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Is there any app that lets you use the separate BT earpieces (like AirPods etc) to communicate directly from one to the other?
You connect them to one phone, as normal, but then two people have each one in one ear and can talk to each other?
I was with a friend to a climbing hall, and even though it was a "quiet" time, it was still hard to talk when one person is far up on the wall and the other was securing you on the floor. Thought this could be a perfect solution.
Tested a radio app once... Like walkie talkie, push to talk style, with multi user channels and all. Basically a voice variant of irc
But you needed to work the device with your hands. No automatic voice activation... At least not anything usable.
(Also, that was in 2014, and I can't remember what is what called...)
I don't even know if this would be technically possible, but I mean, there has to be several situations where a way to communicate over a short distance, "offline" would be extremely practical.
I've thought about this for people riding bicycles together too, but then it would be better if you could add more than two people, and have a bit further reach than BT, perhaps? Or at least a BT mesh.
@forteller I have wanted this for bike rides forever, and have not found a great solution
@forteller There's a few dedicated devices that do this for bicycles, often made by the same companies that make motorcycle intercom systems (e.g. Sena).
I've tried to find something like what you described in the first post and couldn't figure anything out except that some people do it by getting a few little bluetooth audio dongles with 3.5mm jacks and plugging them together, and then pairing a bluetooth headset with each dongle.
@forth Hey, cool. That's interesting! But it seems to me that a separate device should be unnecessary now that most people have these super computers with all kinds of network features built in :)
But does that dongle trick you mention work? I'd love to see/read some more about that.
@forteller Yeah, it really seems like existing devices should do this! I don't know if it's a matter of nobody implementing it in software or a matter of actual hardware limitations to do with audio processing or number of bluetooth devices that can connect & how data is routed to them... but it really seems like it ought to be possible!
It's been a while since I read about that dongle trick and I don't have the link any more. Probably came from a cycling or motorcycle forum and I have no idea how to find it again, though I would have initially found it via some combination of web search & following links...
And now that I'm thinking of it, I realize I was misremembering the way it worked! I believe they actually had wired headphones plugged into some kind of standalone bluetooth audio device?
(I tried walkie talkies and the audio quality was appalling. I also tried some "bluetooth walkie talkie" apps on phones, which never really worked right.)
@forth Yeah, I've been trying to find some kind of app to talk between phones too. The closest thing I've found, I think, is Meshenger https://github.com/meshenger-app/meshenger-android, but it seems to me that it still needs wi-fi (but not internet). Though I haven't gotten around to testing it.
@forth This idea of speaking between two pieces of the same headset connected to the same phone, though, is a new idea for me, and I have not done much to research it. The few searches I've done have come up negative.
@forteller did you just invent ad hoc networking?
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