Garmin 2610 earpiece

[goodinr]

Starting to play with my new 2610 on the gs and need to connect an earpiece to get the audio route instructions, I do not have any autocom gear and would like to try it with this function, has anybody had any success with an unamplified earpiece and if so how much and who did you buy it from.
Thanks in advance Ron.

 

[metro]

One of these plugged into one of these works very well, even with earplugs.

No helmet fitting required, just slips over your ear. Only £6.

 

[Taff]

The only worry I have with using the above earpiece with an adaptor is that its adding another connection, which could cause a problem .... as I found last weekend. I'm sure I have seen someone on here mention that they bought one of those "covert" earpieces with a 2.5mm plug off e-bay. If you look on e-bay for "covert" and "earpiece" you should get a result.

I'm tempted to go down that route (but it must have a 2.5mm plug attached) to save fannying about with trying to secure the speaker in the helmet etc.

 

[metro]

The only connection problems I have had are using the Autocom lead, which I resolved by using shims. The Maplin 2.5-3.5mm adapter I have had no problems with at all.

 

[Kritou]

One of these plugged into one of these works very well, even with earplugs.

No helmet fitting required, just slips over your ear. Only £6.

I use a lead direct from a RAM ACQ audio adapter on my Quest - do you think this earpiece would work in conjunction with a soft earplug or would it need some amplification, especially at speed or with an open face helmet?

 

[metro]

do you think this earpiece would work in conjunction with a soft earplug or would it need some amplification, especially at speed or with an open face helmet?

Works fine with soft earplugs, even at speed. Without earplugs the volume gets too loud for me over 3-4 and I had ringing in the ear for hours after somehow turning the volume up to max - it was painful getting "in 300 feet turn left" screamed at me! This with the SP2610.

 

[goodinr]

Is the output from the garmin a stereo or mono one as if it is mono I think the adaptor is the wrong one and should be maplin part number RWO8J which is a mono adaptor. Thanks for the info lads I will be getting these cheap bits and pieces shortly and give it a try. nothing lost at this kind of cost. Ron

 

[Oatsy]

Guess what im going to buy tomorow Thanks for the info Metro

 

[metro]

Is the output from the garmin a stereo or mono

Sorry, I got a mono adapter, not the stereo one I linked to. 21p cheaper too!
Andy.

 

[Oatsy]

Dont suppose you could post a link to it as i cant find it

 

[Oatsy]

Doh just noticed you already have

 

[metro]

Just be careful with the volume.. I thought my ear was going to start bleeding

 

[iaing]

I got one of the ear pieces mentioned in this thread today. I found it quite painful trying to put my helmet on with the earpiece in place, and impossible to slip it up the side once my helmet was on.

I could hear fine for about 1/4 of a mile then it crackled, broke up and stopped working. The connections seem fine and it works plugged into a portable radio.

Anyone else had problems? Any suggestions for a comfortable earpiece?

Whilst I'm at it, I wear one piece leathers so there is no place to tuck the wire in as you can with a jacket. Any ideas for avoiding the wire flapping about loosely?

Cheers

 

[PanEuropean]

One of these plugged into one of these works very well, even with earplugs. No helmet fitting required, just slips over your ear. Only £6.

Well, that's true, it works very well so far as transmitting the audio information to your ear is concerned. However, I think that we should not overlook the rather significant hazard that is presented by putting a small, hard object between our skull and the liner of our helmet.

Most speakers that are designed specifically for use inside a helmet are very flat and very large - in other words, they are about the thickness of an After Eight dinner mint, and roughly about the same diameter. This is to ensure that if we have an accident, fall off the moto, and our helmet impacts the ground exactly at the location where the speaker is installed, we won't get the speaker / earpiece driven into our skull like a railroad spike.

I don't want to come across like Pollyanna (the sky is falling...), however, I think we need to be very, very careful when choosing what we are going to put inside our helmet. I have looked at a lot of little earpieces that would be just fantastic for listening to music, listening to the GPSR, etc., but I sure as heck would not want to have one of them inside my helmet if I had an accident - because the emergency medical attendants would need a drill to extract it from my ear canal if there was ever a sharp blow to the side of the helmet where the earpiece was.

Michael

 

[metro]

Most speakers that are designed specifically for use inside a helmet are very flat and very large

The link I posted is for a speaker designed for in-helmet use - did you actually look at it? It is large and flat. It doesn't go in the ear at all. It sits outside the ear and is exactly the same as those used on DAS training / bike test (or certainly was on mine). If your ear canal was about 2 ins in diameter it may get stuck in there, I suppose.

I only tried it because I found the Autocom earpieces excrutiatingly painful, after ages of trying different positions. I can't see it being any worse than these from a 'safety' point of view - the only additional 'protection' with the Autocoms is the helmet liner fabric.

The best solution I have found is monitor earplugs and use these most of the time, but they are a bit pricey.

Andy.

 

[goodinr]

I got one of the ear pieces mentioned in this thread today. I found it quite painful trying to put my helmet on with the earpiece in place, and impossible to slip it up the side once my helmet was on.

I could hear fine for about 1/4 of a mile then it crackled, broke up and stopped working. The connections seem fine and it works plugged into a portable radio.

Anyone else had problems? Any suggestions for a comfortable earpiece?

Whilst I'm at it, I wear one piece leathers so there is no place to tuck the wire in as you can with a jacket. Any ideas for avoiding the wire flapping about loosely?

Cheers

I went down this route after advice from the lads but found the earpiece dug into my ears after a very short time.
What I did was to cut off the arms on the earpiece which then became a small button speaker, wrapping this in some thin foam and then sewing it into a small bag made from material. ( the wife did this bit so no wise cracks about my outstading manly abilitys) For 5 quid I had a very good and cheap helmet speaker, gluing a bit of velcro on the rear of the bag (make sure you remember which is the rear) gives an easy method of helmet mounting.
As for the sound breaking up, I found that when plugging the adaptor into the garmin audio out connector if it was pushed all the way in the sound either crackled or did not work at all. I solved this by putiing a small brass washer (very small) as a spacer over the adaptor pin and all now seems ok.
Flapping cables, What I did for this was to make a loose knot about half way along the the earpiece cable (trial and error for position) and sew a little piece of velcro over the knot (wife again obviously) I then tywrapped a small piece of velcro to the left handlebar to the right of the switch cluster and just dab the two pieces of velcro together as I set off.
Hope this is of some help, "Blue Peter" never gets a look in compared to this board.

 

[metro]

I solved this by putiing a small brass washer (very small) as a spacer over the adaptor pin and all now seems ok.

I think the Garmin socket is a bit out of tolerance when matching up with other audio stuff, it does seem a bit hit and miss. I have to use spacers with one solution (Autocom) but not with the monitors / mono earpiece plugged in direct.

I found it quite painful trying to put my helmet on with the earpiece in place, and impossible to slip it up the side once my helmet was on.

I think anything rigid is not going to suite all ear/head/helmet shapes, sorry it didn't work for you. As I mentioned above the absolutely best solution for me is custom monitor earplugs, which are only as uncomfortable as you find earplugs, but a bit more of an investment at c£130 if I remember correctly.

Andy.

 

[PanEuropean]

The link I posted is for a speaker designed for in-helmet use - did you actually look at it?

Hi Andy:

Yes, of course I looked at it. The earpiece in the link you posted (the first of the two hyperlinks in your post) is a conventional over-the-ear speaker - IBM supplied me with one almost identical for use with my laptop.

The concern I was trying to raise is this: Most small speakers that are intended for use in helmets are very thin and are designed such that they mount on the helmet itself, on the inside of the helmet shell, in the cavity that is provided in the helmet for the outer ear (more or less as Goodinr described his installation of this component). If a person was to wear the earpiece that you illustrated in the manner in which it is designed to be worn, or was to use some other device that either sits up against or embeds in the ear itself (more or less as you have suggested with your reference to 'custom monitor earplugs' above), and subsequently fall off the moto with the helmet impacting the ground, it is possible that the hard foam insulation of the helmet could drive the earpiece or earplug against or into the skull of the person who is wearing it.

I'm not trying to shoot your proposal down, I'm just trying to contribute to the general discussion of helmet audio here by raising an issue that I think riders should be aware of.

For what it's worth, I need to purchase a helmet sometime this week that supports helmet audio. I'm going to have a look at the new BMW helmet (expensive as heck), and also have a look at some of the components that are available from J&M in America, for fitment into my existing helmet. I've been doing quite a bit of searching on this subject over the past few weeks.

Michael

 

[metro]

Michael;

So to answer the original question, unless you want to run the risk of having your ears drilled out you need to spend a fortune

I obviously don't know how frequently the type of injury you describe occurs, however I would have thought that a speaker fitted into the ear cavity of the helmet stands as good a chance as ending up embedded in your skull in this type of incident, since it wouldn't evaporate on impact so would get pushed somewhere as it is fixed to the same hard foam insulation that would cause something not fixed to it to enter the skull.

I don't really see how earplugs with internal speakers pose a greater risk than earplugs without, as they have the same profile, however on balance it is probably more likely that using earplugs (speakered or not) while on the bike will stop you going deaf while you are waiting for the freak set of circumstances that may drive them into the brain.

I understand the point you are making, but I don't see how this problem could be overcome without resorting to external loudspeakers.

Andy.

 

[Deleted account 210609001]

Just ordered a Quest 2 with the audio adaptor on the mount thingy as suggested by RAM-man, I was wondering about how to get audio instructions. This thread has therefore been extremely helpful. Have now ordered the Maplins stuff and will sort it out via trial and error, I'm sure.

As Goodinr said, better than Blue Peter. Now, where did I put that velcro.....?


Thanks, chaps.