Bluetooth radio

[MartinAdelaide]

Anyone here had experience with using Blutooth to connect to a hearing aid or cochlear implant? I might be able to hear my VHF OK but in an emergency I'd prefer better than 'might'.

[ohgary]

Not sure about cochlear implant, but with a hearing aid you can get bluetooth hearing aids, They are pretty new and may not support all bluetooth devices. You can get hearing aids with "tv connectors" interface That connect to the audio out of a TV and transmit audio from the TV to the hearing aid, but these may not meet your needs as they often disable the "aid" and only work in AId or TV mode.

You might also want to consider a bone conductive headset and a bluetooth transmitter. The bluetooth transmitter would be connecting into the audio output of vhf radio then would transmit audio to the headset. These go over the ear and work with or with or without the hearing aid. They allow you to hear your surroundings and hear the audio from the bluetooth device. Check out https://aftershokz.com/ for their headsets. For a transmitter something like this will work. https://www.amazon.com/Miccus-Blueto.../dp/B00713RSE0

[LoudMusic]

One major major major issue of bluetooth is that it uses the same band of frequencies as 2.4ghz wifi. If your vessel also uses extensive 2.4ghz wifi then bluetooth may not be an option for you. Fortunately there are other options for wifi, but you would need to make sure all your devices can speak that type of wifi (pretty much everything made in the past ten years should ...)


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

[ohgary]

While they do share the same band, and some channels can overlap your not going to have any issues with interference. Both protocols will find a good freq to work from. I really doubt any yacht is going to have enough active wifi nodes that would saturate the band to stop bluetooth from working. IN the worse case you move your wifi to the higher channels and your outside the bluetooth freq.

[MartinAdelaide]

Gary. Bone conduction relies on me having some hearing and a functioning nerve. I don't have that. I can then stream straight into my head. I just Googled and found there are Bluetooth radios, so I'll have to find an outlet and give it a try.

[roverhi]

Keep us informed of the progress of you search for Bluetooth connectivity. I use Bluetooth to connect my hearing aids to my phone. Works great, way easier to understand other person on the phone than hearing speech from phone speaker to hearing aids. Find it very hard to understand traffic on the VHF. A bluetooth to hearing aid connection would probably make it way easier to understand.

[MartinAdelaide]

Well, GME got back to me. Their only units with Bluetooth are AM/FM radios. I could usemy Roger Pen but, like the MM2, I'd had to plug it in and it'd be vulnerable to salt air. Plus, I'd have to wear the neckloop, which would also be vulnerable. I also don't feel like spending money on the MiniMic and then finding out it doesn't work with VHF radios.

[MartinAdelaide]

Well, apparently the only VHF sets with Bluetooth are handheld. Unfortunately that doesn't meet the legal requirement where I am. So, it's back to me trying my Roger Pen and wearing the neck loop or getting the MM2, probably the latter as a neck loop is just another thing to get caught.

[geoffr]

Can a simple bluetooth transmitter be connected to an aux output on any of the fixed VHFs? ... if not a bit of a circuit and use the external speaker output?

[MartinAdelaide]

Originally Posted by geoffr

Can a simple bluetooth transmitter be connected to an aux output on any of the fixed VHFs? ... if not a bit of a circuit and use the external speaker output?

I thought about a Bluetooth dongle but that requires a USB port.
As for speakers, my hearing sucks, so I may not understand people. I could rely on the DSC or EPIRB but I might just need to contact my boat club, not a rescue group.