Bluetooth hearing protection

Darren Wright

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Location
Springfield, Missouri
So a while back I was looking for hearing protection that also has bluetooth built in for listening to music while mowing. My Howard Leight ear muffs came with a 4' cord for connecting an mp3 player or phone, but I was a little tired of tree limbs catching the cable or catching it on the steering levers getting off the mower. Only ones I could find were in the $400+ range and still didn't support music via bluetooth. So I improvised...

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I found this little guy for $18 and also bought a 6" 3.5mm male to male stereo patch cable off amazon.
2014-04-19 19.55.17.jpg

adapter
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008AGQMQC/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

cable
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004LGNB0A/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's got its own amplifier, so it's actually a little louder than connecting my phone directly. You charge it via a USB cable, which last for several hours. The sound quality is a bit lacking, but acceptable.
 
interesting...

Literally two days ago the same type of gizmo from thinkgeek.com (link here) showed up in my mailbox, but at over twice the price.

If you really were to use it in a car, as shown in that photo, I wonder how quickly the removal + charging would become an annoyance...

...art
 
Cool. That's a slick idea. :thumb:

BTW, thanks for pointing me to the Howard Leight ear muffs a couple of years ago. Everyone that has tried mine (including a number of people in my shooting club) has raved about them and declared they were going to buy a pair.
 
I used to use use buds under my passive muffs too, but same problem with it getting caught on stuff. Mostly what prompted me was the fact my phone had gotten yanked from my pocket and laid on the mower deck for about 10 minutes before noticing it.
 
Cool idea Darren you have had me thinking about this for a few days. Wish i could hack the blue tooth setup in my Jeep to play music over it from my phone. Its geared for phones only. Had thought of plugging something like this module into the aux input of the radio where up to now i have had a cable that plugs into my phone. Thing is the radio system shares the aux input mode with the CD mode so it keeps dropping back to CD if it dont hear signal for a while which can be when a song is soft for a bit. Bit frustrating at times. May be time to pull the dash apart and make my own connection to the input on the radio and then hook something like this blue tooth module up.

I like the earmuff conversion though.
 
I've found the location I mounted it at was next to some of the headphone wiring causing static in the music. So I did a little upgrade tonight by adding a holding clip for the bluetooth device. It mounts a little lower on the band keeping the audio cable away from the head phone's wiring.

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I got the Dewalt Bluetooth adapter for my Lee Valley electronic hearing protectors and it works great. It came with a little clip and some industrial strength Velcro which holds it well onto the headband so far. LV just came out with some lightweight protectors with built in Bluetooth for about $100.
If I’m not using machines, the UE Roll speaker works great for music and podcasts in the shop.
 
So a while back I was looking for hearing protection that also has bluetooth built in for listening to music while mowing.


I found this little guy for $18 and also bought a 6" 3.5mm male to male stereo patch cable off amazon.
View attachment 82478

It's got its own amplifier, so it's actually a little louder than connecting my phone directly. You charge it via a USB cable, which last for several hours. The sound quality is a bit lacking, but acceptable.
I have the same device and love it. I can use the adapter to plug it into my worktunes headset or, via a cable, hook it into the aux input on my older stereo to listen to eiter my iPad or iPhone. Works great and the battery lasts for many hours.
 
Last year I bought the radio headphones with bluetooth from Lowes. I have a three bladed 62" wide mower so I need the hearing protection too. They work great through the bluetooth connection with my phone, and the audio quality is far better than the previous " radio only" headphones that I had before buying these.

Charley
 
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