HelmChat Ditches Traditional Communication Devices For a Cheaper and More Accessible Approach
When I lived in Vancouver BC, my roommate and I (new to riding) lived together and worked at the same office. We would ride into work together every morning, year long. Since we just dropped thousands on bikes and hundreds on helmets, there was absolutely no way we could afford a $300-$400 communications device for chatting during our rides.
We ended up with a smart workaround where we would put our iPhone earbuds on in our helmets and used Discord Voice Chat (software for gamers to call each other while playing games) to chat with each other on our daily commute. It was free and got the job done.
HelmChat takes that idea and brings it to the next level. The steps are easy: 1.) Download it to your phone. 2.) Connect your Bluetooth or cabled headset. 3.) Chat away.
You may have some reservations as not all of us have unlimited data plans on our phones, but luckily HelmChat has optimized the application to a point where it will only chew up 30 MB of data per hour of use. Their website states that a 6-hour ride of constant chatting will use roughly 200 MB of data. I use more than that scrolling through social media in a few days!
With tons of ease-of-use features like automatic reconnection, encrypted chats, and up to 15 people in your party with a stable connection I’m sure you’ll have more than enough reasons to give it a try. It’s free after all!
Gone are the days of having to match brands of com devices and leaving one or two riders without a Sena System in the dark for hours on end. Now everyone can come together and chat to enrich the riding experience without any paywall.
I’m so happy to see an idea like this come to fruition as I have been using a jacked-up workaround that accomplishes the same job but without the dedicated application. I will be trying this out on my next ride and urge you all to do the same.
For more information on how to download and set up please visit their website at HelmChat.eu.