I always thought it would so cool to be able to fix a swimmer’s technique on the fly. No, not swimming fly, but the ability to talk to the athlete while they are swimming. You can imagine my excitement when I bought the Finis communicator. It’s so cool. Now I must admit I really like Finis swim equipment.
So what does it do?
Well in simple terms the Finis communicator is a one-way communication tool from you to the swimmer. In a nutshell, you can talk to your athlete and they can hear you but your athlete cant talk to you. The device works through blue tooth on your phone, once you download the app on your phone. Which you can download for free from google play or the apple store. Another great feature is that you can talk to multiple devices. This feature is great if you have lots of swimmers in the pool because you can place the devices on the swimmers who are having trouble and focus on them more. However, I have to admit that I have not tried this feature as of yet.
The device
The Finis communicator itself is pretty simple. It has 3 components, 2 bone conductor units, and a control unit. these all clip on to your goggle straps. The conductor units sit in front of your ears and can be heard pretty well. The control unit has 4 buttons, power, Bluetooth, volume up, and volume down. These buttons also have raised print so you can feel them on the head unit. However it would be great if Finis could have made these a little bigger, If you are trying to adjust the volume while reaching around the back of your head it can be a little fiddly until you get used to the buttons. Also, an auditable beep would also be helpful to let know that you are turning the volume up or down.
There is a charge point at the base of the unit which then connects to a power source, such as a computer or powerpack. When charging a red power light illuminates to indicate that it is charging. It would have been great if the red light was flashing to indicate the unit was charging and then turned green once fully charged.
Simply to use
Once you have downloaded the ” Finis Live” app and turned on the blue tooth feature on your phone, you can connect the device pretty easily. Power up the communicator by pressing down on the power button. A red light should come on the left-hand side of the device. Then press and hold the Bluetooth button. The device should then beep and blue on the right-hand side of the device should flash. Head back to the finis live app and should see a big microphone button on the screen. Once your athlete is away press the button and talk to them. From the app, you can also turn the swimmer volume up or down.
Bonus feature
The other great feature is that you can live stream music, podcasts, and other audio straight from your phone to the device. So the unit actually doubles as an mp3 player as well. It’s a bit of a hack but this works.
Overall
This is a very easy and great device to use however I have had a few disappointing issues. One of these is a connection from my phone to the device. I have tried to reinstall the software, restarting the device, and restarting my phone but after about 10 minutes of operation, the device falls over. No matter what I do it won’t hold a stable connection. This is really disappointing because when the device works it’s extremely cool. I have to say when I could get it to work, I could instantly make dramatic and effective changes to the swimmer’s technique. The instant feedback was so very helpful to the athlete also.
I would love to hear about your experiences with this device. Please email me and let me know your thoughts.