Camos Bluetooth

I ride with a Zumo 550 and XM radio. I also carry my Blackberry with me and my partner, ninjette, often accompanies me on her own bike but seldom as a pillion rider.
At the Dallas motorcycle show in November, the folks from Benchmark Helmets handed me a brochure for the Camos BTS300 system. I was intrigued. It appeared to offer everything I was looking for.
The system is a two-channel system. Channel 1 will handle two input devices and channel 2 will handle yet another. And it offers TRUE stereo; the other systems I looked at (pretty much all of them) sent the music through two speakers but they were not true stereo and, doggone it, XM radio is too expensive for me to willingly give up real stereo.
Let me say that just finding a distributor was not easy. The Benchmark website said that BMW of North Dallas was a dealer. So on a really cold day in January, Ninjette and I scootered into Dallas. The BMW dealership does not sell Camos; they sell the newest iteration of Scala, but no Camos. And it was really cold.
Eventually, the Benchmark people led me to Todd The Accessories Guy at Harley Davidson of North Texas in Carrollton. So we made a trip to Carrollton. Todd had the system in inventory, demoed it for me, accepted my debit card and we rode back to East Texas.
If you've done bluetooth, you know that devices must be "paired." I easily paired my Zumo and my phone to the headset but I simply could not get the bluetooth adaptor/XM to pair up. I spent so many hours trying that I actually killed the battery on my bike trying to hear radio through my helmet.
Finally, I called Todd and he said he'd be glad to help. So we saddled up on yet another Saturday and made yet another trip to the metromess. And when we got there, Todd was home with the flu.
Flu be d****d, we called Todd at home, plugged his address into the Zumo and went to his house. He graciously put on a pair of jeans and his HD work shirt and sat on the porch for a while trying to get the devices to pair up. No go.
We left it with him. He and the Camos folks eventually figured out that my adaptor was defective. They replaced it, paired the new one with my headset and sent it to me.
The new set-up arrived here Friday. I plugged it all in and -- voila! -- it works.
I rode to and from Tyler with it yesterday, about 60 miles round trip.
(1) It truly is stereo; Bluetooth version 2.0.
(2) the speakers offer pretty good sound.
(3) the phone and Zumo are crystal clear.
(4) I need different ear plugs. The green foamies I use are too effective; at 70 mph and over, I can barely hear the music. Around town and up to 65 or so, the speakers are potent enough to power past my ear plugs. I plan to switch to the slightly less efficient (for me, at least) orange foamies and see how it works. And, maybe, my flip face helmet is just noisier than it ought to be.
(5) Pairing multiple devices is complex and it must happen in a certain order or the bluetooth gets "confused." Phone to Zumo. XM to headset. Zumo to headset.
(6) All the pieces -- headset, XM/mp3 adaptor, Zumo, XM radio -- have their own volume controls.
(7) It's not cheap. $377 including sales tax.
(8) Todd The Accessories Guy called me at home this morning (It's Sunday, Todd; take a day off for, goodness sake) to see how it worked out.
(9) I expect we'll buy another for Jessica. She rides with an iPod and the same adaptor that fits my radio works on her iPod. The decision driver, though, is that we'd like bike-to-bike comm and the second channel makes that available.
(10) Bluetooth means no wires to disconnect every time I get on and off the bike. Helmet speakers means no earbud pain.
(12) Battery life is said to be about eight hours. We're trekking to Yellowstone later this spring and we'll quantify battery life on that trip.
(11) Make sure your professional "pairs" the devices before you leave the shop.

In general: Around town and at moderate highway speed, the system absolutely rocks. At and above the speed limit, sound quality deteriorates rapidly simply because the speakers are competing with wind noise.

I have nearly the same setup (Camos 600) and agree around town at slower speeds it works great. I used my with a buddy on a trip to Galeana Mex. last year. Really helped us get around traffic in Chihuahua.

It takes a little practice getting devices paired and then getting them paired in the correct order.

An update: Saturday a.m. I paired the phone with the Zumo and the Zumo with the headset, paired the XM with the headset and swapped out my green foam earplugs for the less-efficient orange foamies.
Away I went.
At LSL, I called home. On cue, as soon as I touched "dial" on the Zumo screen, the music faded away. Ninjette answered, we chatted briefly and then disconnected. The music fades back in.
Minutes later, the screen on my Zumo flashes an alert that I have an incoming call from my daughter. I touch answer and the music fades away. "It's sure a good thing you're not on the bike, because it's raining pretty hard here," she says. "I am on the bike," sez I. "It's so quiet," she exclaims. (She was right about the weather, too, by the way.) We make a date, disconnect, the music comes up and before you know it, I'm scootering down the highway and singing along with Rocky Racoon.
It works. It works really well.
I ride in an HJC flip face (modular) which is pretty noisey; I expect the speakers should sound even better in a quieter, full-face helmet.
Next up: get a headset for ninjette and talk bike-to-bike on channel two. When we get that in place, I'll post another update.