Milo Communicator

A snowHead

MILO Communicator

We’ve seen this mesh communication tech that’s hands free. It looks ideal for us to ski with our tween who has no phone and struggles with radios and push buttons.

quite pricey so want to be sure they are good. Any snowheads able to tell me if they do what they say on the tin?

will also be handy when cycling, kayaking and sailing

Thanks

A snowHead

Sure looks like a neat little gadget. I’d want to know if the advertised range of 600m is only in perfect conditions with line of sight. If terrain, trees, buildings, ski lifts etc reduce that range then you’d have to be confident that you ski as a fairly tight group and don’t rely on it for someone getting lost (as you could quickly be more than 600m away taking a wrong turn or being the last person stuck at the bottom of the lift). One comment I read suggested that you have to be within 50m to reconnect after a disconnect. Can’t find any useful/in depth reviews of using these for skiing, and the surfing reviews on Reddit aren’t particularly complimentary. I like the concept though!

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Yes all what I found we ski in a thought group she’s only 9 and I’m always behind her - daddy in front we have radios in our packs for bigger the Daddy disappeared again situation Eh oh!

We wondered if it was any good in blizzard, lumpy terrain just as you say

reviews are a mostly mixed bag and to often are planted by the producers

You need to Login to know who's really who.

The surf reviews talk about a specific issue though - that it doesn't deal with getting wet (!) very well. So possibly not directly relevant to snow sports. That said, I can't immediately find anything which looks like a genuine user review. I mean a review by someone who used their own money to buy these in order to use them, rather than some other commercial arrangement.

Personally..

I don't want to listen to my mates all day whilst I'm riding.
I also don't want to ride anything like as close as the people in the promotional video; I couldn't watch that without wanting to yell at them to maintain some distance. You could use it as a "how not to ride in the back country" tutorial. Any anyway if you're that close, I can't really see what need you'd have for a communicator. You may well need a radio once you crash into each other, if you're unlucky.
Most folk wear helmets, so in-ear probably makes more sense, and is perhaps more polite, than carrying a loudspeaker

They're using 2.4GHz - that's at the microwave end. Perhaps someone will know better, but I'd guess that will be more WiFi than VHF in terms of range. It's not clear if they've tested them with transceivers. Those guys ride so close to each other that they're all going to be buried at once anyway wink

They don't say what the power their thing has, but they're small. The max range they quote as 1,300m ... with a bunch of caveats.
I'd say that's not enough for back country use.

The thing with a radio is that it's silent almost all of the time, not a source of chatter, continual or otherwise.

=> To me, these are peer-to-peer intercoms, different from a "walkie talkie". I reckon most people at resorts would do better with a mobile phone and WhatsApp for the "we're separated" scenario. If you're in the back country then these don't appear to cover any of the scenarios where you may want to use a radio.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Working out the range of these things is a nightmare.

From what I can see the US version uses somewhere around the 865 -868MHz band (or possibly the 5150-5250 MHz band as they say in the EU and Canada that is limited to indoor use) so in the EU and presumably UK they use something similar to the Bluetooth 2402-2480 MHZ band instead. (Milo 2.4G 2400MHz-2483.5MHz).

https://www.okmilo.com/fr-lu/regulatory-information/

So for a start the EU version is different from the US version and probably has a lower range (otherwise why not just use the bluetooth transmitters everywhere?)

That table also suggests that they're broadcasting on 2.4GHZ at 17dBm vs Bluetooth being 9dBm

These values are EIPR so include any transmit aerial gain.

The best source I can find to estimate the distance Bluetooth can transmit is here https://www.bluetooth.com/learn-about-bluetooth/key-attributes/range/#estimator

This suggests that at 17dBm the best outdoor range that can be achieved with the highest receiver sensitivity would be around 300m but these highly sensitive receivers need a lot of power and I suspect for a small battery operated device with a small and compact aerial you're probably looking at quite a bit less.

PS. In the 'Daddy Skis off into the distance' scenario the shorter distance could be a benefit as they apparently have quite a nice feature of alerting you if they lose touch with any members of the group. Mind you at over £200 each it's an expensive option.

You'll need to Register first of course.

Interesting. And the UK is no longer in the EU, so I wonder which they sell here exactly.

With that low power, perhaps that's why they're riding dangerously close to each other in the sales videos wink

I was originally thinking that those "out of range" notifications would be massively annoying, because you're going to get them all the time. Then I checked their August '23 software update release notes, and they've just put in an option to disable that Happy

I was just imagining how much non-fun it'd be to have the thing yelling continuously "your mate is out of range".

They do apparently have a 30 day money back guarantee, although you get 14 days in UK anyway, assuming they work as advertised.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

After all it is free

Anyone tried the motorcycle comms units, I use one on my motorcycle, gives me contact with mates or pillion on group rides, music, FM radio,phone and voice activated calls, never tried on a ski helmet though. Cardo are about £160 for two.

Help!!

Milo Communicator

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