Sena Group Intercom & Smart Pairing connection sequence
We almost always have trouble establishing intercom connections on our group rides.
Consider the sceneario 6 or 7 riders show up at a meet to ride together. They want to have a group intercom between all riders. Everyone has as Sena product, with firmware capable of using "Smart Intercom Pairing". Some of the riders have connected to each other in the past and on their Sena Utility App they may show one or more of the group's riders already in their list of "Intercom friends". There's usually a pretty large gap distance wise from front to rear of the group when traveling.
Who scans who to get this setup? What order do the other riders need to show up in the "Intercom Friends" list? Should every rider have every other rider in their list? Do some riders need to delete or move the position of other "friends" in their list?. Who needs who in their list and in what order? That is, who scans who?
Then, who starts the intercom?
We have tried a variety of ways and end up with random connections and some unable to connect at all. The one time we managed to get 3 connected we did 1 to 2, then 2 to 3 daisy chaining them together. But we've been unable to replicate.
Whats the best way to start fresh to ensure everyone can be connected?
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Here's what i found after a lot of trial and error....
1) All sena units need turning off and back on again before starting.
2) Only 1 person needs to create the group and have it set up in the app
3) When setting this up all units need to be within about 10 metres of the phone the the app is running on. That's because you are using the phones standard Bluetooth to set it up, not the long range Bluetooth that the intercom units use.
4) The Sena Utility doesn't do anything other than automate the normal pressing of centre button on the unit for 8 seconds and entering the pairing mode.
5) The "chain" is as per the order in the app list so for best results you should ride in that order on the road!!! And stay in that order... That's the way the chain is set up. To prove this limitation, if you connect person 1 as you, 2 as another rider and 3 as your passenger, as soon as the other rider gets out of range you will no longer be able to communicate with your passenger!!!! The correct way to set it is 1 you, 2 your passenger, 3 another rider, 4 their passenger, 5 another rider and so on..... Think of it like a physical connection lead between helmets.. If all bikes get out of range of each other, each rider should still be able to talk with their passenger if they have one.....
6) You may need to factory reset or delete all phone pairings using the units buttons and configuration menu but only if the above doesn't work....
7) It doesn't need to be this hard and Sena should sort it out so it becomes more reliable, easy and intuitive but i am learning that goes for most of their software / firmware
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Thanks Adrian. After some back and forth with S tech support, I developed this flowchart. I've tested it, it works. There is a limit of 4 riders with any mix of units per Sena, I haven't had a chance to prove/disprove that, but it's what they say. Anyway, this flow worked on first try, was easy to use and for the first time ever everyone got connected that day quickly. During the day, a middle rider's battery dies, orphaning the last guy like you described. But with the app it was trivial to redo at the next stop cutting dead battery guy out.
I'm unable to upload the PDF here, will try as a jpg: If you right click and open image in new windows it gets a little bigger and more readable.
In a nutshell, rider 1 scans 2, Rider 2 scans 3, and so on. When the chain is scanned, it says the last rider can initiate via button press, then ext to last, etc, working back up the line. BUT I think when I (rider 1) did the button press it connected everybody at once. Need to retest that detail.
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Nice clear flowchart Scott. I have just been away for 4 days and we managed to stay connected most of the trip after the initial teething problems of working out the counter intuitive app.....
We each have Shoei Neotec's so all have the SRL2 units. These can be set for up to 8 way.
Only i used the app (Sena Utility), not the others in the group. But I learnt the order of the list of people in the app was key, as was being within 10 metres of each other when clicking on the "save to headsets" button on the app.
When ever we turned our units on after a stop i would simply click on the "save to headsets" button and then clicked on "connect" and it worked every time - as long as they were all switched on after being off and all within 10 metres.
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Thank you. We have 10Rs which I think is a newer version of the 10, and one guy I think has the Shoei integrated (non-Neotec).
"SRL2"? How do I know what ours have? Maybe ours can do more than 4? That is new to me. You'd think tech support at Sena would have mentioned (kidding, of course they didn't).
I had an integraded Neotec, too, original Neotec(I). But the battery life couldn't make it on comms all day, so I switched to the 10R which can make it 2 days all day long probably.
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I just looked up the 10R instructions and that seems to be limited to 4. The SRL2 is limited to 4 by default, but you can enable 8 way intercom as an option, but it doesn't look like the 10R has this option.
I have battery issues every now and then but it was lasting the full 8 hour days last weekend.
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