Starlink - R-pod Owners Forum

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fwunder

Senior Member

Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Location: New Jersey
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1676

Topic: Starlink
Posted: 16 May 2021 at 1:49pm

Life changing.

That is how my client/friend describes his first ten days with his new Starlink install.

We have been struggling with his 1-3 Mbps ( at best ) Verizon DSL for years. Although he only lives about a mile from me, cable is not an option and cell service sucks. He happens to live right across a township line where Comcast is not allowed to go and his township provider refuses to go.

Mid April we signed up for Starlink Beta, paid the $500.00 and received the package about ten days ago.

It took us about 20 minutes to deploy the system. 10 minutes was spent untangling the mess we made of the 100 foot cat6e cable from the dish to POE ( power over internet injector ). The router just plugs into the injector. We just sat the dish on a tree stump and ran the cable through a door until we could permanently mount everything. The stump mount gave us a mostly clear view of north-northwest sky.

Once plugged in, it took about 10 minutes for router to boot and dish to orient itself and download satellite schedule data. Bamm!!! 256 Mbps down and 18.7 Mbps up !!

Did I mention life changing?

We have now permanently mounted the dish with clear view and ran line through conduit and into house. Fun watching dish seek and find satellites. The system has been very stable.

It will be interesting to monitor his service over the next few months. He is, obviously, beyond pleased considering where he was coming from. I have comparable download speeds with my Comcast Blast Pro service and pay the same $100.00/mt. Later this year, when Starlink is promised to go mobile, I will be very tempted to ditch the cable.

Any questions, feel free to ask. It has been a fascinating project!!

fred

P.S. The second picture below is the instruction manual! Smile

2014 RPod 178 => MyMods and Buying Habits
2008 4Runner Limited 4.0-liter V6
Yes, those are wild ponies dining on grass while dumping tanks!

offgrid

Senior Member

Joined: 23 Jul 2018
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 5290

Posted: 17 May 2021 at 7:54am

Thanks for the writeup. How does the system avoid dropouts when the dish has to reorient to a new satellite? Does your friend use it for VOIP calls? Streaming you might not notice short duration drops.

1994 Chinook Concourse
1995 RV6A Experimental Aircraft
2015 Rpod 179 - sold

podwerkz

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Joined: 11 Mar 2019
Location: Texas
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Posts: 966

Posted: 17 May 2021 at 8:18am

My issue with the starlink is the dishy mcflatface itself...it sure looks flimsy....I live in open country and we get a LOT of wind here...lots of gusty winds...in the 60-90 mph range sometimes, and 20-40 usually several times a week this time of year. No you cant just go take it down every time it gets windy, that would sorta defeat the purpose.

Next is UV exposure....I hope it's made with UV protection.

Yeah...so when Elon comes out with a more robust mobile version, assuming it IS mechanically hardened, I might make a donation once a month to his Mars Missile.

But not till then!

r･pod 171 gone but not forgotten!

fwunder

Senior Member

Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Location: New Jersey
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1676

Posted: 17 May 2021 at 9:05am

Originally posted by offgrid

Thanks for the writeup. How does the system avoid dropouts when the dish has to reorient to a new satellite? Does your friend use it for VOIP calls? Streaming you might not notice short duration drops.

Good questions. Remember, J has been living with 1-3 Mbps DSL for years. I'm slowly bringing him into the broadband age. He has never heard of VOIP! It's kinda hard to get empirical data by talking, texting or emailing with him. He is just amazed he can send emails with attachments or stream movies on his computer.

That brings me to a big gripe. There is no remote management yet. Although the iPhone app provides great statistics, I have to be onsite to access them. I can easily remote manage his desktop computer, but stats are only available in the app. I'll be onsite today, so I'll grab some stats.

P.S. I forgot to add. The dish rarely, if ever, moves once it has oriented itself to designated cell position. It's more like the satellite constellation locks in on the dish, rather that the dish following satellites.

2014 RPod 178 => MyMods and Buying Habits
2008 4Runner Limited 4.0-liter V6
Yes, those are wild ponies dining on grass while dumping tanks!

fwunder

Senior Member

Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Location: New Jersey
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1676

Posted: 17 May 2021 at 9:14am

Originally posted by podwerkz

My issue with the starlink is the dishy mcflatface itself...it sure looks flimsy....I live in open country and we get a LOT of wind here...lots of gusty winds...in the 60-90 mph range sometimes, and 20-40 usually several times a week this time of year. No you cant just go take it down every time it gets windy, that would sorta defeat the purpose.

Next is UV exposure....I hope it's made with UV protection.

Yeah...so when Elon comes out with a more robust mobile version, assuming it IS mechanically hardened, I might make a donation once a month to his Mars Missile.

But not till then!

Actually, the hardware seems very, very sturdy. The dish itself weighs in about 12 pounds. I've been following https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/ closely and have yet to hear of any broken dishes. A few lawn mower/cable incidents, though. I would imagine SpaceX is pretty good with UV exposure.

Although Starlink policies may change once the program is out of beta, all reports are that Starlink support is very good about replacing damaged or malfunctioning equipment.

2014 RPod 178 => MyMods and Buying Habits
2008 4Runner Limited 4.0-liter V6
Yes, those are wild ponies dining on grass while dumping tanks!

podwerkz

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Joined: 11 Mar 2019
Location: Texas
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 966

Posted: 17 May 2021 at 9:44am

Hmmm...you can 'guess' it might survive, or you can take the recommendation by Starlink:

"Additionally, the SpaceX representative also confirmed that the terminal is not designed to operate in high winds and should be brought indoors in such a circumstance"

Source: https://wccftech.com/starlink-laser-operating-temperature-other-details/

I don't plan on investing $500 and watch it twist into a pile of broken plastic within the first 2 weeks of ownership.

Oh did I mention hail? Lots of it! Big ones. 1-2" is common....sometimes even bad enough here in tornado country that cars and RVs are totaled...it can destroy entire roofs...

I dont expect it to survive a tornado...but high winds and hail...yeah we need that amount of robustness out here. I am not in the city with trees all around me...I am out in the county....and no wind blocks exist here at all...so...ladders, metal panels, trashcans, plastic bags, boxes, buckets, all these things can and do become airborne...and they can do some secondary damage also.

As I said...once they can prove they have a weather-hardened unit...something similar to the enclosed satellite TV dish that you can buy for RVs and trucks....maybe then.

Maybe.

r･pod 171 gone but not forgotten!

fwunder

Senior Member

Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Location: New Jersey
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1676

Posted: 17 May 2021 at 10:36am

This may help:

https://www.google.com/search?q=wind+site:https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

And:

https://www.google.com/search?q=hail+site:https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

2014 RPod 178 => MyMods and Buying Habits
2008 4Runner Limited 4.0-liter V6
Yes, those are wild ponies dining on grass while dumping tanks!

podwerkz

Senior Member

Joined: 11 Mar 2019
Location: Texas
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 966

Posted: 17 May 2021 at 10:52am

Yeah I can build up all sorts of protection for Mr Dishy: a wooden or metal or fiberglass 'bunker' of sorts, and with a nylon mesh to prevent hailstones, then go clean plastic debris or dry tumbleweeds off the net every other day, or...I can just wait till they offer a weather hardened unit. And they will.

My money, my choice.

I actually get suitable internet right now from the two cell towers each within a mile of me, for a very reasonable $50/month for BOTH plans (not each plan) ...(almost) unlimited GB on one and 15 GB on the other..and fairly high speeds, I can watch HD video on youtube or Netflix....plus these hotspots are inside sitting on my desk as we speak...one is a phone, and one is a dedicated cellular hotspot...so its not like I need to send Elon any money right now to get internet.

In the future, with a robust unit and maybe even some cheaper plans, you never know...it could happen.

r･pod 171 gone but not forgotten!

offgrid

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Joined: 23 Jul 2018
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Posts: 5290

Posted: 17 May 2021 at 11:12am

Yeah I probably wouldn't consider spacex's solution either if I had an alternative. But the dsl is flaky cellular is worse, and no way I'm gonna use geosync sat service at it's price, latency, and data limit structure. At least starlink has low latency and doesn't have data limits (for now).

My wife works from home and is on the phone all day. So I need VOIP to work, landline service is silly expensive and doesn't work well here either. So I might try starlink although it appears most of the Southeast isn't well covered yet. From the reddit comments if sounds like I could keep the dsl and add the starlink and use speedify to maintain service when either experiences an outage.

1994 Chinook Concourse
1995 RV6A Experimental Aircraft
2015 Rpod 179 - sold

fwunder

Senior Member

Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Location: New Jersey
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1676

Posted: 17 May 2021 at 11:23am

I was considering a failover switch for J and advising him to hang on to DSL for a little while. But, he was soooo excited with how well it was working and soooo anxious to cancel DSL, there was no stopping him!

You are exactly right. It's really not for those who already have fast and reliable broadband. It is actually promoted as "Better Than Nothing Beta".

It's also not for you if you live in a forrest! Obstructions ( currently to the NNW ) are a huge issue. At least until the constellation is so built out the connection beam can be maintained through a thin sliver of sky.

2014 RPod 178 => MyMods and Buying Habits
2008 4Runner Limited 4.0-liter V6
Yes, those are wild ponies dining on grass while dumping tanks!