Star Link

It no longer in Beta. Anyone (in the US) can sign up and pay the deposit. Then wait for shipping. Which could be a few months away.

Wow, they are moving fast-- it has not been a month since I got an email saying I could be a beta tester. BTY the Russian is doing a similar setup and I wonder how we are going to deal with thousands of low orbit satellites. I'll bet the astronomers are not happy with all the orbiting satellites interfering with their telescopes. Anyway, Star link looks to be a game-changer for Verizon, ATT, Hughes and etc. competition will certainly bring prices down.

I am holding out till they get a version that I can use in my RV.

I entered my name on the Starlink website way back last year. Then in early February, I received an email stating I could order a unit. I ordered mine on February 8 and it came February 28 (I live about an hour north of San Francisco).

If you watch any of the dozens of Starlink unboxing Youtube videos, the setup is exactly as people show. The speeds are good.

Over the course of the first 24 hours, the Starlink dish reports whether or not it detects obstructions. Mine does not detect obstructions. Despite that, the real time data shown in the app, shows occasional obstructions for 10-20 seconds every few minutes. I also frequently see "beta downtime" and "no satellites". Apparently this is when the satellites out of view or busy receiving updates.

The graph below is automatically collected by the router. The pink zones indicate "obstructions". If the pink region was yellow, the indication is "no satellites". When gray, "beta downtime". Over the last 24 hours, the total obstruction time for my dish is 5 minutes. 2 minutes for no satellites, and 5 minutes for beta downtime.



During the beta downtime, obstructions, or no satellites, there is no response. Your signal is lost. If you are gaming or working with an editor doing coding, you will be disappointed during the downtime. If you are Youtubing or watching Netflix, the buffering in those services is usually good enough to span the downtime.

Most of the Starlink media news is that things will get better as satellites are added with each launch.

The incredible speeds shown on the Youtube videos occurs when you are standing right next to the Starlink router. In my home, the router is 30 feet away and the signal passes through the floor of my living room. In my case, this cuts the bandwidth down from 100 Mbps to about 40 Mbps.

I spent a few days moving the dish around, looking for the best view of the sky. Eventually, I put the dish up on a flagpole I bought at Harbor freight. The dish "peeks" up over the edge of my roofline. This turned out to be the best spot where no trees were in the way. The app helps with this.

It looks to me that it can be used in an RV if you can see the satellites. If not why?

justme wrote:
Anyway, Star link looks to be a game-changer for Verizon, ATT, Hughes and etc. competition will certainly bring prices down.

I will not be buying any Hughes stock. :R

I hope for our good that the low orbit satellites don't interfere with the astronomer's NEO studies. I would hate for an ELE rock to hit us because we didn't see in time to do something about it.

justme wrote:
It looks to me that it can be used in an RV if you can see the satellites. If not why?

The dish is constrained to a "zone". If you go outside that zone, you will not get a signal. There are lots of articles about this if you take just a moment to search.

When you order your dish, you declare your "service address", and you are limited to that. I am not sure how big the zone is. I suppose that could be your favorite campground.

DarkSkySeeker wrote:

justme wrote:
Anyway, Star link looks to be a game-changer for Verizon, ATT, Hughes and etc. competition will certainly bring prices down.

I will not be buying any Hughes stock. :R

I could not use Hughes because of its high latency time that makes VPN run at modem speeds.

justme wrote:

I could not use Hughes because of its high latency time that makes VPN run at modem speeds.

I might be over-stating this here, but I think Starlink is wrong to suggest the latency of its system is so good. The obstructions, beta downtime, and no satellites of the beta are nearly unacceptable.

Elon says space should be exciting. Starlink is exciting. First there is anticipation about the order, and now I have anticipation about more satellite 'fixing' the downtime issues.