Help with creating PI hearing loop for friend

[Loquitir]

Hi

I'm looking to hel a person with a disability.

My friend has a hearing disorder which means he is 85% deaf and he uses a Bluetooth hearing aid in each ear.

I'm looking to build a Raspberry PI hearing loop which will have microphone input receiver and amplify the sound directly into his hearing aids.

I've got no background in this kind of task so I am looking for some thoughts from more experienced users in how to go about it.

Basically the scenario is pretty straight forward say 4 people sat round a breakfast bar. One of the persons is deaf and the other three want to use a method of speaking by Bluetooth directly into his hearing aids which can already do with his mobile phone, VIKTOR audio streaming device and TV system. These all directly transmit via blue tooth into the hearing aid.

Any thoughts how I can recreate a hearing loop so we can chat in to a microphone or microphones and get this transferred straight into his earpiece via Bluetooth or IR RF.

Any thoughts would be much welcomed.

Kind regards

[Brew]

Is the ambient noise around the breakfast bar too loud for your hearing impaired user to distinguish the conversation by using the microphones within the hearing aids?

[Loquitir]

No. His hearing isn't effected by the breakfast bar area or background noise. It's the easiest place to sit with closest circular seating for close proximate discussion.

The loop would act as an amplifier.

[DeeJay]

From my (possibly incomplete) understanding, I think there is a problem with vocabulary here?

A conventional analogue 'hearing loop' radiates a signal which a hearing aid on its 'T' setting picks up and injects into the ear canal. The loop doesn't amplify - it takes the output from an amplifier and 'broadcasts' it.

By contrast, surely Bluetooth is a point-to-point network that operates by 'pairing' two devices? In the hearing-impaired case, presumably the earpiece and some 'base station'?

So do you need the RPi to act as an aggregator of the analogue signals from one or mikes around the location, with the combined feed then being made available over Bluetooth as the base station for the user to pair with?

[redhawk]

I don't understand the problem, your friend has hearing aids so why are you building him a hearing aid??

Just to clarify are they genuine Bluetooth hearing aids or just a regular Bluetooth headset??

Bluetooth audio does not support multiple connections at the same time therefore trying to multiplex 4 streams to one Bluetooth audio stream would be virtually impossible without the aid of 4 Raspberry Pis and 4 Bluetooth dongles.
A simpler solution would be to use a Bluetooth Audio transmitter dongle + microphone amp circuit and then pass this around the room if people wanted to talk to him or alternatively one of these - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sonic-SuperEar- ... d_sim_kh_2

Richard S.

[Loquitir]

Yes that's exactly what I am looking for.

Microphone to base station aggregated or enhanced pair to the blue tooth hearing aids which boosts him hearing conversations. A scale of aggregation i.e different increase to get the boost ideal to include him in different environments.

From my (possibly incomplete) understanding, I think there is a problem with vocabulary here?

A conventional analogue 'hearing loop' radiates a signal which a hearing aid on its 'T' setting picks up and injects into the ear canal. The loop doesn't amplify - it takes the output from an amplifier and 'broadcasts' it.

By contrast, surely Bluetooth is a point-to-point network that operates by 'pairing' two devices? In the hearing-impaired case, presumably the earpiece and some 'base station'?

So do you need the RPi to act as an aggregator of the analogue signals from one or mikes around the location, with the combined feed then being made available over Bluetooth as the base station for the user to pair with?

[Loquitir]

He has two top of the range digital Bluetooth hearing aids which work with his Viktor, mobile phone and TV. He struggles with conversations with people individually and groups. I'm looking to use RPI to build something pics up conversation with mics and is boosted or aggregated so that he better hears the conversation and therefore feels included.

Hope that helps

I don't understand the problem, your friend has hearing aids so why are you building him a hearing aid??

Just to clarify are they genuine Bluetooth hearing aids or just a regular Bluetooth headset??

Bluetooth audio does not support multiple connections at the same time therefore trying to multiplex 4 streams to one Bluetooth audio stream would be virtually impossible without the aid of 4 Raspberry Pis and 4 Bluetooth dongles.
A simpler solution would be to use a Bluetooth Audio transmitter dongle + microphone amp circuit and then pass this around the room if people wanted to talk to him or alternatively one of these - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sonic-SuperEar- ... d_sim_kh_2

Richard S.