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Build Your Own Bluetooth Hearing Aid

Posted by michael on from the volume-goes-to-11 dept.

CloudShape writes "I've been trying to find a way to make a mobile phone work with my hearing aids for some years now, and I finally managed it a few days ago. Although the procedure itself is pretty simple, the surrounding issues are good for quite a bit of discussion."

9 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Cell phone RF bad... Bluetooth good. by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Bluetooth is an important add-on to cellular technology because as hearing aid users clearly realized right from the start, there's a lot of RF coming out of that little thing! We hear about all of these questionable health risks... why are we even taking the chances?

    1. Re:Cell phone RF bad... Bluetooth good. by rohan_leader · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I am a hearing aid user so I can comment on this. Being severely/profoundly deaf will get you exceptions in the rule.

      I'm certainly allowed to use my hearing aid on planes. Furthermore, I also own an FM system, basically a sort of wireless microphone that can speak directly to my hearing aid. Same 3 pin connector that the author refers to connect to a DAI shoe, btw. It is certainly handy on planes, and there are provisions in the rules that airlines have for disabled people.

      Personally, I've seen, as I've travelled with other deaf people, others use text pagers in the air to communicate. Definately, the rule is a little blurry when it comes to what technologies are allowed, but airlines do bend over backwards to accomodate us.

      And a word on the bluetooth issue. I heard from my audiologist that Widex www.widex.com is coming out with hearing aids with built in bluetooth. This was a while ago, so perhaps, they are out now. Not only can bluetooth be used to stream audio, but also to configure the hearing aid on the fly. Some hard of hearing people suffer from fluctuating hearing losses and used to have to visit an audiologist to get their hearing aid reprogrammed each time they wanted it changed. Now, we can use our bluetooth enabled devices such as PDA's and laptops to do this.

  2. Great Work! by Mad+Martigan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What a neat project. I've been thinking about the same problem for a while because my Great-uncle is going deaf. He takes out his hearing aids when he talks on a conventional phone (remember back in the day when you used to be able to get those big bowl-looking things that fit over the ear-piece to help make up for the abscence of the hearing aid?), but using a mobile phone is impossible becaues of the RFI.

    He is pretty old, so we would feel a lot more comfortable if he could have a phone with him at all times. I can't wait to try to build one of your devices for him.

    --
    ... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
  3. Where's a standard where we need it? by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Effectively, this solution is working because bluetooth uses a much lower power RF signal so the wire is not interfered with... he's just built himself a custom connection so that a hearing aid can be connected to the bluetooth tranciever.

    So really, all that really needs to be on the market for this to be a mainstream solution are A: Bluetooth adapters that connect to the phone and have a standard 2.5 mm output, and then B: an adaptor to convert that to a hearing aid-friendly conector. It'd have the side effect of letting all of us also connect our favorite handsfree piece to the phone by Bluetooth

  4. Filtering the wrong end? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    If he's trying to filter at the phone end of the wire, well of course there's going to be RFI fed into the hearing aid. The doggone wire is going to act like an antenna that just happens to be sitting right next to an RF transmitter!

    The RFI filter needs to be on the hearing aid end.

  5. Re:Maybe It's Asking Too Much ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How about an opto-isolator? A simple LED setup with some Toslink cable (hell, have it use the S/PDIF protocol, too, just for kicks) would be way more than enough, could run with cellphone/external power, etc. And it would use tons less power than Bluetooth, but it wouldn't have the obviously nice benefit of being wireless.

    I'm sure most of the parts needed to drive this are available cheaply, and they've got to be small enough to be portable. My iRiver 120 has Toslink ability, and it works marvelously (damn small to boot). I suppose it could be good for hearing impared people to listen to music as well. Mmm.

  6. I also wear a hearing aid... by antdude · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't wear those standard/common ones that go on the ears. Mine is the bone conduction type with a headband since I do not have ear canals. I wonder how difficult it is to do this for this type of hearing aid.

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  7. woes of hearing aids by zanzibuz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have a moderate hearing loss, and have found that using cellular phones with my hearing aides is nearly impossible. I look forward to this technology and hope that it will eventually lead towards my being able to use my hearing aids and cell phone simultaneously. There are a few things that I have found work moderately well to compensate for the interference. I have a clamshell cell phone, a Samsung x-427. The clamshell design helps keep the antenna another couple of inches away from the hearing aide, and its enough to make a conversation tolerable. My old phone was a non-clamshell Nokia, and its interference was horribly bad. My hearing aids also have a background noise canceling feature that, when I turn it on, takes out quite a bit of interference. Unfortunately it also makes understanding conversations harder. I am left with having to take out my aids completely to talk on the phone. its quite annoying. For those of you who wonder exactly what the interference sounds like, check out http://commerce.motorola.com/consumer/QWhtml/acces sibility/hearingAid.html there are a few .wav files on this page which sound very familiar to me. Imagine those sounds blaring over every conversation on your phone. It gets to be where you just cant tolerate it anylonger. To my knowledge, only Nokia has an attachment for their phones to allow for use of the Telecoil. Information is at http://www.nokiaaccessibility.com/loopset.html. If anybody out there has used one of these, i'd love to hear your testimonial on how they work... Garth

  8. Induction Loop? (much cheaper) by truefluke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You didn't mention whether you were aware of an existing technology, but there's something known as an "induction loop".

    Being hearing-impaired myself, I obtained an induction loop that jacks into the cell phone. The signal is clear as day. Of course, you have to deal with batteries, but an advantage is, hands-free mode. There's a microphone portion where the cord forks into a 'Y'. :D

    I imagine the local Bell cell-phone store would carry it (that's where I got mine).

    Good luck.

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