BMW Communicator pair with Sena

andyclift

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For the last few years I have been very happy with my Sena 20S but no longer need bike to bike. Thinking about a new lid with BMW Communicator fitted but still need to talk to wife on pillion. Sena is quite good at pairing with other makes but before spending loads of money can anyone confirm whether the BMW will pair with a 20S.
 
Tried to pair my sena20s with my pal and his Bwm helmet thingy
Although it seems to pair ok in use can’t get them to work on road it may be the Bwm unit needs a button press to activate the link but my pal is a bigger Luddite than me!!
The Bwm manual does talk about phone call initiation thru button press but like many manuals is not that great at clarity
 
OK so I now have my new R1200 GS Adventure Rallye and bought a BMW GS helmet with BMW Communicator built in as it seemed possible to pair it with my wife's Sena 20S. I never got as far as trying to link it and the Communicator is going back to the dealer.


I linked the Communicator to the bike's TFT display and the Navigator VI satnav. I then linked the TFT to my iPhone. All seems OK but after restarting the bike the helmet would not link to the tft. Paired it again and it seemed to accept the pairing but dropped the link to the satnav. After a lot of attempts to get it to work I contacted dealer who told me he thought you could have it paired to the tft OR the satnav but not both. This matched my experience but seemed crazy as every time I wanted to use the tft I would need to unpair my phone and helmet from the tft and pair them with the satnav. Then if I took the satnav off pair again with the tft and so on and so on. When it did work I found the sound too quiet and poor quality.


As an experiment I dug out my Sena 20S. Paired it with the satnav and then the tft and the pillion helmet. Paired the phone with the tft. Only needed to it it once and EVERYTHING works perfectly every time I start the bike. The only thing I lose is being able to adjust volume from the bike but as the Sena has a big easy to use volume wheel on the side it is not a problem at all and the audio quality is much improved. I prefer to listen to radio when riding rather than iTunes and that works well by just selecting the station from the radio app on my phone. The tft shows station and program info. and satnav commands either from the bike's TFT basic satnav or the Navigator interrupt as they should.


Incidentally, the BMW phone software which includes the "basic" satnav works surprisingly well. Initially some of the graphics were a bit misleading. For example when I was asked to take third exit on roundabout, i.e. right turn, the graphic shows a roundabout with an arrow going straight on but with a small number 3. It seems there is only one roundabout graphic so the number and voice is important to check and the voice is very good indeed. It provides so much information on distance to turn, type of turn, how sharp it is and how long to next instruction that the graphic on the tft is not really needed very much. If the headset was as good as the bike it would be perfect.
 
If it is the Helmet from 2015 it is using old Bluetooth technology, this is where the problem is likely coming from.

Article below is not from me.

The Spec Sheet they (BMW) sent me, however, states that they are using "Bluetooth Standard: 2.0 and 2.5". My question is, hos can they use such old technology standards in a "new" product? Especially since it doesnt appear to be upgradable.
 
If it is the Helmet from 2015 it is using old Bluetooth technology, this is where the problem is likely coming from.

Article below is not from me.

The Spec Sheet they (BMW) sent me, however, states that they are using "Bluetooth Standard: 2.0 and 2.5". My question is, hos can they use such old technology standards in a "new" product? Especially since it doesnt appear to be upgradable.

Makes sense to use the older standards as new stuff, if its any good, should be backwards compatible - this way it ought to work with many more devices - but software compatibility is always a pain in the arse - we have to deal with these things all the time at work.
 
If it is the Helmet from 2015 it is using old Bluetooth technology, this is where the problem is likely coming from.

Article below is not from me.

The Spec Sheet they (BMW) sent me, however, states that they are using "Bluetooth Standard: 2.0 and 2.5". My question is, hos can they use such old technology standards in a "new" product? Especially since it doesnt appear to be upgradable.

This is a new helmet fitted by the dealer with a new BMW Communicator which was ordered in especially in March 2018.
 
Makes sense to use the older standards as new stuff, if its any good, should be backwards compatible - this way it ought to work with many more devices - but software compatibility is always a pain in the arse - we have to deal with these things all the time at work.


I think Apple get it right by limiting backward compatibility as going the Microsoft way of trying to make everything compatible with ancient kit produces its own problems. Whether kit is made backward compatible should not be an issue if every part of the kit is new purchase in 2018. I could understand it if I was trying to make the bike work with an early version of Communicator but BMW have produced a bike which needs Bluetooth and badge a 2018 Garmin Satnav which uses bluetooth. They then supply a bluetooth headset in 2018 which will not work with it. Oddly enough the bike and satnav work 100% as expected with a 2012 headset from Sena
 


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