Bluetooth on a 2018 Spyder RT

I purchased a 2018 Spyder RT with the BRP connect system, which of course does not provide bluetooth for FM and/or Aux. In looking at alternatives, as I prefer headsets when on the road, I can across Motorcycle Dave's solution for the RT. It includes a cable to simply plus into the radio, as well as a Sena 10 bluetooth transmitter.

Has anyone tried one of these on a 2018 with the BRP connect? I know the dash changed significantly, and understand the system has more speakers and maybe more power, but am not sure if the connectors remained common.

Thanks for any insights.

That's a great idea. I am thinking about doing it to, but waiting to hear from other people who have tried it.
JD

I e-mailed Dave direct as well. His response was "your audio system is different than all the other Spyder’s that came before 2018, your system is already blue tooth but they left a few thing off when they made it." He suggested using Pandora, XM or similar. He also suggest using FM if your headset has available -- mine is a Sena 10U which does, but a little flaky to change channels etc. I took from Dave;'s response the current harness will NOT work on an 18.

That said, you should be able to tap into the rear speakers and use as an input to the sena transmitter. It should not be difficult at all, but I was really hoping for plug and play. I may try to create a harness "bypass" for mine when I have time.

I'm really disappointed that Can Am is not even at 2006ish technology levels for bluetooth with BRP Connect. My previous Hondas and BMW were able to bluetooth FM to headset for years! It should be an easy software fix, and I have to believe it was a bug/coding error as there would be no reason not to implement that functionality. That said, BRP Connect is already a year old and the correction has not been made.

That’s interesting! The 2015-2017 RT’s at least had the option to add a bluetooth device (I bet Sena made it) to allow you to hear the AM, FM and XM with Bluetooth helmets. Why would they ever go backwards! With the current system I’ll never trade my 2016 RTL on another Spyder unless!:banghead:

Need to be nice.

I have contacted BRP several times and all i get is see your dealer . :shocked:

If I could get a look at a 2018 and the radio inside, there maybe ways to do it. To hook a Sena SM-10 to speakers requires a reducer circuit to lower the power output to ear bud levels. It can be done that way but is not plug and play.

Bob

Thanks Bob. I believe the issue with the 2018s is actually software vice hardware. Th radio (BRP Connect) does have bluetooth, and it passes audio from the BRP apps (Navigation, music player) to the headset fine. It will not pass FM radio or anything plugged into the aux input though. seems for some reason, they have those two disabled in SW.

Understand on the Sena SM-10 and inputs -- I did make it sound a little more simple than it is. There are some transmitters that have speaker level inputs, so if I do it, will likely go that route vice Sena. I'll probably sit back though and hope Can Am gets the software fixed. Thanks!

I bet is it is not software. It's a hardware separation between the radio's FM, etc output and having a phone plugged in the Frunk. Routing a FM radio back into a phone on it's connection to the radio, then back out to BT, is impossible because the phone has no way of doing it. Software will never fix this.

Ever been to a hotel that has one of those radio's on the desk you can also plug your phone into? You can use BT headphones to your phone but you are only going to hear what the phone can output. If you try to play the radio on that, it will only come out the radio's speakers not re-routed to the phone and out to the BT headsets. Same thing on a car that has a phone interface. Yes you can output from the phone into the radio and the radio will play it out the speakers. But to reverse this so the phones BT is outputting something it is not generating is not going to happen.

I would be willing to bet on the radio main connector is a line level output that a Sena SM-10 can hook to. BUT with that said if you could do that.... Remember you can only have ONE BT media device playing at a time. So if you are listening to the FM radio via a Sena SM-10, you won't hear the dash system and visa versa. Since the BRP BT system can play "everything" out the speakers, the best bet would be to hook a Sena SM-10 and pair ONLY to it not to the Spyders system. Now anything that can come out the speakers will come to the headset. THIS is the way BRP should have implemented.

Bob

There is a post here talking about the 2019 model year spyder manual.
In the 2019 manual there are new things for the dash, that the 2018 don’t have, and one could be spyder fm radio through BT headset.