Creating a cheap helmet speakerphone solution

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Category: Automotive
Published on Thursday, 25 July 2013 14:01
Written by Ben
Hits: 9868

 

 

There is nothing like driving while listening to music , especially I you ride a motorcycle. Since an average helmet speakerphone solutions costs quite a lot I have decided to build something on my own. It wouldn't be perfect but I would get the main job done – get music\GPS navigation to my ears while driving my motorbike.

I tried a previous solution in the form of a button ear plug headphones that came with a bluetooth speakerphone which wasn't good for several reasons:

  • I had to put them on before putting my helmet on

  • while putting my helmet on wearing the headphones the latter sometimes got released off their grasp on my ears which made me take both and helmet and the headphones off and start over again

  • because the headphones were ear plugs , hearing the engine was difficult and it made me look at the RPM niddle instead of just hearing he engine. Not very safe if you ask me...

  • the inability to hear the environment and traffic made also things not safe.

  • The bluetooth speakerphone that came with the unit was hang from the helemt while I was driving. It had a little clip on which lost its graps on my jacket a lot of times.

I had figured I needed 2 main items – 2 speakers to install inside the helmet and a device that will transfer data wirelessly to them.

While browsing on E-Bay I found these:

 

   

 

 

the speakers are pretty simple , they come with a double sided stripe paste and a volume control unit and an audio cable extender . Installing them inside the helmet was easy.

After installing the speakers I glued the bluetooth speakerphone on the bottom left side of the helmet. I glued the volume control unit right above it for an easy access while driving.

The bluetooth speakerphone comes with a button ear plugs , a charger and a cable extender. Its functions are quite general and simple – forward and backward audio control , volume control , a pause button and a big button that has several functions - on\off , bluetooth attach mode and calling to contacts via voice recognition.

More functions of the led light:

  • steady red – while charging the unit

  • blinking blue – right after the unit has been turned on and it is searching for its attached device.

In addition it has a single powerful led light while turns red if there is no connection to a device and blinks every 3 seconds a blue light when having a stable connection to a device.

It looks really cool while driving your motorbike...

Since the helmet speaker’s audio cable is a bit long when it comes to the scale of a helmet I had to “handle” it and make it disappear by shoving it in between the helmet's hull and the internal part of the helmet.

I admit it doesn't look very aesthetic but it does the job.

The helmet speakers cost 4$ and the bluetooth speakerphone 12.5$.

 

Pros:

 

  1. A very cheap solution for someone who doesn't want to spend a lot of money on a genuine motorbike bluetooth speakerphone system

  2. Easy installation of the helmet speakers and gluing the speakerphone and the volume control to the helmet

  3. In case you lost the charger of the speakerphone you can use a Nokia charger instead

  4. depending on your smartphone abilities , with this installation you can listen to GPS instructions while listening to music while driving your motorbike.

  5. For all of you who need to hear the engine noise like in order to know when to change gears – since the distance between the ears and the speakers is quite big – about 1.5 CM in my case , hearing the engine noise and traffic noise is possible.

Cons:

 

  1. The helmet volume control isn't perfect and it is made at a very low quality which makes the volume be uneven between the speakers. A special spray for electronics parts cleaning can be used to overcome this problem.

  2. Since the microphone of the bluetooth speakerphone is built in and the speakerphone was glued on the outer side of the helmet ,it cannot be used for phone calls. Installing the unit inside the helmet right where the mouth is could be a sufficient solution to this issue. But since making phone calls while driving my motorbike wasn't one of my goals in this project I'm happy with theway it is.

  3. Looks – it looks a bit messy and improvised