[skuben]

Does the subvocal microphone and the electronic ear buds connect wirelessly to your commlink?  To enable discrete comms.

If they are wireless, what powers them?  I guess batteries.

[Kanly]

Given that a lot of items like powerful tasers can recharge by "induction" via wireless, I'd say earbuds, commlinks, smaller drones etc etc etc just... charge constantly - as long as they do have a wireless connection!

[Michael Chandra]

Everything is wireless if you want it to be.

I'd advise you to use Microtransceivers though. The way they're written, it seems their communication itself doesn't go through normal Matrix protocols.

[Reaver]

I would imagine they run off a battery, and are probably recharged by induction stations. think of a large pad that you just place the item on. And I would imagine they would be fairly common... so common as to not worry about.


if you want to get really picky, 4 hours of life per charge for a constantly active device is a good guess. Charge time could be around an hour...

[Xenon]

If you have DNI (data jack or trodes) then you can receive audio and text "inside your head" and you can send long and complicated messages, about a paragraph worth of text, as one simple action. Without making any noise at all.

If you want to transmit and receive other senses besides visual and audio (like smell and touch) then you need to add in a sim-module for that (you can mod your commlink with a sim-module).

[SmilinIrish]

I think the biggest use of the subvocal mic would be paired with a transceiver.  As my use of the transceiver is to avoid communicating via matrix (commlink), having DNI wouldn't benefit it.  Subvocal mic/.transceiver/earbuds is non matrix communication and can't be hacked. 

Of course, someone with high enough perception could overhear I guess.

[Michael Chandra]

Doesn't the microtransceiver come with default earbuds and subvocal microphone?

[Kanly]

It does.

[Anarkitty]

Seems like it would be simple enough to use DNI with a text-to-speech or even thought-to-speech program to "speak" silently from your DNI through the transceiver.  "Hearing" via DNI would be even easier.  It would still allow non-Matrix radio communications but without actually needing to even sub-vocalize, and it would still be compatible with the mage who is actually using the earbuds and mic (although your voice would probably sound weird and flat).

[Insaniac99]

With how portable and easily concealable Trodes are, the mages in my players team take them, instant DNI and all of the bonuses that provides.  They have them worked to look like a martial arts headband, a few styles of hats, in the armored helment, etc.

[Novocrane]

SR4 had charging available through a number of methods equally as omnipresent as induction, to the point where you could basically ignore whether or not you have power for smaller items unless they're faulty and you can't get repairs / replacements. I wouldn't worry about it.