Friday 27 February 2009

Icom

For many years, while in school I have dislike using the microphone because of the way the teacher wear them around their neck. The microphone would then be rubbed against their clothes causing the static sound and the sound of the teacher breathing.... just make me want to throw the microphone away. If I ever been asked by a teacher of the deaf to see if I was using the microphone.. I simple take the microphone with me but they were never been switched on. Who would want to hear someone breathing down your ears? or the sound of static and miss out what was been said? Deffo not me.
Anyway, few years go by and technology have improved. I came across this product, iCom, through Ear Foundation in Nottingham by a guy who works in Phonak. A company that design most of the devices that hearing impaired relied on. A new hearing aid, colour on the moulds, sound quailty on the telephone, microphone and so on. I quite like the name of iCom as its quite close to Apple Mac brand name, but that's not the real reason why I like it. iCom was build for the hearing aids user but since there are many cochlear implantes, they adapted the technology to be able to work together no matter what devices we have. Hearing aids or cochlear implant and other devices. Here I will explain why this is a fanstasic product.



What does it do?
iCom is a product that we called a FM System wireless microphone using the latest technology. The microphone bit is a little stick where it can be hang on a person's neck speaking through the mircophone as if in a class or in seminar or it can be place on the table such as in cafe and want to cut down the background to hear the small group of people. Its wireless and it can even talk to pick up tranmitter on a bluetooth.

setting it up....

I have a Harmony, Advanced Bionic product so I would need an hook called iConnect ( another Apple mac brand name... Why am I so proud of this? hee hee) In this picture, you will see the iConnect hook that required a yellow (size 10) battery into it and a MicroLink FM receiver. This Microlink FM receiver is the most important pieces of product that transfer the information from the microphone. As pictures below, you can see I have connected the FM receiver to the iConnect hook to the processor. Once switched on, The microphone need to be in the right channel for the FM receiver to pick up the right microphone otherwise you might have another FM user in the event and you end up hearing different conversation. Please see Hearcare to set up this channel for you.




How does it work?
Basically the microLink FM receiver pick up the information through the microphone based on the channel I can use. There are many way to set it up but I would rather keep it simple as I have only been using it for few days. My channel were on number 2 and when a person was talking through the microphone I could hear him/her. There are three different levels of noises that I could cut down to focus on that specific person depend on the noisy background.

Level one is general surrounding and not so nosiy but comfortable. This is ideally for meeting board room with group of people around the table and maybe no background noise available.

Level two is zoom. A zoom is ideally for being in a cafe with small group of people on your table, chatting with you. Or you could even use this while you are driving in the car and a passenger next to you wear the microphone. You could drive your car without even tempt to look at your passenger to lipread what they said. Old habit may never die but this could be very dangerous if you tempt to lipsread your passenger! Please drive with care! I find this task was brilliant. I was able to have conversation without lipsreading although can be quite tiring if on a long trip.

Level three is super zoom. Ideally for a very nosiy background and want to focus on one person you want to listen to.

iCom can also been use to listen to the televison by placing the mic near it. It can even been used for landline telephone or even better..... using a mobile phone based on bluetooth. Everyone have a bluetooth technology on their mobile phone and this would mean we would be uptodate with everyone else. We don't need to buy an adapter to the mobile phone. Just Wireless.

You can even get an adapter for your ipod as long it ha ve bluetooth adapter and connect to your ipod. This won't cost much. You can find the adapter such as Jabra Music adapter at this link
This is what I am hoping to get for my iShuffle ipod.


I have recently went to NEC, Focus Imaging which its all about photography, suppliers, seminars and equipments. I thought I would test out the FM System wireless Mic out and see how I got on. I must said that I was impressed on how much that I could control the sound of the background and focus who I want to hear the most. Even at the seminar, a guy who presented the seminar had a microphone to the public, I simply place my wireless mic on my lap pointing at him. He was very clear and there were no static sound, no breathing and the background nosie were non- exist.

Coming from a person who can not stand having a microphone because of the static sound, I must said that I am very impressed with this. I have yet to try out the mobile phone and the music adapter.

If you wish to find out more information about this product please click on this link






1 comment:

dancilhoney said...

Just a simple advice for me ,in loud environments, you should shorten the distance between you and the listener. informative phonak hearing aids buda tx