Starlink satellite launch

[Cyberman]

I like it.

 

[Crissa]

Seems another of Elon's broken promises. It's supposed to have been out 2021 and "populated??? (saturated) the whole world".

Tough to do when not enough chips are being made.

One of the reasons Tesla is so vertically integrated is because they often found suppliers would overbid or straight up expect Tesla's orders were too optimistic and plan to only build 30%. Apparently the other automakers often do that. Which of course Tesla never does, because they keep ramping up.

-Crissa

 

[azjohn]

I have been waiting for Starlink. Living in the country my options is Viasat, Hughes Net and cellular based. First it was supposed to be by summer 2021 than by winter 2021 and now April 2022. I belong to a few Starlink groups on FB and has some people who claim that they reserved when I did Feb 2021 and say they have had neighbors that get dishes when a month or 2 that there is no rhyme or reason even though we have been told it’s chips, being in a cell that doesn’t have any space. I don’t know how true this is or if it’s the luck of the draw

 

[azjohn]

Update

got my dish in April and happy with the service, IME the obstruction portion of the app is overly conservative and wanted my to install 40 ft a away for no obstructions. A dish installer I know had told me to take the app with a grain of salt. So before I dug a hole for the pole mount, a 40 ft trench and invested in conduit I tried putting the dish next to my house and had no obstruction issues

If I had better options such as cable or fiber I wouldn’t have Starlink but for me it’s been a god send. It is comical to see a small amount of people complaining about the speeds being slower than what Elon advertise, the service has done everything I need it to do.


I do find it interesting to follow the satellite path on Starlink.sx not sure how accurate it is , there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason

 

[charliemagpie]

How good is Starlink RV

In AU, $924 for the dish and $174 per month

And can be month to month.. Cancel and re-subscribe when needed.. What a Hoot !


I wonder if CT will have embedded Starlink… I'm in.

 

[azjohn]

How good is Starlink RV

In AU, $924 for the dish and $174 per month

And can be month to month.. Cancel and re-subscribe when needed.. What a Hoot !


I wonder if CT will have embedded Starlink… I'm in.

From the FB groups I belong people ordered the RV dishes who we’re getting tired of waiting for a residential system. According to Starlink FAQ the residential dishes have priority in a given area. So far the speeds have been comparable to a residential dish and if you buy a RV dish the service can not be transferred to a residential later on. It has been speculated that Starlink will allot he transfer of service at a later time once things settle down. It has been reported 20k RV systems have been sold

 

[charliemagpie]

From the FB groups I belong people ordered the RV dishes who we’re getting tired of waiting for a residential system. According to Starlink FAQ the residential dishes have priority in a given area. So far the speeds have been comparable to a residential dish and if you buy a RV dish the service can not be transferred to a residential later on. It has been speculated that Starlink will allot he transfer of service at a later time once things settle down. It has been reported 20k RV systems have been sold

Update

A couple of days ago , Musk said on Twitter 30,000 have been sold to Rv's ,, rollout is flying

The bottom half of AU has coverage, the other half doesn't. Coverage is fast too.
I have no idea if demand will exceed supply.. but with 40,000 satellites planned, pretty soon there will be no restrictions.

 

[JBee]

I've had a McSquareface Starlink for over 2 months now in WA. Has been fairly good, when it works its 120Mbps/20Mbps and can sustain a good 6-7MBs, works surprisingly well even in heavy rain, it typically doesn't move once its found the sweet spot in the sky. Always looks the same. It has connectivity issues sometimes, that seem to resolve shortly after I connect via the Starlink app, which is a bit weird.

Biggest downer is power usage really, my two Atom based NAS/webserver, router and pihole together use less, with it running on around 30-40W while idle and up to 50-60W when streaming. It's not bad I suppose for talking to satellites, but I would have hoped holding an active connection would use less. Maybe when there's more they can optimise via a firmware update.

Latency is not that great, but useable around 80-120ms for normal surfing and streaming etc. But fairly useless for gaming, I have my own additional long range Ubiquiti wireless connection to a fibre to the node modem, that does 40-50ms and 50/20Mbps which the boys use for gaming only now.

My place is turning into a bit of a connectivity nest, with CB repeater, wifi/lora/900Mhz to various parts of the 6sqkm farm for ip cameras, sheds, gates, lights, pumps tanks and co. RTK GPS server, lora base station, ADSB receiver, SDR etc. plus UAV telemetry. I still haven't setup my 30m mast yet, its just sitting next to the shed atm. Another job...everything is self contained and solar powered as running power for miles accross the block is to expensive. Only way to do things in rural WA is by yourself.

 

[charliemagpie]

I've had a McSquareface Starlink for over 2 months now in WA.

Latency is not that great, but useable around 80-120ms for normal surfing and streaming etc. But fairly useless for gaming,

I'm guessing you must be near the perimeter of service, or maybe served by a trickle of satellites.

https://www.starlink.com/ Surprisingly , Normal connection now states 'AS LOW' 20ms latency for gaming etc.

I guess we wait for more satellites.

 

[JBee]

I'm guessing you must be near the perimeter of service, or maybe served by a trickle of satellites.

https://www.starlink.com/ Surprisingly , Normal connection now states 'AS LOW' 20ms latency for gaming etc.

I guess we wait for more satellites.

I'm pretty close to the middle of the Starlink band, but its all about the earth base stations for latency. Theres only 27 or so POI in Australia and only 5 or so in WA where anything can go back in the large fibre backhaul. The nearest POI with a Starlink earth station to here is 350km away, but it currently seems to prefer to come out in Sydney which is nearly 3000km away which doesn't help. 40ms would be good, 20ms would be fantastic as my boys play competitively on esports. Hopefully one day, I'm not complaining, at least now I don't get the shouting upstairs "who's using the internet!"
I mean really? Who isn't?

This is how it looks like this morning:

Mbps is the highest I've seen it.

The other thing it doesn't like is streaming Disney, I think it might be because they might not have their embedded cache servers setup yet. Netflix, Stan, Amazon, Paramount, youtube and Apple work when its up.

 

[JBee]

Another thing I forgot to mention is that Starlink supports carrier wifi calling, meaning that even inside my faraday cage like house, where I only have a bar or two of reception (3-4 outside), wifi calling lets me make standard HD video/Audio mobile calling over the Starlink connection.

I haven't tried Starlink in a location without mobile service yet, but I'd assume it should work as well, meaning on a RV etc you would have mobile reception anywhere in the bush. Both a safety and convenience feature, should you ever get stuck. No sticky taping mobiles to drones to get them to altitude and into cell range to send SMS...

 

[charliemagpie]

That should have been a double Like

I never thought of sticking a phone on a drone... dammit, I would have looked forward to that. ! Lol

I just needed to train a monkey to press 'send'

 

[JBee]

That should have been a double Like

I never thought of sticking a phone on a drone... dammit, I would have looked forward to that. ! Lol

I just needed to train a monkey to press 'send'

Obviously only works for sending a SMS, unless you have a bluetooth headset that goes a few 100m, which doesn't exist. So you type the SMS on the phone on the ground then take it up to altitude and hopefully it connects to a mobile network and sends the SMS by itself. Ideally, you ask the person to respond directly so you know someone got it and send the SMS to more than one person a the same time. Now we just need a "emergency" SMS system, so that it can send via and network whilst roaming too. (Not just SOS calls)