How To Install SENA Bluetooth

So, you want to get into the 21st century and hook up your crew to a Bluetooth intercom system? You've come to the right place! You'll just need a SENA Unit, Notch Hook Ups, a helmet, and the installation video above!

So, you want to get into the 21st century and hook up your crew to a Bluetooth intercom system? You've come to the right place! You'll just need a SENA Unit, Notch Hook Ups, a helmet, and the installation video above!

There are two main SENA systems used by arborists - the Work4 and the 33i, but what's the difference? Check out our article on how to choose the right SENA system for your crew.

Video Caption File/Transcript by Arborist Industry Expert Nick Bonner.

Hi, my name is Nick Bonner for TreeStuff.com and this is the Notch Hook Up.

This is a really interesting and exciting ear muff that is SENA integrated right from the get-go. You see the wire sticking out here? That's part of the magic. We'll crack this hygiene component off here. And when we look inside, we're going to see that this has a semi-integrated speaker built into the ear muff. The wire exits through a noise reduction rated grommet and comes out the side here. This ensures the noise reduction integrity of your SENA install. All the SENA installs that were done before this were done by cutting a small notch or hole in the outside of the hygiene cup here, and that invalidates the noise reduction. That is not happening anymore. When we put this back together, we're actually going to see one of the other great features is that because the wire is routed through this articulating armature, it's going to decrease the amount of available wire that has to be out to service that orbit or range of motion that you would expect from the ear muff.

Let's take a look at exactly how easy this installation is with this Edelrid Tectum helmet here. So, I'm going to go ahead and clip this ear muff on. This is a standard 3M slot. So maybe you have a KASK helmet or something and it doesn't have ear muff slots, right? Like this helmet, you can just add an adapter like your KASK adapters here. Put that on and it's going to work. These Hook Ups don't work with Protos helmets. That's worth noting. The Protos helmets only work with their Protos ear muffs, so there's no Hook Ups with the Protos, unfortunately. Turn this the other direction. Make sure our wire is coming out the right way. Go ahead and clip this in.

There we go. We've got two ear muffs. We see our wires are exiting. Very nice. Go ahead and position these to the front. And we're going to install our SENA unit right back here. This works with either a 33i or a Work4. I'm going to show the install today with the Work4 because that's my headset of choice. It's a little cheaper than the 33i, and I think it works a little more robustly. So, here, this is the brains. This is the part you're going to charge. It's also called the radio. You'll peel this little cover off there, no problem. It's going to come with two microphones. It's one of the benefits of getting this from us. And then here we see the bracket with the wiring. Let's take a look at that. Just unravel these. Okay. And there's three wires here: a long speaker, a short speaker, and a microphone.

So, what I'm going to do is I know that I want the short speaker to go straight out this way and the long speaker to come around the helmet this way. So, I'm going to wrap after I loosen my bracket up here. This is a 2.5 mm Allen key. There's a small one that's included inside the box. And I'm just going to take this and I'm going to wrap it around the outside of the bracket until it's just about the same length as the other one. And that looks pretty good to me. So, I'm going to keep that nice and tight. And I'm going to go ahead and open this bracket up and I'm going to apply it to the back of the helmet. And you know, every helmet is different. So, you're going to want to check and make sure that you have it all the way down. You might need to loosen the bracket up just a little bit more. Get it on there. And then I'm going to use my Allen key. This isn't the little tiny one that's included in there. So, just tighten that down a little bit. I'm not going to overly crank it. One, because I'm not finished, and two, simply just because if you overly tighten these, the bracket can bend and then the SENA unit won't—the radio, the brains—won't actually mount in there well, right? So you'll put this in and it will pop off because you've twisted this, so you want to avoid doing that.

So anyways, we've got our wires here. To finish our install is really dead simple. Okay, we take this wire, paying attention—there's a little V-shaped groove in the top here, and if you look at this on one side, you can see that V-shaped indicator right there. So, I'm going to carefully—make sure that's wrong—I'm going to see this is the right way. I'm going to go ahead and just wiggle that in there like that. And there we go. That one's connected. I'm going to come over here and do this side just like this. Same thing. So, again, paying attention to that V-shaped indicator. And there are three wires here. These are black-to-black connections. It's pretty simple.

When I come back to the inside here, we're going to see that microphone cable. We'll take that microphone cable, connect it to the microphone. That's pretty logical, right? Again, these have an indicator. So, you can see that little triangle there. We'll go ahead and connect that just like that. Bang. And now our microphone is connected. I'm going to route it underneath these straps. Again, I think that's just a matter of personal preference if that's what you're into, you like it like that. And then here you have a couple of different options. There are these Velcro mounts that come with this. Honestly, that's not the way I would go about it. I've got some small zip ties here. These are not included. Warning, you may need to buy a couple of zip ties if that's your preference.

What I would do, and the way that I'll finish this install today, is I'm going to come with this small zip tie, and I'm going to go around the plastic component of the harness, the helmet harness infrastructure. I'll just loosely connect that, making sure that my microphone is through there. And there's one zip tie. Go ahead, get the microphone in place. And then the one thing that I'm really looking at here is I'm making sure that the sharp part of the zip tie isn't going to be on my head, like on the inside of that sweatband there. So there's one zip tie. I'm going to install a second one just to be sure that my microphone's not going to come undone while I'm up in the tree working. Again, same thing. Just make sure that I'm around just the plastic component of the sweatband and not around the cushion component because I don't want to feel the zip tie, that's for sure. Tighten that down. Make sure that the sharp part of the zip tie is not going to be up. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a SENA installed helmet. With just a couple of zip ties and maybe a few extra minutes, you can certainly set this up really neatly. Let me cut this zip tie for you. And then simply mount your SENA unit on the back.

And you are good to go. One of the things I want to really draw your attention to is you notice that this is the maximum of the exposed wire. Now, get a little more creative with your zip ties, you could probably even limit that some more, but the ear muff has a full range of motion without needing that wire to move. So instead of having to have wire that comes from here all the way to here, you can see how much distance that would be. And then when that's back, how it would be a big, you know, kind of floating wire here. So it's a very neat installation. It's very simple and it's available on almost every helmet that we sell. When you order the helmet, you'll get your helmet, your box of Hook Ups, and the SENA unit of choice. Whether that's a 33i for the mesh capabilities or the proven and tested Work4, you can get that at TreeStuff.com. You can set it up to your liking. Whether you want that SENA on the back, the side, or somewhere else, you can get it all while maintaining your noise reduction rating through that grommet. So, a bunch of really nice features on these. Check out the Notch Hook Ups with almost all of our helmets at TreeStuff.com. Thanks for watching.