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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 25/09/2023 11:32 pm, Noel Butler via
Starlink wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:34eb69c849fc441c0184e7768ec768d9@ausics.net">
<p id="reply-intro">On 25/09/2023 18:06, Alexandre Petrescu via
Starlink wrote:</p>
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding: 0 0.4em; border-left: #1010ff 2px solid; margin: 0">
<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace"><span style="white-space: nowrap;">ah, sorry, probably we speak of the same thing.</span><br>
<br>
I dont know whether or not the current in-car starlink devices
require an extra 12v-to-220V/110V adapter, or whether it's
included, or integrated.</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace"> </div>
<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace">Here, the
"RV" is identical to a household service, the same stuff,
except your allowed to move around - not locked to the beam
covering your home location.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Depending on where on the globe you live, there is a difference
in the range of Dishy options available (or at least advertised),
which is where perhaps some of the confusion arises.</p>
<p>The "RV" option available in Australia and NZ at this time is
indeed the residential option without the cell lock. It's intended
for stationary use and assumes that you have a mains (AC) power
source. We've tried it here with the much taunted Yaosheng
adapter, which however isn't 12V (it needs 42V) and which gave us
a lot more outages than the Starlink router with Ethernet adapter.</p>
<p>There is also a "mobility" option available here (or at least
they offer sales consultations for it) that's shown mounted flat
on the roof of a speeding 4WD and seems to be quite different from
a residential class Dishy. Presumably that will run off 12V. Cost
is significantly more than for the RV option, and there's an "up
to" caveat on the data rate, which I take to mean "I you decide to
hoon around with a Dishy that doesn't really have the opportunity
to track properly with its phased array, then expect to have to
track multiple sats in parallel to stay connected, and expect to
pay for the privilege of occupying a larger number of slots, many
of which you won't get to use properly". <br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:34eb69c849fc441c0184e7768ec768d9@ausics.net">
<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace"> </div>
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding: 0 0.4em; border-left: #1010ff 2px solid; margin: 0">
<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace"><br>
These 12V-220V/110V adapters are relatively big, necessitate
fans. </div>
</blockquote>
<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace"> </div>
<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace">If you're
getting the "RV/camping/portable" equipment you'd want to use
your 12volt system that nearly all campers and RV's I've seen
with factory electrics come with (A couple RV models are 24v) so
the DC supply woud need to accept 12 to 48 input, slightly less
heat is generated if you use 24v and even less again if 48v
since it only bucks it for the 12v parts of the circuitry in
modem. You would not want to use an AC supply, defeats the
purpose of the design of that service, the 12 to 48v boost
converters for the dish to work have decent heat sinks, a little
better ventilation in the modems for that little bit of extra
heat would be beneficial.</div>
<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace"> </div>
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding: 0 0.4em; border-left: #1010ff 2px solid; margin: 0">
<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace">If they
are still needed for starlink in-car devices is probably
because of higher transmit power that is necessary to reach to
360km altitude. They could reduce that in-car power need by
bringing the sats even lower, or other non-sat objects like
HAPs. Or by augmenting the starlink sat antennas sizes.</div>
</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>They are identical hardware, no extra power is needed, since
there is 350 odd km's to the satellite, do you really think the
2 or so metres AGL for campers, would really need more power
compared to the standard unit at 10 metres AGL, at say a house
mounted dish :) In early days I remember quite a few youtubers
using the stand on the ground in their back yard, and they
probably still do.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Distance to the satellite is usually much more than 350 odd km.
The vast majority of Starlink sats orbit at around 550 km, and
your Dishy does not normally talk to satellites straight overhead
(except in a few select latitudes, such as close to the 53rd
parallels, where it may do so if there is one right overhead at
the time). In moderate latitudes, where much of humanity lives,
Dishy will point itself in the direction of the nearest 53rd
parallel and track satellites it can see in roughly that
direction, meaning that most satellites Dishy talks to are more
like 800 - 1000 km away. Near the Equator, Dishy will remain in
"coffee table" position but avoid the geostationary arc, which
also means that the sats it talks to are quite a bit off to the
side all of the time.</p>
<p>We've observed that our Dishy consumes more power during large
downloads than during uploads, which suggests that transmit power
isn't the main factor here. It appears that it's the signal
processing that is needed to receive and demodulate the incoming
signal with the high bit rate data stream that really eats the
watts.</p>
<p>Incidentally, with more birds in the sky, Dishy seems to be
willing to put up with a bit more obstruction nowadays:</p>
<table width="146" height="135" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" border="1">
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<td valign="top"><img src="cid:part1.qHxhf7No.zMEegTEo@auckland.ac.nz" alt="" width="123" height="123"></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Think of this image as viewing our Dishy down its surface normal,
mirroring the sky. Anything in red is obstruction, anything in
white (if your background is white, save image and view against a
dark background) are successful communications with satellites.
The obstruction you see here is the corner of my roof at home,
making up around a quarter of Dishy's field of view. The
obstruction resulted in a ping loss of 518 packets out of 635923,
or 0.08%.</p>
--
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel
School of Computer Science
Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
The University of Auckland
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz">u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/">http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/</a>
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