communication system

pat McNamara · 3 Jan 2024, 18:56

Hi and new year’s greetings from Ireland.

I am a member of a bike marshalling organisation in Ireland, we require a communications system while out on the road.

We have a need to be able to speak to each other when marshalling road racing cycling events and truck runs to name a few.

We currently use a system called BT Talk which runs in conjunction with your Mobile phone, this allows us to use the different headsets we have on our helmets.

The system it is not great, it works and receive transmission intermittently when we are out on a run which is of very little use to us.

However, when it does work it is quite good as you also have a g.p.s on your phone which allows you to see your fellow riders.

In addition to that we can be fairly spread out during the day any thing up to a mile or even further, if any one had any suggestions regarding such a system I would be great full.

Appreciate your feed back.

Kind regards

Pat

Jörgen · 3 Jan 2024, 19:17

@pat-McNamara Hi, interesting to read.
I am also in a group of riders that supports different events like Ironman, bicycle events or other charity events etc.
We also use BT-Talk for communication. And it seems there is nothing better at the moment. There is another one (I am looking for the name).

By the way, I would like to know something more of your bike marshalling organization. Can we share information by mail or PN?

Rob Verhoeff · 3 Jan 2024, 20:22

@pat-McNamara I know someone who speaks highly of Zello. On AliExpress, you can buy a Bluetooth button that can serve as a push-to-talk key. Press the button, and you're ready to transmit.

Jörgen · 3 Jan 2024, 20:29

@Rob-Verhoeff said in communication system:

@pat-McNamara I know someone who speaks highly of Zello. On AliExpress, you can buy a Bluetooth button that can serve as a push-to-talk key. Press the button, and you're ready to transmit.

This is available for BT-Talk from Midland. https://www.midlandeurope.com/en_150/products/btt-button

Con Hennekens · 4 Jan 2024, 09:07

@pat-McNamara, I have been experimenting with Zello. It works great I think. It has the ability to use overlay buttons on your screen, also multiple of those if you wish. So you can define multiple groups to talk to. You can add this overlay button to the MRA navigation screen and move it to a place where is does not bother. A pushbutton would work much better of course, but have not tried that. I think I will order 2 of them to try.

Con Hennekens · 11 Jan 2024, 11:15

@Rob-Verhoeff said in communication system:

On AliExpress, you can buy a Bluetooth button that can serve as a push-to-talk key. Press the button, and you're ready to transmit.

I have bought two of these:
https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005005481658422.html
(common CR2032 batteries not included)

They seem to work fine. You can even use multiple buttons for multiple groups.
Button A to talk only to the front driver
Button B to talk to the whole group
Button C to talk to the homefront

Of course for Zello every participating phone needs to have an internet connection, but you can use multiple phones on one hotspot

Erdna · 15 Jan 2024, 15:37

@pat-McNamara

Cheers,

maybe "Helmchat" could be an option for you, too: https://helmchat.eu/

Regards from Austria,
André

Nomko Nomden · 16 Jan 2024, 14:43

@Erdna said in communication system:

@pat-McNamara

Cheers,

maybe "Helmchat" could be an option for you, too: https://helmchat.eu/

Regards from Austria,
André

Helmchat looks discontinued due to reasons of not working on Android 13.

The developer of Helmchat even redirects (new) users to Jitsi Meet, an Apple/Android chat application.

So, Helmchat is not an option either.