helmet communication?

After trading in my cruiser a few weeks ago for an '06 white VFR I let my riding buddy give it a go who also rides a cruiser, the next morning he when't down to the dealer and bought the same '06 as me but in black, figured it would be more fun to continue riding similar bikes. Anyway does aybody have any sugestions as to the best type of helmet communication system we could get that would allow us to keep in contact from one bike to the other?

 

AutoComm was the absolute best when I researched this a couple of years ago. Rather pricey, but works great, even at speed. You can tie in other things too, if you want, iPod, radar detector, GPS, cell phone, etc. Since then I have seen ads for a couple of new players, but don't have any experience, nor read any comparos.

 

Heard and read the same about the Autocomms. Hoping Santa brings one!

I tested some Fire Fox throat mic's for a shop-owner buddy of mine and those things are total trash. Amazingly clear at a stop, but about 10mph they are totally worthless.

 

Thanks for the quick reply, I will check out your recomendation.

 

with autocom can I integrate an mps or portable satelite radio etc.. that both bikes could hear and then be overide by speaking?

 

The Autocom will let you integrate multiple audio sources like that, but only for you and your passenger, your buddy won't be able to hear your sat radio from another bike.

It has a very slick override where the music volume gets muted when other traffic comes in, or when you speak.

I have one, it works VERY well. Even the vox is good, though they offer a push-to-talk option if you want it. When I talk on the CB radio the truckers tell me they can't even tell I'm on a bike, that I sound like I'm in a bigtruck.

I do have to adjust the vox if there's a heavy crosswind, but overall the vox has worked so well I have never gotten around to hooking up the PTT switch. Riding alone I just don't need it, vox is perfectly adequate. But I recently started carrying a passenger so I'm going to need to get around to that soon, so I can converse with my passenger using the vox, and use PTT for the radio. The truckers don't need to hear my nephew asking me if we're there yet.

 

Another thumbs up for the Autocom system. I only use rider to pax, phone and music. All works great. used it to talk to pax up to 100mph with no problem. I only use VOX, and all you have to remember is to give it time to switch on at the begining of talking. If you speak quickly, the first few words can be lost. Mine is hard wired in to the bike using the power from the tail light, and the unit is kept under the seat where the took kit normally sits. (toolkit now behind battery). I use "coiled" extention leads from bike to helmets.

 

They won't, it is smarter than that. But it will transmit what you say back to him, it doesn't know.

 

StarComm1 gets my vote. I'm all about the Advance model. All you have to do to prove it to yourself is watch the video they did comparing theirs to others. Simply astounding. linky

I also like the quality of the unit according to a lot of users. No ill reports that I know of.

 

The difference between Chatterbox and Autocom is that the Autocom actually works ;-))

 

Chatterbox vs Autocom

Before I had the Autocom, I had a Chatterbox.

This was a kit Chatterbox offered, it had everything you needed to run CB radio, including the radio, for less than $300. Brand new, the Chatterbox did not work, but I was able to find the loose wire and solder it. After that it worked quite well, for a while at least. It had an input for a music source, like an mp3 player. The music went through the radio and got controlled by the same volume control as the radio. I had to use a Boosteroo inline amp with the music source otherwise I couldn't hear the music unless I turned the radio up so loud that every time any CB traffic came in, it about blasted me out of my seat. The mic worked OK when I was on a faired bike, but when I was on an unfaired bike the truckers would say "Lady, there's sumpin wrong with yer radio!" Still, all in all I liked it.

The included antenna fell apart and the pieces got lost when they fell off my bike while I was riding one day. My friend who had the same kit, had immediately upgraded his antenna to a much larger one, so he gave me the antenna parts from his kit and I was back in business. The second antenna fell apart too, but this time I saw it fall off my bike and I was able to go back and pick up the pieces and bring them home and fix it.

Then the radio controls went wonky; every time I pushed the button to go up or down one channel it would go up or down a random number of channels. But if I pushed the button enough times it would eventually find the channel I wanted, so I just lived with it and went on.

Then the mic stopped working. I couldn't fix the problem. I called Chatterbox since I'd only had the thing for a year, it was still under warranty right? But Chatterbox could not supply a replacement headset; their other communicators used a different headset that wasn't compatible with my CB kit, which was now discontinued, and they didn't have any more of the old headsets.

I continued to use it to listen to music and eavesdrop on the truckers, for a couple months, then one of the headset speakers blew and the sound got terrible.

That winter I bought the Autocom stuff. Autocom doesn't do a kit like I had from Chatterbox. Instead you buy a base unit and the various leads you need from Autocom, and you get your radio transceiver and antenna from someone else. In the end it cost twice as much, and it required a lot more research and mental energy to navigate the bewildering array of choices.

What did the extra money and effort get me? Well, the wiring is stout, I haven't needed my soldering iron even once. I haven't had to replace any components, but if I did need to, they offer them. The sound is a whole lot better. The mic works much better. The people I'm speaking to don't hear any wind noise at any speed, even when I'm on an unfaired bike. I have a much longer transmit range with my carefully chosen and well-tuned antenna. I've been running the Autocom for three or four years now and everything works just as well as it did when it was new, and once I finished the setup phase I've never had to futz around with it the way I did with the Chatterbox. It's rock solid.

 

Eli, would love to hear more about your transceiver setup with the autocom. I'm going that route soon specifically for bike to bike communications.

 

having used both, it is a BIG difference, BIG.

If you just want to be able to talk at stops and stuff, than the chatterbox is fine. But if you want to be able to say "I need to get gas" @ 70MPH, the Autocom is the only choice. Plus you don't have that big box on the side of your helmet.

 

Last time I saw a brochure for Autocom, they had made sort of a chart to help people pick componenets. When I bought mine in like '99, it was indeed a pain to figure out what I needed.

The only problem I ever had was my buddy had a Speed Triple with a very loud aftermarket exhaust, that would trip his VOX occassionally, thus I would get an earfull of his exhaust. Once he got a thicker mike sock from Autocomm, the problem went away. A minor issue to be sure.

One of the nice things with the Autocomm is that for bike to bike communication, you plug in a outside vendor's FRS or GRMS radio. You know like a Motorolla unit you might already have for camping or whatever with the family. This means on occassion, if you need to be in contact with someone in a car, they can carry such a radio, and you can be in contact with them as well. Not something I did often, but occassionally it came in handy.

Spike

 

The base Autocom unit I have has been superseded by the newer ones. Mine is model PRO-7. In their new lineup I suppose I would get the Active-Plus model. The base unit is a black box with a couple sockets for plugging in different types of inputs, like music, cell phone, GPS, radar detector. Then it has three cords coming out. Two of them go to rider and passenger helmet headsets, the third can be plugged in to an assortment of different leads for various transceivers. If you want to set up PTT, there's a PTT lead that daisy chains in between the wire coming out of the black box and the transceiver lead. My PRO-7 has only one control on the black box, it is used to dial the mic sensitivity up and down. You adjust the volume on the various devices to turn them up and down and I've been happy with that. (The new Active-Plus has some additional controls for dialing these things up and down, apparently other people complained about the lack.)

The tranceiver lead I bought is a somewhat standard two-pin connector, that I can use with either my CB (a Cobra HH38WXST handheld model) or with some FRS radios. (I took the lead to Best Buy and bought a pair of radios that it fit, since a set of radios is cheaper than another lead.) Autocom offers an assortment of leads for various radios but I haven't bought any of them. I can only use one radio at a time; I have to choose which one to plug in.

The base kit came with a lead for cell phone that I have never used. I ride a motorcycle to get away from telephones; if I start talking on the cell while riding you might as well shoot me now.

I do listen to music while riding. I use a Sandisk Sansa MP3 player, which I plug in to a PIE inline amplifier, and the amp plugs into the Autocom. The PIE amp replaces the Boosteroo; I chose it because it runs off bike power instead of two AA batteries. (The Sandisk MP3 player doesn't have an option to run off bike power, and one battery to change is enough!) Maybe the new Autocom unit will amplify the music enough to make the amp unnecessary, but with the old one the personal stereo simply don't have enough juice for the music to be audible through the helmet speakers when I have earplugs in.

When I speak into the mic, or when traffic comes in on the radio, the Autocom drops the music to half volume. If I had a radar detector or GPS it would also do that.

The antenna is attached to the cross-brace of my Givi rack, kinda low, near the license plate. This was the least obtrusive mount point I could find. I chose a four foot antenna because the mount point is so low and I wanted the tip of it to be just slightly higher than my head when I'm riding. I chose an antenna with a screw type tuning adjustor rather than the kind where you trim the wire, for ease of tuning. The antenna plugs into an 18' long antenna cord. A motorcycle is at a disadvantage with CB, because it doesn't have enough metal to make a good ground plane, and spreading out this antenna wire helps compensate for that. I have it routed all over the bike, under the bodywork, and the end comes out of the fairing near the handlebars, so I can plug it into my radio. I tuned the antenna with an SWR meter I got for $20 at Radio Shack.

I put the Autocom box, the MP3 player and amp, the CB radio, and a power block into a tank bag. I put a Powerlet jack on the tankbag to plug it in to a Powerlet outlet in my fairing. One power cord plugs in all the devices. I cut a window at the front of the tankbag to plug in the CB antenna and so I can reach the controls. I made a clear plastic window in the top of the tankbag so I can see my MP3 player through the map case and push its buttons as needed. The headset leads, I route out through the zipper opening.

Oh, and I wired the outlet in my fairing using a relay so the power turns off when I turn the bike off. And I put a power filter under the outlet because otherwise the radio picks up a whining noise from the ignition and a ticking noise from the grip heaters.

Also something to note: If you route the transceiver leads too close to other wires, you'll get a feedback squeal every time you key the mic. If this happens, try rerouting the wires a bit, it will go away.

As you can see there are a lot of fiddly things to set up even with the Autocom. If you have poor quality equipment, it adds a whole 'nother layer of fiddliness and you may never overcome it. I know a number of people who have tried to set up CB on bikes and who swear it's just not doable. I also know a few who have managed to build their own setup from cheap parts, and who have been quite successful at it, but IMHO those people are particularly gifted and skillful. The Chatterbox was my third try at setting up CB, and my first success, at least until it fell apart. The Autocom is my fourth try, and it has worked well and held up long term.

 

This is the uk web site, sure you can find US stuff from this.
http://www.autocom.co.uk/

 

I have the Chatterbox. The only way to use it at freeway speeds is to use the push-2-talk switch. The squelch only works below 50 mph. Also, battery time is around 4 hours depending on how much you talk.