You assume I have limited experience and make judgement. I don’t blindly recommend DIY as Hearing Aids are medical devices for a reason - I do advocate for the right person as it’s worked great for me, after my medical evaluation. It’s imperative to rule out medical issues by trained health care workers before moving to DIY simply for hearing aid fitting. I am a clinician and a programmer. I understand the medical environment very well and I will not supersede their judgement on a forum.
Yes that’s right,that came about from just reading you post,so how much experience “being so successful” with DIY have you? I think it’s my first interaction I’ve had with you? You come along as being a little bit of the “entitlement” camp.
Ha yeah no kidding, but it didn’t stop you tho eh.
Oh that’s good, so tell us whats the “right person” (obviously besides yourself)
Well…if…you…say…so…doc
Well you think making this statement has some how given you some air of authority on the matter? So what about all us DIY that haven’t followed your instructions
(Advice) goes a long way if one looks in a mirror before making a statement like " You assume I have limited experience and make judgement" well that goes both ways.
Please don’t put down all the good work that the DIY community has put in to helping people get the best results for themselves
(Including you) remember for some of us DIY is a way of life.
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@tenkan: FWIW, I agree. @RCF - what was the point/objective of your post, other than to blow your own horn?
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I believe that most of the people that DIY hearing aids also DIY just about everything else in there life.
I know I do!
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RCF excellent postings - can you explain your statement: “ I now use the programming software to do my own in-ear hearing test. It very accurately modeled the results from the audiologist”. That is the missing link after the REM test!!!
In-Situ fittings are the standard for the diy bunch.
It is questionably better than getting an audiogram from an audiologist.
Some may think it’s better than REM fittings as well.
Many are very successful doing their own hearing aid fittings.
Good luck
@SpudGunner Thank you for asking instead of attacking.
My first reply was triggered by an email i received noting I hadn’t been on the forums for a while and there was a conversation recommendation. Probably algorithmic but it was accurate. So logged in after not being here for a very long time.
I read the post and one person had said basically you don’t take apart your iPhone so don’t take apart your hearing aid - I am paraphrasing.
My reply was in favor if DIY as a counterpoint and I shared that it worked extremely well for me. Not to “blow my horn” but as a counterpoint to the person who said don’t fix your own. I was advocating DIY from what I learned here and sharing my success.
I ended a 2nd post with a separate paragraph that was basically a disclaimer that I’m not in a position to advocate for any given individual to embark on DIY without proper medical evaluation first. That is simply a truth. Not that a person can’t choose to embark on that path, just not at my recommendation as I am not qualified to make that recommendation. Especially on a forum.
My comment on being a clinician was intended to say I know enough to know what I dont know and when I should defer to others. Its not horn blowing, its the opposite.
Thats it. Replied in support of DIY as a counterpoint to someone who implied not a good idea and then a disclaimer paragraph.
Got ripped with line-by-line dissection by @tenkan for some reason. Triggered him/her personally it seems.
I do imagine this reply will also be dissected for what @tenkan feels has some sort of inconsistency or steps on his/her ego. Such is life.
I wish everyone well. I’ve learned a lot here from some great people and it set me up to be independent. To all of you, thank-you. I hope @tenkan is actually a kind and helpful person and that I’ve been the exception.
@SpudGunner thank you again for asking instead of attacking.
Best regards to all. I will post some images another person asked for and then probably not continue the derailment of this thread.
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Sounds like “In-situ” testing is what some Audiologist call Functional Testing and others “AIDED” testing. I talked to an Audiologist at Kaiser and got the answer that the HA fitters program the HAs to the Audiogram and then run the REM test and send the HA Client out to see if tweaks are needed. The Hearing test and program to match the Audiogram cannot include the Understanding of the words - that has to be done by trial and error and some hearing aids are better than others. I hear all sounds now that my 20 channel hearing aids have been programmed to 100 percent of my hearing loss; but my understanding of the words is maybe on 50 percent. 30 years ago another engineer and I were discussing sound and how the human with excellent hearing can pick out a conversaton of two people across the room filled with people. This ability fads before the hearing fads. He was EE engineer but a sound engineer expert.
Reply to @lilliegin
Not sure its ok to post on this thread or if new thread recommended.
I had/have similar issue. Speech discrimination did not immediately match tone recognition. There are great resources on AudiologyOnline and there is a nice overview thread here: Why is it difficult to understand words with hearing aids?
In Situ Testing is without appropriately set hearing aids. You do this test before you program the hearing aids correctly.
I wouldn’t say it was an aided test?
Wow! I love those pictures of the replaceable battery.
Also, @zebras @lilliegin
I believe that “unaided” comment stems from another discussion (with the Pros) where online hearing tests (with hearing aids/aided) and maybe even wearing headphones may have been confused with in-situ testing.
Yep. Battery is why I had it apart. Long story short, that one won’t charge and there is nothing I can figure out to do. Battery is not serviceable by me it seems. I bought on ebay so even though still in warranty period Phonak requires I go through an audiologist which I don’t have. Paying for an appt and having an audiologist facilitate the repair process would cost more than the hearing aid so its a sunk cost. One of the downsides of DIY.
I chalk it up to the cost of learning. I have a pair of rechargeables that are great. But guess they are throw away when batteries die. Part if the reason I avoided rechargeable but the price was good enough to give it a go.
Thats an M50 in the image.
Open to ideas on Phonak warranty or battery replacement.
How did you remove the black battery cover?
Also, after the black cover is removed is the battery loose-and-likely-removable?
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@RCF: Thanks for explaining yourself clearly. Perhaps that same tone, initially, might have precluded your being gutted by @tenkan , who actually is helpful, (if not always kind), and has assisted many since I joined the Forum in February of 2021.
[No offence, but I, too, detected a certain whiff of "“entitlement”, shall we say, in your initial post. It’s all just been a big misunderstanding - a “clustercoitus” as my Grandma SpudGunner used to say!
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Well I don’t know how much you paid, but you could find out using target to confirm if there’s any warranty left ( or check the serial number first 2 digits for the year of manufacture) but its not that much compared to new, if you believe there’s a warranty still to be had, it won’t cost for the battery, you should be able to get a costing from any audiology clinic you decide to go with before sending it in, I believe the Oticon situation is around $150 and cheaper if you DIY.
I do have some experience rescuing these types of battery in other types of small device. Quite often the issue is that they have discharged so much that a low voltage cutout has kicked in isolating the battery from the charging circuit.
Sometimes the fix for this is to charge the battery to above the cut off voltage directly bypassing any internal charging and maintenance circuitry.
The below is assuming that this is a single cell Lipo or Liion battery:
The first thing to do is to find the + and - contacts of the
actual battery and verify that they have a voltage below 3v or so.
If comfortably above 3.2v then your battery isn’t the issue if it is lower then try and apply 4-5v directly to the battery, a cut USB cable can work as the power source. Only do this for a minute or so and stop immediately if you see the battery bulging or any smoke being emitted.
Remeasure the voltage and if it has risen above 3.2v then try and charge it normally. If it hasn’t risen then you could try repeating the above steps a couple of times but if the voltage doesn’t rise or the battery bulges then it’s dead.
A slightly more refined version of the above is to use a Liion charger rather than directly applied voltage. I use a disassembled e-cigarette charger for that purpose.