Homebrew bike - bike communication?

[Rosie!]

Originally Posted by clintnz

Well I guess I'm just lucky that when my lady says something to me, it is usually worth hearing

...I have to say that cos she stalks me on here

Cheers
Clint

Stalk is such a strong word, I prefer to think of it as 'appreciation'

And the comms system was your idea.

[booger1]

BUSTED

[clintnz]

Some pics, radio mounted to bike & wired in:



Car charger cut down & wired through a 2A fuse to the relay I fitted a while back to run my hot grips & other future gadgets. This relay has a fused heavier feed direct from the battery & is switched from the park light.



Cheers
Clint

[griffo1962]

Originally Posted by clintnz

On first inspection I thought the radios would run off the supplied car chargers without batteries, It turns out they will power up & receive, but shut down, beep angrily & flash the light on the charger if one tries to transmit. Obviously the wee charger doesn't have the amps to power a broadcast.

Clint, my Uniden specifically states NOT to transmit if it is externally powered. No one I asked can tell me why but..........

[stresssolutions]

We bought some headsets and Cobra radios. Our experience has been......marginal at best. The microphone is fine, the PTT button is very good, but there's some short at the headset connector thathas caused one speaker to not function. 2 year warranty, so they're going back.

I'd suggest some sort of headphone/earbud use instead of speakers in the helmet....unless everyone has the same wattage radio, you won't be able to hear the low watt...like a chatterbox. That's not too clear...so I'll say that when both speakers were working, I could hear my wife, she could hear me, but rarely could we hear our friends with chatterboxes, and we were too loud for them at full power; they use custom molded earplug speakers.

[desert dog]

this is my system....






motarola headset (mic / ear piece)

transeiver in back pack.

limited range but ok with vox on dirt tracks & noisy old KLR.

cheers matty

PM for more info.

[mrich12000]

I use my 2mtr Alnico radio in pairs.

[clintnz]

Originally Posted by griffo1962

Clint, my Uniden specifically states NOT to transmit if it is externally powered. No one I asked can tell me why but..........

I think it is because the wee charger can't provide enough current. A mo power 12V - 3.6V reducer will be cheap & easy to fit if the current setup gives any trouble.

Originally Posted by stresssolutions

I'd suggest some sort of headphone/earbud use instead of speakers in the helmet....unless everyone has the same wattage radio, you won't be able to hear the low watt...like a chatterbox. That's not too clear...so I'll say that when both speakers were working, I could hear my wife, she could hear me, but rarely could we hear our friends with chatterboxes, and we were too loud for them at full power; they use custom molded earplug speakers.

The speakers seem to work pretty well, better sound & louder than the earbud supplied, works with earplugs & less hassle when taking helmet on/off. A good quality earbud would no doubt give good sound though. This system really only has to work for Rosie & I, so not too worried about compatibility with other radios. I do have another 0.5W radio I may try out of interest though once I have both the 2W ones set up.

Further testing over the weekend had everything working well apart from the mic at speed. I may try a little wind deflector under my helmet chin next, if that's still no good I might look into noise cancelling mics.

Cheers
Clint

[Unstable Rider]

This may be a tad off topic, but lots of us have "unlimited" talk time on cell phone plans, has anyone tried a bluetooth and cell phone inside the helmet and just call your riding partner before you start your ride?

Just thinkin outloud.

Usually gets me in trouble.

[clintnz]

Originally Posted by Sick-Till-Tuesday

This may be a tad off topic, but lots of us have "unlimited" talk time on cell phone plans, has anyone tried a bluetooth and cell phone inside the helmet and just call your riding partner before you start your ride?

Just thinkin outloud.

Usually gets me in trouble.

It's actually not a silly idea if you have coverage, even a simple setup with the ph mounted on the bars so you can just hit the speed dial button, ph set to auto-answer & a speaker & mic setup like I've built might work, most ph's these days come with a lil earbud & mic on a wire.

Trouble is, many of our adventures take place far, far out of cellphone coverage.

Cheers
Clint

[Navy CWO]

My wife and I have been using a Motorola FRS handi-talki and a set of earphones attached to the inside of the helmet with a small boom microphone fro MotoComm. Seems to work pretty good up to about 65mph. After that you have to duck down in back of the windscreen to hear the other person's transmission. We've used this system for about 2years. Only problem is the wires into the mic and headphone speakers are DELICATE, so I put a dab of RTV on them where they meet the speaker foam to strenthen them.

[mikesova]

Bringing this thread back from the dead.

This is my setup, I bought one of these:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Helmet-speak...-/350184892508



It consists of helmet speakers, a boom mic, and a PTT button that mounts on the grip of the bike. The whole thing plugs into a single pin Cobra FRS radio. I got a pair of the radios and the charging station at a yard sale for 2$. ;)

It works great and it's nice that its the single 2.5mm pin, so I bought a 2.5mm female to 3.5mm male adapter that allows me to plug it into my iphone or mp3 player to listen to music.


I recently thought it would be nice to have both going at once, so I found a cord that would allow both to be connected:


I hooked it all up with an older mp3 player and it worked fine. I could listen to music and when somebody would talk, the music kind of faded and I could hear what was being said. However that mp3 player was kind of quiet (even if the radio wasn't connected). I know that you can damage electronics by hooking them up this way, but I then tried it with my zune and my iphone and If I had those plugged in, I couldn't hear the radio or even change the channels on the radio. It was like it was frozen until the zune/iphone was disconnected. The only thing I could think of, is that the zune/iphone has a TRRS (4pin) headphone jack and the older mp3 player had a TRS (3 pin) jack. I know that a mixer is the way to go, however, I don't have a good way to get my mic to work through a mixer like a Mixit2 or Amplirider.