Is HelmChat Free Helmet Comm Solution A Good Alternative? – RideApart

What if there was a way to communicate with your riding buddies where you didnt have to worry about hardware compatibilityorBluetoothrange limitations? Better still, what if said moto communications solution was free? No, Im not talking aboutDiscordI'm talking about an app solution calledHelmChat.

By this point in the global pandemic, many of us are more familiar than wed like with Zoom.HelmChatuses the open-source videoconference software Jitsi, which some prefer over competitorZoom due to privacy concerns. As long as you havecell signal on your smartphoneand older smartphones are totally fine to use here, tooyou should be able to talk to yourHelmChatgroup via audio-only conferencing.

Presets inHelmChatare optimized for conditions unique to riding, such as noise-cancelling for loud helmets. If you have speakers in your helmet, thats obviously helpful, but if you choose to use wired or wireless earphones inside your helmet instead, no problem.HelmChatis hardware-agnostic, so your buddy with theSenacan talk to you with your earbuds with no problem.

Regarding privacy, heres what theHelmChatwebsite has to say:

Jitsiuses DTLS-SRTP encryption for all of its communication. 1-to-1 chats are connected directly between phones. Group chats do use our server asacentral point, but the contents are never stored to any persistent storage and only live in memory while being routed to other participants in the meeting.

Cell reception can obviously be an issue, but its one thatHelmChataccounts for. If your cell signal drops while youre in a chat, it should immediately reconnect once you have signal again, and a notification tone will soundto let you know. You will require a data plan on your phone, since chatting via theHelmChatapp (which is available for both Android and iOS devices) requires around 30MB of data per hour, with a 6-hour ride taking roughly 200MB intotal.

If this sounds great to you, youre not alone.The good news is, you can check it out without having to shell out any money, and see if its right for you and your friends.The person behindHelmChatgoes by u/doflnlon Reddit, andis quite responsive to questions, concerns, and commentsin this Reddit threadaboutHelmChat.

Sources:HelmChat,Wired,Web Bike World

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Is HelmChat Free Helmet Comm Solution A Good Alternative? - RideApart