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Build Your Own Bluetooth Hearing Aid
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."
Imagine the possilbities for bluejacking!
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
You'll actually need that tinfoil hat.
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
I found it quite humorous, really, clicking on a page about hearing aides and getting visually yelled at.
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.
edit:
Seems as if Phonak has their own deal called SmartLink. No sign of a Widex version like I said earlier, but again, it's planned but may not exist.
I'm going to be looking into this since I have a Phonak Claro hearing aid that I bought a year ago. Finally can use those cellphones now!
For those of you who are wondering, hearing aid users experience an extremely loud crackling sound when using the cell phone normally. If we use the telephone switch which make use of built in telecoils in some cell phones, a loud buzzing sound overpowers the voice coming out of the phone. It's very annoying indeed. Some phones, amazingly, do not have these problems. I once tried my friends phone made by Samsung, and it was amazingly clear! Just a bit of advice, in case, anyone was wondering :)