New Kiter Struggles - My Solution

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Sunbear said..
Hi Everyone

My name is Andrew and I've recently tried to pick up kite surfing over the past year or so. I Surfed and wake boarded when I was younger, but haven't done many water sports since. I use seabreeze.com for weather info but only just joined the forum now.

While learning to kite, I really found that lack of easy communication with my teacher and those around me (because of distance and wind noise) has made the learning process a bit difficult. I'm no natural sportsman ha.

Because of this I decided to make and combine a few water proofing and tech products to try keep better in contact with everyone while out on the water.

Have any of you ever had the same issues? Do you think others could also benefit from better comms?

hi mate , the tech si already there. It's called a helmet with inbuilt two way radio

Put a pic up of yr design
Fyi west oz boardsports been using them for years

Hey all cheers for the responses

I have been getting lessons from my father and sister so I don't have access to all of the nifty helmet equipment.

I will look into the headzone system and helmet radios but I would guess it's rather expensive and potentially outside my budget, I'm just borrowing people's kites for the moment while I learn.

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timmybuddhadude said..
Put a pic up of yr design
Fyi west oz boardsports been using them for years

Here's a pic of what I've sorted so far. Just trying to make something a bit more affordable


I'm also in the process of writing an app to more or less communicate with those around you, but that's still a while off.

Good on ya..good luck with it nice u r showing initiative allthough maybe were in the dark a bit
Thats great..

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RPM said...

Sunbear said...
Hi Everyone

My name is Andrew and I've recently tried to pick up kite surfing over the past year or so. I Surfed and wake boarded when I was younger, but haven't done many water sports since. I use seabreeze.com for weather info but only just joined the forum now.

While learning to kite, I really found that lack of easy communication with my teacher and those around me (because of distance and wind noise) has made the learning process a bit difficult. I'm no natural sportsman ha.

Because of this I decided to make and combine a few water proofing and tech products to try keep better in contact with everyone while out on the water.

Have any of you ever had the same issues? Do you think others could also benefit from better comms?

Another 1st post wonder...

So I take it you went with the cheaper kiteschool who has euros screaming at you and waving their hands on the beach? It's not your fault..

Actually it is...

Any school worth its merit uses the headzone system. Helmets and radio direct to your ears.
If your school didn't use this, you got ripped off.

That's it in a nutshell.

Also I doubt your backyard invention is better than headzone.
Nice try to market your product though.

Welcome to the forum...

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Kozzie said..
we use icom 41-w's when instructing students several thousand feet in sky who then fall into the water covered in canopys and lines.

ill never understand whats with eveyrone and "kite specific" bull****. if you have a problem *cant hear instructor, RADIO! but its in water...... WATERPROOF RADIO! done, now you can cancel your alibaba order and get back to rideing upwind like a mad man you kitesurfer you do a jump!

Hi Mate

Just to clarify, my intention has never been to create a kite surfing only solution, but something affordable that's useful to people from any number of sports.

I think there are a couple of issues for these handhelds, starting with the price I found online being $350 and ending with they need to be in the hand, or held by perhaps a pocket in your clothing? I'm sure they work great for skydiving, probably better than my gadget, but I still feel there are issues with using two ways for many other sports.

Its only a cheap alternative until greed adds their markup.

Hi Sunbear,

this looks like an interesting product, I would like to see it and test it in live environments, i.e. wind and salt water.

From reading the description it seems the communication is done through Bluetooth, which to my knowledge only has very limited range. Can you provide more info about this?

Christian

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cbulota said..
Hi Sunbear,

this looks like an interesting product, I would like to see it and test it in live environments, i.e. wind and salt water.

From reading the description it seems the communication is done through Bluetooth, which to my knowledge only has very limited range. Can you provide more info about this?

Christian

Hey Christian

Essentially the bone conduction headset (technology used in military helmets) connects with your smart phone device via blue tooth. This means it has roughly a 10 meter range. The idea is basically strapping your phone to your arm in a waterproof pouch while you're out on the water. The phone will never be out of range of the headset. The pouch protects the phone from water and debris, and the touch screen and camera functions while in the pouch. The pouch also floats with the phone in it. The connected headset (with microphone) allows you to communicate with people via phone calls, or skype / facebook voice conversations while out on the water. As I said I actually plan on making a communication app also which allows you to both have 'private phone calls' with specific people, but also chat with those around you within a relevant range.

I've done a lot of testing with different designs and products to find one I believe really works while out on the water. The biggest challenge has been minimising the background noise, as I'm sure we've all tried to have a phone call on the beach on a windy day? It sucks ha. That's what I've been aiming to fix, and I think it's a pretty good job so far. I do also want to eventually sell a couple different models at different price points but I don't have the capital to sort everything out at this point.

can not believe your flogging this **** for a few hundred bucks, every monkey with a solder iron and a couple clamps can make one for $30 and set it in some silicone. who ever you have makeing these for you is chargeing WAAAAY the **** to much for you to think this is a good price for retail.

make them yourself and charge $50 or opensource it and sell the parts in an easy to assemble guide. youll be surprised what the average goon can do with a screwdriver and some heatshrink

Hello SunBear
It's great to see some entrepreneurial effort and the subject you are looking at here is a quandary that could certainly do with some advances but I think you need to consider a few things at this point.

After a few interesting episodes with the instructor yelling Bar Out! Bar Out! not being able to hear a thing and ending up on the Maroochydore north shore (not deaf but with water in my ears I might as well be) I purchased a Headzone system of my own (which was a saga on it's own but another story) in the end I never actually used it but I did have significant exposure to the Headzone system using Christian's Headzone system during lessons on Cocos Island.

The main issue I found it that even the Headzone has it's limitations of audio level and consequent distortion that made it of minimal benefit in my case (I think it's a great device for those for the majority who can use it). However I did lots of research and experiments of my own (after too many years in the RF/Communications business) because I did not like the one way limitation of the Headzone system but the major problem I came up with is not the RF system itself, which as you say can be solved in a number of ways using established RF systems or some of the newer communications technologies, but the safety issues are the bugbear as Absolutbeginer indicated earlier is the thread.

Having anything that will work in the way you have suggested, that is using bone conduction necessitates direct contact with the skull and regardless of whether you encase this in a helmet structure or have a free standing headpiece, a significant impact with the water, with equipment or even people, (which you will experience learning to kite and subsequently experimenting with new tricks) will push that device into your cranial cavity causing much much grief.

I use a Gath safety helmet even though it looks a bit kooky because I need to be able to go to work after a great kiting experience or a bad one where some of the impacts have seemed to almost wrench the helmet from my head. It's unavoidable and an inevitable reason that these helmets with or without communication systems are highly regulated in Australia (take motorcycle helmet as an example) so if you develop these and put them out there I hope you find yourself a good legal representative as well.

My suggestion is to pivot ie change tact, I would suggest you look at something like the molded ear fitted RF audio systems that performers use for concert music foldback system nowadays (which have a comparatively large surface area and pliable rubber like texture) or there are 'water proof' hearing aids which can receive bluetooth or run a 'local loop' rf system although I would not be fussed about using my smart phone in a waterproof bag, again physics is against you as the exerted pressure of hitting water at speed, as opposed to just straight immersion, is far greater than the normal waterproofing systems as used on something like the paqua bag headzone use, can handle. But perhaps that might be possible???.

Apple and Samsung have hearing aid control apps already and some hearing aids do claim to be waterproof (I can't help but think kiting might be a little outside of their operational parameters though) and you can run them in a mode where you can hear the immediate vicinity external audio for those safety conscious souls around you on the water giving you helpful advice ('LOOK OUT YOU IDIOT!') and the bluetooth audio from your phone is combined with the external audio so you can hear your instructor at the same time ('Push the bar out Andrew and just lookout for that catamaran won't you....') Incidentally they use this mixed audio feature so you can answer the phone (voice activated command) on handsfree in the car and still hear issues like someone blowing his car horn at you at the same time.

The bottom line is unfortunately the cost is going to be a problem, people involved in this type of research spend millions of dollars annually and charge accordingly however there are plenty of innovations still to work on, how about a helmet that allows thought transfer (not far away), no more problem with wind noise??? drone kiting??? driverless kite board??? I wish you luck.

Garry

Have you actually tried a bone conduction headset?