How to buy a mini Pro (USB 2.0 Hearing Aid Programmer)

Buyhear has so far been pretty good on the phone. This guy has seemed… shall we say… odd. A little elusive. A little difficult to contact. The people don’t know what they offer. But $50 then to CDN$ is a bit of coin.
pvc has offered a price. We’ll see what he comes back with. I preferred my asking what he would want rather than offering but what do I know about negotiations :slight_smile:
Who knows…maybe Buyhear would do a match anyway.

Got my shipping notice email. Looking forward to tinkering.
For future readers it will be interesting to see what, if anything, Audiometrix comes up with.

Thanks for letting us know. I ordered mine back on 9/5 and still have not received the shipping notice email yet. Hopefully soon sometime today.

So your Costco KS7 is not locked? I find it confusing which one at Costco is locked and which one is not. Why do they only lock some and not all?

I currently only believe and understand from reading a lot that it’s not locked. I guess we’ll see for certain when I get the gear.

KS7 is definitely not locked. (I have one and a mini pro) KS5s and KS6s (Resound) were locked.

Thanks MDB. That’s what I’ve read.
Maybe pvc has a list of known locked HA’s. Or known open…whichever is the shorter list.

Same boat as Volusiano with respect to the shipping notice.

The shorter list is definitely the locked ones. PVC only mentions the KS5 and KS6. My guess is that there are other ones out there, but they’re odd ducks. If you stick with the big 6 (Wm Demant (Oticon, etc.), Sonova (Phonak and Unitron), Sivantos (Signia and Rexton, Resound, Widex or Starkey you should be ok.

Thanks pvc.
In the spirit of trying “to make this as plain as possible”…I re-read your post…is it that ONLY the KS5/6 are locked out of all other brands/models? (of dispensed HA’s…not PSAP’s) Your post isn’t 100% clear on that in as far as this dim brain can interpret. You’re entirely clear on those 2 but are there any others?

I’ve heard that some hearing aids from Miracle Ear, Beltone and Audibel may be locked. The source wasn’t reliable as it said that all Costco aids were locked. On occasion people ask about hearing aids none of us have heard of. I felt fairly safe saying the big 6 weren’t locked, but there’s a lot of hearing aids out there that I have no clue about. By big 6, I was meaning their name brand ones, not Kirklands.

Ok…easy…trying not to be triggered and rise to the bait…

During this composition pvc added his “impossible to download” post. But the ideas are still relevant.

Your sentence in your as always most excellent collection of posts is unclear to the exact context that you’re writing about. You’re in a paragraph talking about the Costco Aventa software version being locked to the KS5/6. The sentence is the one with the bolding. The language used is not clear to this feeble brain whether you’re meaning all other Costco HA’s or all other HA’s anywhere. Because after that you go on to say that Costco stopped using locked software.,thereby still in the context of Costco.
Does that make sense?
Maybe a new paragraph right after the Costco one that could saying something like “The two mentioned Costco HA models are the only known locked HA’s.” <-I’m leaving this here just cuz.
Just some feedback. Frankly I don’t care. I have KS7’s. MDB has confirmed from his own experience that the KS7’s work. So I’m good. It’s only because I wondered after Volusiano’s comment as to what other models might be locked. I imagined you would know.

Yeah I guess that works to put it in the software area. Your entire approach is to first suggest getting the software. No software. No self-programming. I’m good. :slight_smile:

Z10user2,
Just a warning you will not find the KS7s in the Rexfit Connexx database. They will only show up when you hook them up to the mini pro and click on detect hearing aids.

Yes. Thank you. I gathered that from somewhere.
I would be very interested in any and all “gotcha’s” you might have of course.

Sorry for the delay in response. We are out of stock of the mini pro. Office manager will let me know ETA. I should have double checked before posting, but wanted to make sure everyone was aware you have options.

I’ve personally never used the device but I highly doubt miracle ear or any other franchise will work. The biggest problem being the software.
Speaking of which we have tons of extra older software discs for multiple brands if any of you guys wanted them. I know some brands have legacy downloads available, but it’s nice to have the physcial CD in case they ever decide to stop doing that.

You never answered PVC’s question on whether your price matching of $175 includes the 2 CSS cables and 2 Flex connect strips with free shipping or not.

I never got any shipping email notice from BuyHear today and my order was placed way back on 9/5. Meanwhile z10user2 got his shipping email notice today from them and he only placed the order last week. Looks like they’re operating on the last in first out basis… Not impressed… I’m going to send them an email now to see what’s going on.

If you’re reasonably able to call them…real humans answer the phone. I would certainly be just as frustrated though.

My experience the last few times when I called to inquire is that sometimes it just kept ringing, and when somebody answered the phone, they passed me on to somebody else and I landed into their voicemail instead. But once in a while after several tries I may get somebody who knows what they’re talking about.

I just sent them an email anyway so let’s see what they say and how fast they will reply.

Thanks. Although we don’t have any Miracle Ear users active on the forum, it’s nice to have an idea of what might work when we get questions about stuff we’re not familiar with. Thanks again.