Cardo Edge and Sena intercom twattery

[Snowy]

Me and two other incompetent fools went to Portugal a few weeks ago to play on the TET and ACT trails. I already have a Cardo Edge so the other 2 bought Sena headsets before the trip so we can chat on the bikes to share the giggles - MESH brings everything together after all. Who knew it didn't ...?

We spent hours in the cabin on the way to Santander with our helmets on saying 'can you hear me now'? Which we could of course but not through the intercoms. What a bunch of twats we looked. It turned out that we couldn't all link up, especially as one of the Sena units turned out not to have MESH at all and the other Sena unit only had MESH - which it turns out doesn't work with Cardo MESH. I eventually managed to link up via bluetooth to the non-MESH Sena but that was it.

In my defence, I had no input in which units the other 2 bought, but I am guilty of assuming that any units with MESH could talk to each other. Every day is a school day and all that buy there's no excuse for stupidity and a lack of geeking. This set the tone for the whole trip, which turned out to be brilliant.........

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

Excellent, thanks for sharing and your honesty.
I need to buy a new intercom as the battery on my Sena unit failed a couple of months ago.
I also need a new crash helmet so I've been looking at the various integrated options available. My last couple of intercom units have had the Mesh thingy but I've never used it as I prefer to ride/holiday on my own and any friends I do travel with don't have Mesh units anyway.
I'll be going for the most basic Schuberth/Shoei options I can find so it's nice to know I'm not missing out anyway based on your experience.

 

[Pale Rider]

Had similar twattery earlier this year, 9 of us sat with helmets on and off in a pub we chose for the meet up all asking "can you hear me" luckily the majority of us had cardo comms of various models and eventually managed to all connect, fella with the senna was fucked and gave up.

 

[JohnnyBoxer]

 

[Lord Snooty]

I use Cardo, sadly the manufacturers are not interested in producing product that provides seamless connectivity to rival products; and TBH you can sort of understand why, I mean why would they when they want to ensure customers stay with their product? I sometimes have customers come in for training with a Sena or some other product and it is the devil's own game even trying to get them to connect via BlueTooth, they will never connect via Mesh as they are using different aspects of the EMS.

 

[JoeBiff]

Me and two other incompetent fools went to Portugal a few weeks ago to play on the TET and ACT trails. I already have a Cardo Edge so the other 2 bought Sena headsets before the trip so we can chat on the bikes to share the giggles - MESH brings everything together after all. Who knew it didn't ...?

Same / similar experience here in Springtime, this year.
Two gays with Schuberts fitted with mesh, and a third with some random helmet with a Bluetooth connection.
Where it all let itself down (we found) is the Random headset could only link up with one Schubert helmet.

It was reassuring though that SportsBikeShop took the lad’s Random headset and exchanged it for a Mesh unit FoC.
This was really good of them, though they did have a replay of the sales pitch made at the till when it was purchased; seems their shops have a big brother system near the tills….
Long story short, the upgrade worked fine, with all three Meshed together.

As an aside - There’s been a recent software update, too and a new App for the Schubert system which has made it altogether simply and easier to connect. The previous App was dim and scratchy.

As Snooty says above, though, there’s method in Cardo Madness when it comes to pairing dissimilar manufacturers systems.

 

[KWS]

I recently bought a new Shoei helmet and while browsing, I got sucked in by the advertising bumph of the Sena, thinking I’d buy it at the same time as the helmet.

Fortunately I checked in with a couple of mates who are already riding in groups, one here in SW Scotland, the other over in NE England and they both confirmed that their groups are Cardo users. I found plenty of information online suggesting that MESH would allow some inter-connectivity between Sena and Cardo, but probably more information regarding problems.

In the end I went down the Cardo route myself and saved the 20% VAT, buying it at the same time as the helmet.

 

[stever1]

Excellent, thanks for sharing and your honesty.
I need to buy a new intercom as the battery on my Sena unit failed a couple of months ago.
I also need a new crash helmet so I've been looking at the various integrated options available. My last couple of intercom units have had the Mesh thingy but I've never used it as I prefer to ride/holiday on my own and any friends I do travel with don't have Mesh units anyway.
I'll be going for the most basic Schuberth/Shoei options I can find so it's nice to know I'm not missing out anyway based on your experience.

Personally I’d give the built in Shoei option a miss. My original one lasted less than a year and the replacement has never been very good. The sat nav instructions often break up.