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Teardown of the SpaceX Starlink User Terminal
- shantara 6y agoI wonder what possible DIY applications could this dish have. Something that immediately comes to mind would be a radar or a transmitter for drones.
- Tuna-Fish 6y agoAny DIY applications are very illegal in the US. There is basically nothing you can do with this dish other than it's original purpose that doesn't make you a felon.
- techdragon 6y agoNot true, as long as you’re only broadcasting in the appropriate frequency bands, it’s completely legal.
- londons_explore 6y agoI doubt you can make it transmit far outside the bands it's designed for. Doubt any of those frequencies are unlicensed...
- Tuna-Fish 6y agoIsn't the entire frequency range that it is capable of transmitting in licensed spectrum?
- martin_a 6y agoAren't there strict limitations on the maximum power output of any radio transmitters? At least in Germany there are quite low levels even for "free" frequency bands, so long-range FPV flight boosters/repeaters are already illegal, although they are working in a free band.
- swiley 6y agoYeah that's not at all how radio laws work in the US.
- cschneid 6y agoIf you have a Ham license that gives you permission on the right bands, and you are careful to only transmit on those bands, then it's legal. There are power & frequency rules, among others. It'd be a pretty big DIY project, and quite possibly unable to be done due to physics of the dish preventing you from shifting over to the legal (Ham licensed) frequency. It's not on-face illegal to build radio equipment though.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoIf you hold an Amateur Radio license it would be entirely legal for you to repurpose this hardware for transmitting in one of the many allocated amateur bands, as long as the standard rules were followed. (No encryption, always identify yourself with your callsign.) There is a long tradition of radio amateurs re-purposing other radio hardware. CB radios can often be retuned into the 10 meter band, wifi transceivers can work inside the 13cm band, for example.
- gorkish 6y agoOnce you get into this kind of special purpose microwave gear, it's all made to only operate at a very specific frequency. So in this particular instance, no the dish really isn't able to be used or repurposed for anything else. The only thing it is ever gonna be capable of doing is listening or talking to Starlink. There's no shifting it into a nearby amateur band as you can do with some wide bandwidth LNBs or old commercial radios.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoI only said it was legal. Not that it was practical. :)
- Tuna-Fish 6y agoAnd that is my entire point. The range that a starlink antenna can transmit or receive at is ~10.7GHz - 14.5 GHz. (possibly a bit wider than that, but not by much) All of which is licensed spectrum. And starlink only has a license for using that band if the beam is steered at least 25° above the horizon, and 25° away from the geostationary orbit band. Good luck doing anything other than the intended use with that.
- lxe 6y agoYou can transmit using unlicensed equipment on Ham bands with appropriate amateur license, or on the ISM bands without a license under certain more restrictive power emission rules.
- nynx 6y agoWould be nice if this tech got copied and started showing up in asian tech markets. Phased arrays are super cool and affordable ones would be useful for a lot of different projects.
- vardump 6y agoDishy looked rather expensive to manufacture. I think it's sold way under manufacturing costs. Real costs could very well be in thousands.
- chess_buster 6y agoIn what kind of projects could this phased arrays be used for?
- baybal2 6y agolistening to multiple satellites at once
- jcims 6y agoDepending on transmit power it could possibly be used for short range active radar. Tracking comms with any moving source, e.g. UAVs, satellites, etc. Localization of RF sources. Possibly MIMO-type operations to build more resilient RF point to point networks. etc. etc. Lots of this depends on the RF architecture of the board though. The device clearly has high bandwidth but we have no idea what the tuning range is or if those subassemblies can be operated independently to build multiple beams. Also it is very high frequency (12GHz+) and uses circularly polarized antennas which may limit utility with existing terrestrial RF infrastructure.
- xrayarx 6y ago- radar I.e. to track drones - create microwave links - receive/transmit to multiple parties simultaneously - extend the range of wifi/Bluetooth - all of the above simultaneously - put it on your own satellite or drone and the possibilities... All depends on what the Antennas, the electronics and the Software of the array allow you to do. And then of course you could chain them,...
- dsalzman 6y agoI’m surprised this type of tear down was allowed under the beta user agreement. Or maybe just ignored.
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- jewel 6y agoThe video's creator didn't necessarily have to violate the agreement. He could have bought it on ebay. Competitors are going to do these teardowns privately anyway. In the case of starlink, it seems like there'd be nothing to gain and a lot to lose by being litigious when there are hoards of tech-enthusiasts which will devour content like this. It's free marketing.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago> nothing to gain and a lot to lose by being litigious I'm a big fan of Elon Musk, but I would have trouble denying that this line could be a chapter heading in any biography on hum and it wouldn't surprise anybody.
- Jugurtha 6y agoI asked for one for use, and teardown. I haven't received a reply. StarLink is underrated. Where I live, it's $100 a month for 100Mbps Fiber to the Home (it was $200 last month) if you can actually get in touch with the "National" telco, which has a monopoly on FTTH, xDSL. The other operators offer "4G", which goes to 10Mbps at 3 or 4 in the morning. It's also capped as you can only download with "high-speed" about 1GB before it's throttled. Mostly, though, it's a few kilobytes per second. We lost millions of euros in business because of that, couldn't make video calls with physicians when we needed it the most for extremely urgent situations [tried 8 devices simultaneously with three different networks to get that to work and it did not work]. We bought about six 4G devices (routers, dongles). We bought a 4G antenna. Main xDSL provider took a year to bring us a line. For businesses, it's $300/month for 20Mbps. (Yes, that's 20 mega bits not bytes per second). There were other providers, but they were shut down by the "regulators" because they were too popular. Seriously, fuck them. Let StarLink shatter these assholes. It's taking too long. If there's anyone from StarLink here, I'd like to get some of these babies.
- jack_riminton 6y agoAnyone here know the likely component costs? Reports say ~$2000 each https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/iuvqdq/starlink_terminalantenna_about_2000_according_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/iuvqdq/starlink_t... But this feels like more of a finger in the air guess
- inamberclad 6y agoWouldn't be surprised if it were that order of magnitude, but I bet the engineering effort cost much, much more. I'm ballparking the PCB alone at a hundred dollars each (that large of a multilayer board with controlled impedance), custom silicon probably had a high startup cost that will eventually amortize, a few hundred dollars in extra components, and then an expensive custom process for the top section with all the antennas.
- xoa 6y agoWouldn't SpaceX be amortizing though vs their satellites and rockets too? They must have had to invest a significant amount in R&D and supply chain setup already to figure out aerospace grade electronics. It seems like the terminals, despite being extremely impressive, would still be much easier (and could reuse some know-how) than what they've needed to deal with for their rockets, capsules, and satellites? And they're definitely aiming pretty mass market with millions of terminals in the US alone.
- delfinom 6y agoRight now these dishes are most likely completely overdesigned on the high-end RF scale. Unless Elon is repeating his stupidity of hiring a idiot of a consultant like they did for the Model 3 body (and eventually fired when made look bad by that reverse engineering firm). The design should get cost reduced in the future once they have enough field feedback over RF performance/behavior.
- LinuxBender 6y ago$699 for hardware, $99/mo for subscription according to a few youtubers. That is in the U.S. No idea what it will be elsewhere. Or do you mean their manufacturing cost per unit? [Edit: ] Was I incorrect, did I misunderstand the question?
- rcarmo 6y agoI want one of these. I promise to take much better care of it than this other human, since it would be invaluable for me to have connectivity from the countryside :)
- grogenaut 6y agoA teardown like this is much more valuable than you (singular) having countryside access to HN. Teardowns and ifixits provide a large benefit to the environment (less waste) and just general learning.
- puranjay 6y agoI am already fantasizing about a future "workplace" where remote work is common and good satellite internet is everywhere so you can work from whatever corner of the world you wanted to.
- treespace88 6y agoI am hoping for high bandwidth on airplanes to enable a VR appliance.
- colejohnson66 6y agoI don’t think the regulators would particularly like the idea of people playing VR games on an airplane. Or do you mean something else?
- technofiend 6y agoThat sounds like fun. I think the very limited per-passenger space would prevent enough useful movement for many VR games, though. Interacting with the stewardess would also be challenging without adding outward facing cameras.
- rcarmo 6y agoThe Quest 2 can deal with most of that (including passthrough), but yes, the movement range would be a challenge. You'd need to rely on close gestures or controls.
- nullifidian 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25220589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25220589 I actually submitted it some time before, but evidently the original title and a direct link to youtube weren't as appealing to HN readership. UPD: If it isn't obvious, I was making a comment about the effects of the original title policy. If the original title is confusing / unappealing, the submission wouldn't be noticed, but someone's "repost article" with a better title would.
- avalys 6y agoI'd much rather read an article than watch a video.
- nullifidian 6y agoThere isn't much of an article to read. Personally would rather listen to the author who actually did the job. Also I submitted it 6 days ago.
- derekja 6y agoThat video was great, thanks.
- superkuh 6y agoIt's a "reactive impedance surface" metasurface (the squares) to better isolate the circular patch (or mushroom?) antennas and then a suspended layer of director elements for both linear polarizations (which passes circular).
- jcims 6y agoThe best part of this teardown is that Ken is sending it to Shahriar from The Signal Path for a proper RF assessment (and if history is any guide, repair). I can't wait!!!
- gorkish 6y agoThis is where the good stuff is gonna happen. Still though, phased arrays aren't all that complicated conceptually. The little chips are probably TX/RX switches and the larger chips probably do block up/downconversion, mixing, and provide controllable phase delay. It is the overall integration and combining of 600+ signals that is the real impressive part. ST Microelectronics deserves as much credit on this as anybody. Truly stunning.
- jcims 6y agoTotally agree and I'm no expert but was thinking likewise in the architecture. They clearly put some thought into the package, it's got to be the most sophisticated bit of commodity RF kit ever sold.
- Steltek 6y agoThe Signal Path is no joke. EE's will say "RF is voodoo" and looking at HF to Wifi, you think it's a little bit hyperbolic. Then TSP goes and dissects some 80GHz monster and you realize that you know absolutely nothing about electronics and you should have stuck to software. I'm excited to hear he's getting a crack at this and I can't wait for that video to drop.
- gdubs 6y agoEagerly awaiting an invite here in NW Oregon, seemingly just on the border of the beta zone. Last night I white-knuckled through a big presentation, hoping my over-the-cap LTE wouldn’t get throttled. It mostly worked out. Our traditional sat is expensive, capped, and the latency isn’t usable for video conferencing. For our family, the trade offs are worth it. But for rural areas, this is really exciting. Can’t come soon enough.
- Diederich 6y agoI'm right in the middle of the beta zone, in Washington state, and I've not yet received an invite.
- dfghnmsemr 6y agoI was surprised to get an invite with an address smack in the middle of Seattle. I've been tempted to bring it up as as failover for Centurylink, but it's still a bit pricey for novelty (about all it provides compared with the alternatives at this address).
- sbierwagen 6y agoIf Starlink customer service knows what they're doing, they won't let you sign up with a metro address. Starlink has limited bandwidth per satellite footprint. It either won't work at all in a city, or be very, very slow.
- belval 6y agoLinks for that? It sounds logical but I never heard about it before now.
- sbierwagen 6y ago>Elon: "We'll have some small number of customers in Los Angeles but we can't do a lot of customers in Los Angeles because the bandwidth per cell is simply not high enough" also "I wanna be clear, it's not like Starlink is a huge threat to telcos. I want to be super clear. It is not. In fact it will be helpful to telcos because Starlink will serve the hardest to serve customers that telcos otherwise have trouble doing with landlines or even with cell radio stations, cell towers." https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/wiki/index#wiki_-_will_starlink_be_available_in_dense_urban_areas.2Fcities.3F https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/wiki/index#wiki_-_will_sta... That links to two timestamps in a 47 minute livestream by Elon Musk. There's no canonical answer on starlink.com.... because that site has basically no info on it.
- conradev 6y agoI have been curious how feasible it would be to mount this dish to a van (when stationary), and specifically what the power requirements would be. I don't know a whole lot about off-grid power setups but it seems like it should be fairly feasible at 100 watts, which is awesome!
- mschuster91 6y agoDepends if you're running it 24/7 and what your power generation is.
- grecy 6y agoElon has said more than once it will work perfectly fine, even when the van (or yacht, or train) is in motion. In the Starlink Engineers AMA on reddit the team said they're working on reducing the power requirements. My current vehicle has 200W of solar, but a 100W draw would be a lot.
- DGAP 6y agoCan someone explain to me the economics/ technology of Starlink and why it beats out traditional geosynchronous internet providers? Is it that owning your own cheap launch platform makes launching lots of satellites instead of one big one feasible? Is it some new antenna miniaturization technology? If that were the case, I would think this would have been invented by one of the myriad existing players in the space. Why is this apparently revolutionary progress in internet satellite technologies coming out of nowhere from a company (SpaceX) that has nothing to do with connectivity or satellites?
- jasonpeacock 6y agoIt's all about latency. Having broadband with 200+ms of latency to reach geostationary satellites is to slow for modern networks. https://www.satsig.net/latency.htm https://www.satsig.net/latency.htm You have to move the satellites closer to Earth to reduce latency - hence low earth orbit (LEO). You can achieve much better latencies, <20ms, and support modern networking applications. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/musk-says-starlink-isnt-for-big-cities-wont-be-huge-threat-to-telcos/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/musk-... But when you reduce the height to LEO, not only are the satellites no longer geostationary, they also have a much smaller coverage area. So you need more satellites to cover the same area, and fancy networking to handle the constant hand-off between satellites.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoBandwidth as well. Starlink can reach 100Mbps, and they're talking about 200Mbps. They can do that in part because they have more satellites.
- mbreese 6y ago> because they have more satellites I wouldn't characterize this as a function of having more satellites, but rather having fewer users per satellite (an admittedly subtle difference). But, related to the above post(s), the smaller geographical area each satellite covers is a problem for coverage (you need more satellites in orbit), but is a benefit for speed -- you have less users vying for the full bandwidth of the satellite. And, because the geographical areas are smaller, instead of having one base station/uplink, you now have geographically distributed base stations, so you have multiple points to access the Internet. This also helps with bandwidth (instead of X total uplink capacity, you need X/n capacity for each site, where n is the number of sites). Once you get around the logistics of managing a fleet of satellites, many, many benefits flow from having lower orbits.
- llimos 6y agoAnyone wondering where the name came from, look up the story of Boaty McBoatface.
- esaym 6y ago> "Power over Ethernet is usually limited to about 30 watts, but new standards allow for greater power delivery that can meet Dishy's need for about 100 watts" 100 watts? Is that for real??
- mlindner 6y agoOn powerline meters of the dish + router input AC power, yes that's correct, but that's also factoring any inefficiencies in the power supply. The Power over Ethernet injector supplies 56V/1.6A 2x power (namely all 8 lines energized). See: https://imgur.com/JpVZ6Uy https://imgur.com/JpVZ6Uy Output 1 is for the dish, output 2 is for the router.
- jcampbell1 6y agoIt’s probably 95 watts of radio and 5 watts of compute. If we could see radio waves, that thing would look like a 95 watt spotlight.
- driverdan 6y agoIt has a heater to melt snow.