Freewire and the Whim choice

[windsurfed]

I have a 2020 Triglide. So I went out and bought a freewire. And a Sena 20S Evo. Hooked it all up everything worked fine except for a couple annoying glitches. When on the intercom I had a crackling noise in the speakers,that sounded like wind but it wasn’t. When I shut the freewire off, the crackling went away. Very annoying, but it still worked. Add echoing in the mic when talking on the phone or giving voice commands to the boombox. Reset the intercom audio overlay sensitivity to number four and that helped A lot. Reduce the echoing by 75%. Echoing was still there, but not as annoying as before but still there. It was livable.



Not able to use Siri on the handle bar button control. Rather annoying as I always ask Siri questions like what is 175÷4.10 as in gas mileage. how many miles to the city of Republic? So Siri did not work with the freewire. But the voice commands worked on the boombox.

Since I have an Apple iPhone I would have liked to had Apple CarPlay activated. The freewire does not let you activate Apple CarPlay.

The next thing I did is I called the dealership and told them if I could get in right now then I would buy the whim and the Harley Davidson Sena 20S and have them install it. They took me up on the offer. $830 later I rode off into the sunset. Everything works perfectly as one would expect.

Ah, all the enjoyment of modern technology at my fingertips now. Also no more wire plugged into the dedicated Harley Davidson communication port

($299 Sena 20s Evo) ($299 Harley Whim) $158 labor for install And flash) ($67 tax)($7 shop supplies)

So I had $450 tied up into the freewire and the regular Sena 20S Evo which I will be selling back on eBay and make a majority of my money back on that.

To each his own. If you are satisfied with your freewire and it works for you then more power to you. I suppose someday that the freewire will improve to where it is able to use Siri and Apple CarPlay. But I couldn’t wait.



I paid the heavy Harley tax as they say. But, oh well! I guess it’s a $40,000 motorcycle, what’s another $830.

[Snohomish]

I’ve been doing lots of reading on various forums about this subject and, as much as I don’t agree with the Harley tactics on not providing the WHIM as standard equipment on Tri-Glides, you did what we are going to do by installing the WHIM.

My wife rides with me 90% of the time so purchasing two Sena Freewire’s would be absurd. We really don’t want to be tethered to the bike either so the wired H-D headsets are not viable for us. WHIM it will be.

I’m still struggling with the brand of headsets however as I really want to use the Cardo Packtalk Bold rather than the H-D branded Sena. My understanding is that we will lose the headset stereo sound out of the BoomBox and I hope she can live with that.....

[David792]

I too, debated heavily (with myself) over Freewire or WHIM. I went with Freewire. Mostly because the WHIM makes the 7 pin DIN inert. I understood that when the WHIM is installed the 7 pin DIN is disconnected. I already had a SENA 20s and didn't want to buy another one just because HD says so.

SENA just barely supports their devices. Sort of like Garmin. Once you buy it... they no longer give a shirt. I contacted SENA about the crackling noises and customer service said I should be sure to upgrade my software. SENA BT communication has always been a bit unreliable.

After all is said and done I find that I don't really use the comms too much anyway. Mostly for navigation, but by the time I can get the "proper" commands figured out I could have just stopped for a break and made it a lot easier. I guess I'll just keep the SENA going until the next generation comes along.

[windsurfed]

I’ve been doing lots of reading on various forums about this subject and, as much as I don’t agree with the Harley tactics on not providing the WHIM as standard equipment on Tri-Glides, you did what we are going to do by installing the WHIM.

My wife rides with me 90% of the time so purchasing two Sena Freewire’s would be absurd. We really don’t want to be tethered to the bike either so the wired H-D headsets are not viable for us. WHIM it will be.

I’m still struggling with the brand of headsets however as I really want to use the Cardo Packtalk Bold rather than the H-D branded Sena. My understanding is that we will lose the headset stereo sound out of the BoomBox and I hope she can live with that.....

That is what I am to understand also is that you would lose the stereo. I have my old (Not harley branded sena 20S Evo) and am going to really see if there is no stereo. Also I am going to fiddle with my

Sena Smh10 to see what happens.

[Batman825]

I have a 2020 Triglide. So I went out and bought a freewire. And a Sena 20S Evo. Hooked it all up everything worked fine except for a couple annoying glitches. When on the intercom I had a crackling noise in the speakers,that sounded like wind but it wasn’t. When I shut the freewire off, the crackling went away. Very annoying, but it still worked. Add echoing in the mic when talking on the phone or giving voice commands to the boombox. Reset the intercom audio overlay sensitivity to number four and that helped A lot. Reduce the echoing by 75%. Echoing was still there, but not as annoying as before but still there. It was livable.



Not able to use Siri on the handle bar button control. Rather annoying as I always ask Siri questions like what is 175÷4.10 as in gas mileage. how many miles to the city of Republic? So Siri did not work with the freewire. But the voice commands worked on the boombox.

Since I have an Apple iPhone I would have liked to had Apple CarPlay activated. The freewire does not let you activate Apple CarPlay.

The next thing I did is I called the dealership and told them if I could get in right now then I would buy the whim and the Harley Davidson Sena 20S and have them install it. They took me up on the offer. $830 later I rode off into the sunset. Everything works perfectly as one would expect.

Ah, all the enjoyment of modern technology at my fingertips now. Also no more wire plugged into the dedicated Harley Davidson communication port

($299 Sena 20s Evo) ($299 Harley Whim) $158 labor for install And flash) ($67 tax)($7 shop supplies)

So I had $450 tied up into the freewire and the regular Sena 20S Evo which I will be selling back on eBay and make a majority of my money back on that.

To each his own. If you are satisfied with your freewire and it works for you then more power to you. I suppose someday that the freewire will improve to where it is able to use Siri and Apple CarPlay. But I couldn’t wait.

I paid the heavy Harley tax as they say. But, oh well! I guess it’s a $40,000 motorcycle, what’s another $830.

If you're handy or know someone who is installing the WHIM is really easy. I did a video on installing one on my Tri Glide. The 2020 does not require the extra cable in my video. You can get it at a discounted price from Utah Harley, $254. You can also get a pair of Harley (Sena) headsets that work great with the WHIM they are $468. You have stereo that you lose with the freewire and non-harley Sena headsets. Unfortunately you do need to go to the dealer and have them flash the radio once you install it. It takes them about 5 minutes and my dealer charged me 1/2 hour labor to do it.

[Phrogg]

That is what I am to understand also is that you would lose the stereo. I have my old (Not harley branded sena 20S Evo) and am going to really see if there is no stereo. Also I am going to fiddle with my Sena Smh10 to see what happens.

Since I have done much experimentation and modifications to play with all of these combinations, I thought I might jump in here and offer a little info.

The WHIM is actually made by Sena as well. But they have been given some very specific guidelines by Harley that must be put in the firmware. If the WHIM boots up and connects to a headset that is a Boom 30K or Boom 20S then it goes into A2DP with Stereo and AptX HD codec. If it is a Boom 10 or Boom 5 then it goes into A2DP with Stereo. If it is anything else then it goes into dual monaural mode with A2DP.

Some people don't even seem to notice the loss of stereo, but others really notice. It is much easier to hear what happened if you use headphones in your helmet than if you are just using the helmet speakers. I personally use headphones a lot of the time. If you want to test this, pick a song that has a lot of stereo playing in it....like Bohemian Rhapsody and listen to it in stereo with your headphones and then listen through the WHIM.

What I did was to create a modified Boom Communications Cable that has fools the system into thinking there is a mic. When you plug an actual mic in, that disables my hack, but the Freewire doesn't show up as a mic so it works! And I have full functionality with CarPlay, Siri, CB, and Headset communications. I can use any headset and it works fine and I get stereo. The freewire does not support the AptX codec so I am not getting HD audio through it but the quality is actually still very good. Contemplating making and selling these cables. It functions the same as the one that Harley sells but I could make them cheaper and with the CarPlay hack built in.

I'm now experimenting with actually using the 2nd bluetooth channel of my headset to connect directly to the phone. I get better music that way and the comms and freewire always take precedence over it if I set it up as the 2nd connection. The issue here is that after you have to do things in a very specific order. That includes going a step further and after you have connected to carplay and started playing music you have to go to the phone and tell it to send the audio to a different output. It always defaults back to the carplay connector and not the bluetooth.

[Devildoc99]

Since I have done much experimentation and modifications to play with all of these combinations, I thought I might jump in here and offer a little info.

The WHIM is actually made by Sena as well. But they have been given some very specific guidelines by Harley that must be put in the firmware. If the WHIM boots up and connects to a headset that is a Boom 30K or Boom 20S then it goes into A2DP with Stereo and AptX HD codec. If it is a Boom 10 or Boom 5 then it goes into A2DP with Stereo. If it is anything else then it goes into dual monaural mode with A2DP.

Some people don't even seem to notice the loss of stereo, but others really notice. It is much easier to hear what happened if you use headphones in your helmet than if you are just using the helmet speakers. I personally use headphones a lot of the time. If you want to test this, pick a song that has a lot of stereo playing in it....like Bohemian Rhapsody and listen to it in stereo with your headphones and then listen through the WHIM.

What I did was to create a modified Boom Communications Cable that has fools the system into thinking there is a mic. When you plug an actual mic in, that disables my hack, but the Freewire doesn't show up as a mic so it works! And I have full functionality with CarPlay, Siri, CB, and Headset communications. I can use any headset and it works fine and I get stereo. The freewire does not support the AptX codec so I am not getting HD audio through it but the quality is actually still very good. Contemplating making and selling these cables. It functions the same as the one that Harley sells but I could make them cheaper and with the CarPlay hack built in.

I'm now experimenting with actually using the 2nd bluetooth channel of my headset to connect directly to the phone. I get better music that way and the comms and freewire always take precedence over it if I set it up as the 2nd connection. The issue here is that after you have to do things in a very specific order. That includes going a step further and after you have connected to carplay and started playing music you have to go to the phone and tell it to send the audio to a different output. It always defaults back to the carplay connector and not the bluetooth.

You've caught my interest!

I'm now in a bit of a quandary in that I've got a Cardo Packtalk Bold Duo setup for me and my passenger, and I need to connect to my 2016 Triglide. How to do it? I've read a great deal of conflicting information and I'm not a great deal further ahead.

Have you made any further progress on what it was you're doing? Is it working? You talked about maybe making and selling some of the harnesses. Have you?

If you've interest in what my problems and findings are, please visit this posting in Harley Davidson Forums

https://www.hdforums.com/forum/audio...l#post20017129

Thanks for any help you might have for me.

[Devildoc99]

I'm now in the same boat with a Cardo Packtalk Bold that I like and a 2016 Triglide that won't play nice.

Have you made any further progress.

Please message me if you would or post here again.

It seemed you were pursuing a solution that had promise!

Thanks