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Satellite Radio opinion?

3K views 12 replies 7 participants last post by  kl3640 
#1 ·
I'm about to take a long trip across the US and I'll be in some pretty remote places, so I figured that satellite radio is a good idea for continuous entertainment while doing a 1500 mile in 36-hour dash across Idaho, Montana, S. Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, etc...

The last time that I tried this I purchased one of the XM portable units that has the built-in antenna and put it in the map-window of my tank bag to keep it exposed the sky, but reception really stunk. I've seen the other semi-portable units, such as the Roady 2, which are really small, mounted on bikes' handlebars.

Two questions:

1) Do they get good reception when mounted that way?
2) How/where is the best place to mount an antenna for the XM receiver on a K12S?

Thanks in advance!
 
#3 ·
HGP3 said:
I have a small steel tab held under the rear most windshield screw on the right and a roady mounted in my tank bag. It gets great reception and I use custom ear plug-phones.
H
So then you just run the antenna wire from your windscreen down and across the top of your handlebars and in to your tank bag, to connect to the Roady? I can't quite see where the wire goes in to the tang bag, so I'm wondering if it snags the handlebars at all (I assume not, of course, but I'm wondering how you prevented the antenna wire from interferring with the steering or if just keeping it short does the trick).
 
#4 ·
I use the Roady 2 on a Hoon Hardware mount, attached to the clutch reservoir. On a recent trip across US up to Hyder, AK, the only time I lost reception was in heavily wooded areas, or when riding in canyons, mostly in East -West orientation.
I bought a raincover for it that was on for the entire trip, easy enough to hit the buttons for station changes.
If you use the Hoon Hardware mount, go to your local Ace hardware store and buy some metris panhead stainless screws that are about 1/4 inch lonher than the ones supplied. The screws supplied only grab by a few threads, unless they have changed that since I bought mine 2 years ago. I think I bought 5x25mm.
 
#5 ·
The new Garmin 2730 GPS has a satellite radio feature.
 
#7 ·
Roadie29 said:
and the new 2820 has bluetooth which is even sweeter...should be available in the next few weeks.
So, I gotta ask. It has bluetooth, so what? What's the benefit? Bluetooth helmets are far and few between and have a 5-6 hour run time (hardly enough time for a decent ride).
 
#8 ·
kl3640 said:
So then you just run the antenna wire from your windscreen down and across the top of your handlebars and in to your tank bag, to connect to the Roady? I can't quite see where the wire goes in to the tang bag, so I'm wondering if it snags the handlebars at all (I assume not, of course, but I'm wondering how you prevented the antenna wire from interferring with the steering or if just keeping it short does the trick).
Just keeping it short is plenty to keep it out of trouble.
H
 
#9 ·
eljeffe said:
So, I gotta ask. It has bluetooth, so what? What's the benefit? Bluetooth helmets are far and few between and have a 5-6 hour run time (hardly enough time for a decent ride).
You can get a bluetooth stereo earphone set, like the one offered by Cables Unlimited. You can cut-off the earpiece and crimp or solder on your own earphones. That's what I did, using the drivers from my Etymotic ER-6i Isolators, and for $100 total ($20 for the Bluetooth stereo earphones and $80 for the ER-6i's), but you can use whatever earphones that you want. The makers of the unit (CellTrends, from Taiwan) also offer another model that has no integrated earphones, so that you can plug in whichever earphones you want without having to do any splicing.

Also, the Bluetooth capability in the Nuvi (and I assume the other BT enabled models) integrates with your mobile phone, so combined with its built-in music features, that means that you essentially don't need an Autocom or Chatterbox type of communications management device unless you also want to integrate in FMS or something else. It makes for a very "clean" motorcycle setup.

I would like to have GPS with Bluetooth, like the models listed in the above responses, or the Nuvi, as I mentioned in the original post. The advantage of the Nuvi is its size and the fact that it has a built-in mp3 player w/ expandable SD memory, so that saves me from having to use a separate mp3 player. SD memory is cheap, so I can get a 2 or 4GB card for well under $100 and then I don't have to worry about music. I think that it also has a calender facility, which could be helpful.

Ideally it would have the XM receiver built-in, like the 2730, so that I could just have one single device on the bike, mounted to the steering head...but I might have to settle for two devices, the Nuvi or other model and the XM receiver, or a 2730 and a separate mp3 player.

Unfortunately, my trip starts on 6/28, so I can't wait for the new models to be released because I need time to purchase it, install it, and test it, so I'll have to go with an existing model like the Nuvi 360 or other.
 
#10 · (Edited)
I wasn't able to find anything at Garmin or in a Google search regarding the 2820's support of A2DP (the bluetooth stereo streaming format) needed to drive stereo bluetooth headsets. I'd wanna be sure it supported it before I started looking at Bluetooth headsets.

Couple that with the limited battery life of bluetooth devices (the unit you describe only has a 5 hour usage time -- probably less driving the E6i earphones), so I don't see this as a viable alternative at this point. Nice idea, but not practical yet.
 
#11 · (Edited)
eljeffe said:
Again, with the limited battery life of bluetooth devices, I don't see this as a viable alternative at this point. Nice idea, but not practical yet.
I've found them to be very practical, especially since they last about 8 hours (not the advertised 5 only) when subjected to constant use, besides which I don't regularly take 8+ hour trips other than a few times a year, such as this upcoming trip.

Second, the CableUnlimited Bluetooth Stereo Earphones cost about $20 bucks. For my upcoming trip I'm going to bring 2 of them and I'll just switch when the first one runs out of battery life, as I don't plan to ride more than 16 hours on any single segment. I'll then charge them either at night or I'll charge the depleted one via the 12V charger from the forward accessory outlet that I installed in the battery cover while I'm riding. And if I didn't listen to music, the charge would last a very long time (all day at least) since it would only really use up power at a standby rate other than when the GPS unit is giving voice directions, which isn't very often relative to power consumption of constant audio.

Lastly, even if I couldn't or didn't want to use a Bluetooth earphone set, the fact that the GPS unit is Bluetooth enabled means that by plugging my earphones in to the GPS that I can take or make calls without having to connect to the phone directly. Even though it doesn't state that it explicity supports the A2DP protocol, it does state that it has similar functionality (however they do it).

So, in other words, the Blueooth features of these new GPS units is very practical, and although battery life could be better, it's definitely good enough right now to be very useful.
 
#13 ·
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