Re: [Starlink] Starlink power use & satellite tracking

[Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com>]

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On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 3:08 PM Ulrich Speidel via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

>
>    - Small inverters usually come with cigarette lighter cables, and
>    cigarette lighter sockets are typically fused with 8 or 10 A fuses. That
>    puts maximum safe power outputs in the 96W to 130-something W range
>    depending on battery voltage.
>
> When a larger inverter failed upon installation, I ran Starlink with the
router and rectangular dish for about 2 months, unattended, on a Harbor
Freight 250W inverter and 8 GC2 batteries.

Unfortunately this sort of crashed and burned after the first snow. The
battery bank was 8 GC2 in series, and there was a 48V-12V converter before
the Harbor Freight inverter. I had 4 solar panels flat on top of a freight
container, simply so that they would not be visiblle and the site would be
low profile. These got covered by snow, and I will tilt them up before the
next snow season. The batteries then got to a low voltage, and the lovely
Victron battery protector failed because I wired it backwards. Then I had a
heart attack and could not visit the site for 3 months. The battery bank
discharged entirely. I finally arrived to find ice at the top of 4 cells in
the battery bank. Fortunately it was only at the top, and I was able to
recover all of the batteries, rewire the protector, and put the site back
on the air.

At that point, I switched to DishyPowa, connected via a hacked Starlink
Ethernet Adapter. This allows you to delete the inverter and the Starlink
router, and run the dish directly off of 48-52V DC. You still need a
router, because Starliink only provides one IPV4 DHCP address to the Dishy,
and you need to do the usual NAT thing on your local net. But routers that
run on 12V directly are easy to find.

    Thanks

    Bruce

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