bluetoothability for dunces

My son has an earphone clipped into the hat wirelessly bluetooth? linked into his smartphone and a sat nav app on the phone. sorted!, I will ask him for more info. No, better than that I will get him to buy me one so when I conk out on club runs and get left in nomans land I can find my way home.

How did we survive, in the 50's? No sat nav, not even mobile phones. Oh, I remember, we studied maps before we set off.

Map's ??, I think you can still see one in a museum.!

I bought an old RAC SatNav 200 off Ebay for £5. These early models have both an earpiece socket and 12v power socket. I connected up a cigarette type of female socket, on a lead, to my battery. This dangles at the front end of the seat.

Once wired in to the battery supply, The SatNav gets progammed and then placed in my jacket pocket. A nice set of comfy earplugs head up to my lugholes before the helmet takes up residence. Generally I only wear one earpiece so that I can still hear when chunks fall off my bike.

This set-up work fine for me, especially when plodding through London. I listen to the SatNav instructions but can use my undistracted eyesballs to watch for signs, turnings and mad motorists.

Previously robert_tuck wrote:

Map's ??, I think you can still see one in a museum.!

Being of a 'certain age' I still check the map if I'm going somewhere new, and being of a 'certain age' Icheck it out on Google Earth too, thenItake the map with me.

Just found this thread. I use a TomTom rider GPS. Sometimes I use my Interphone F3 bluetooth clip-on goody (with the earpiece fitted permanently i/s the helmet) but it is quite feasible to leave it off and simply glance at the screen occasionally. I do it all the time in the car when I need the GPS. You just have to put up with the warning sign flashing up now and again "headset not fitted!". You certainly don't have to "stare at the screen" all the time as the visual display is very clear and obvious. George

I use a lazer monaco carbon flip front helmet which has bluetooth built in It also has a self dimming photochromic visor! . It works well with my phone or to stream music. It should work with sat nav too but as I do not use sat nav on the bikes I cannot comment.

Previously alec_stevens wrote:

has anyone any experience/opinion on the topic of how you get a Bluetooth capable m/c sat/nav to audibly function properly? Hating motorway work as I do ,i have always done it the old fashioned way. however, on an unfamiliar route this summer it took over 7 hours to travel the "bike route" from Swindon to somewhere east of Norwich ! Something must be done, so one not very state of the art sat/nav later I'm still trying to sort out where you go from here,.Tried my ten year old Motorola earpiece thingy and even if it did work (which it doesn"t) you just cant wear a lump like that under an helmet. Do those Bluetooth audio earphone thingies / buds?work? I don"t want an intercom, never have passengers, just a way of the sat/nav Telling you the way to go next . Staring at a screen on a motorbike is surely a no,no.

Hi Alec

I use a tom-tom rider 400 which is bluetooth to my vnet intercom I also bluetooth my phone to my gps which then allows calls , my vnet headset also will pare with others I ride with as long as they have the same unit normally there are two of us one leading and the other being back marker with 4 riders between us works well up to 1000mtrs

I have a Garmin bike Sat Nav and Cardo Scala rider, still getting use to it but seems Ok. I always check the route first. but found in modern traffic its too busy to glance at instructions or a map.

Previously John Shorter wrote:

How did we survive, in the 50's? No sat nav, not even mobile phones. Oh, I remember, we studied maps before we set off.

Less Traffic, cars were slower, road signs clearer and positioned better.

Now we have roundabouts with signs on the road which are obscured by cars and on gantry's that you have to look up to see while looking out for cars cutting across the traffic because they are in the wrong lane.

Ah yes, & don't forget the aritic that obscures the roadsign that you were trying to read!

Personally I don't think that voice is critical, I have a Garmin Zumo that moves between bike & car. I always take maps (Michelin for the mainland) & plan a rough route ahead of time. Visual system worked well enough to get to Italy & back last year.

Research shows that the hypothalamus (route finding) is less active when using sat nag, my theory is that just using visual is closer to map reading with less negative impact (hah what do I know!).

Now off to feed Shrodinger's cat, if I can find it!

Cheers, Mike

oops, sorry, direction should be the entorhinal cortex,adjacent to the hippocampus (not the hypothalamus!).

It's late, it's hot & I've had too many Pimms!

Cheers, Mike