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Starlink is in beta. The entire purpose of the beta is to find stuff like this. They found something, and I'm sure that the next iteration of this before it g
by blhack 5y ago
Starlink is in beta. The entire purpose of the beta is to find stuff like this. They found something, and I'm sure that the next iteration of this before it goes to mass market will account for it.
You're just seeing the system work.
- new_realist 5y agoThis flaw was known to SpaceX before the beta began; SpaceX has publicly said the dishes are only certified to 104° Fahrenheit. Musk prefers to ship known broken products in the name of velocity, and out of a sociopathic contempt for the consumer. It’s happened to me more than once.
- stagger87 5y agoIs it even fair to call it a 'flaw' or 'broken' if they advertise the limitations? Almost all electronics will have some operational temperature range depending on power consumed and cooling available. Is there even active cooling on the unit?
- tptacek 5y agoYes? If you advertise a flaw, it remains a flaw.
- throwaway69123 5y agoHard to call this a flaw no product ever invented isn’t without limitations
- falcolas 5y agoHowever, products are frequently created to not shut down in “average” summer temperatures. It’s a well known operating parameter throughout the US - temperatures break 105°F even up in Canada. It’s not even the hottest part of the summer yet. I can’t imagine this problem getting better.
- drusepth 5y agoOn the other hand, products do frequently shut down in "average" temperatures, especially in the context of internet dishes. The rural communities most likely to use Starlink are also those most likely to be relying on satellite dishes right now, which seem to frequently suffer from similar problems. My parents pay for internet from both HughesNet and AT&T because the former stops working whenever it snows more than an inch or two (even after clearing the dish manually) and the latter constantly drops any time there's thick rain, heavy winds, etc. There's dozens of days throughout each year where neither work and they're just SOL in terms of TV or internet.
- shaklee3 5y agoNo. I said this earlier, but they won a rural auction from the FCC where they were given 900 million dollars for Starlink, which includes providing coverage in areas well above 100 degrees f on a regular basis. They are required to provide this. If they hadn't won the auction, they can do whatever they want. The auction had service level agreements that could not be met with this limitation. It's a fundamental flaw that has to be fixed.
- _Microft 5y agoDo you know when they need to have started providing service there at the latest? They began providing service at higher latitude earlier because that is where the satellites "lump" due to their inclination, so that they needed fewer satellites in total. They are also required to cover Alaska and have now started launching Starlink satellites into (near-)polar orbits. If these are test sats or actually operational I do not know but they seem to be working on these issues. All in all they seem to be following a launch-early strategy.
- shaklee3 5y agoI believe late next year is the first real rollout, and the rest are scattered over 2 years. This is the reason they changed the inclination and altitude several times.
- tptacek 5y agoI think you're operating from a broken definition of the word "flaw".
- tzs 5y agoIt might depend on whether the advertising conveys the limitation correctly to the consumer. I had a home router once that was cutting out in the summer. The operating environment section of the manual listed a temperature range that went up to something like 105 ℉. My apartment was below 80 ℉ so didn't think that was the problem. It turns out that they meant 105 ℉ inside the router. Opening the router case and placing it so a fan I used to circulate room air was blowing over the router made the problem go away. I think it is reasonable to assume when writing a manual that if you tell a consumer that the device can be operated in an environment with a temperature range of X-Y, the consumer will take it to mean that if the temperature in their room is in that range they can use the device. If that's not what the range means, you should tell the consumer. Is the Starlink manual clear on this?
- shaklee3 5y agoIt's a flaw because they are required to provide service in areas that hit these temperatures with certain SLAs. I say required because they want a government contract promising that they can do it.
- MobiusHorizons 5y agoAs far as I can tell it's not advertised publicly. For instance it's not in the FAQ on the starlink website (although considerations about snow are). I was unable to find a PDF of the booklet that comes in the box though, so maybe it's in that.
- ganoushoreilly 5y agoI don’t recall a booklet in our box, just a cardboard setup overlay and a weather cover. It might have been in one of the the accessory boxes, I’ll look later today.
- knownjorbist 5y agoThis is the most ridiculous characterization. It's literally a beta.
- Black101 5y agoThis was programmed in... it is not a bug... it is just a known flaw. Has nothing to do with it being beta. Beta means that unknown bugs might pop up...
- jazzyjackson 5y agoIt also means it’s not the final product and doesn’t make promises about operating in all environments
- newacct583 5y ago> You're just seeing the system work. This sounds reasonable, and you make excellent points. But the important fact we all have to remember in these discussions is not the details, but that SpaceX is run by Elon Musk.
- verytrivial 5y agoWhoa. What guy? This thermal issue is critical.
- newacct583 5y agoAnd it's a failure in a beta, with a sample size of one. As the poster upthread points out, this is the kind of failure you want to find in a beta test of a new product. But right right... I forgot. Musk.
- verytrivial 5y agoI couldn't agree more. But it seems some people are reading my comment literally.
- newacct583 5y ago(HN really, really doesn't like sarcasm. But this particular story just absolutely drips with irrational hate and really deserves some. Good grief, new product has correctible flaw!)
- shadowgovt 5y agoAlways worth remembering that HN has an international audience. English is terrible enough before we start butchering it by playing with intent. (Said with love and encouragement; I've forgotten about not using sarcasm here too).
- babesh 5y agoThe link is mostly a honeypot for Elon Musk haters. I wonder if they have bothered looking at the operating temperatures of other satellite Internet dishes? A simple search will net you heating and cooling devices for satellite dishes. If you face more extreme temperatures, you need only go buy a heating and cooling unit. http://www.dishcamo.com/dish_heater.htm http://www.dishcamo.com/dish_heater.htm
- ganoushoreilly 5y agoSurprisingly, the heating element built in appears to be pretty solid, or at least that's been the responses on /r/starlink. You're definitely right that people are hating on it. Most of the people I know in real life that knocked it have access to land based internet. Once you get out into rural areas where 4g is the basis for your internet, it's amazing.
- swiley 5y agoAnd it's not like 4g hotspots and old cell phones don't overheat either.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jazzyjackson 5y agoYes, my iPhone went into thermal shutdown sitting by the pool on a 90 degree day but I don’t see a hacker news discussion on it…
- AngryData 5y agoYour iphones primary environment isn't outside under the sun for half of every day of the year though either.
- HarryHirsch 5y agoI have yet to see cellphone towers shut down because the summer is too hot.
- aaomidi 5y agoIf your engineering team had to wait for a product failure to realize an item that's going to be outdoors in the sun is going to get hot, what on earth else are they missing?
- tyingq 5y agoThey put a non-automotive grade LCD in Teslas. I assume because they thought they knew better. I suspect hubris is at play more than full-on incompetence.
- willhinsa 5y agoJust curious, what are the differences between normal LCD's and automotive-grade LCD's?
- aaronmdjones 5y agoAutomotive-grade LCDs don't burn out and melt at the temperatures commonly found in ... well, automotive environments. Like your car sitting in a tarmac car park all day in sunny weather with the windows closed.
- tyingq 5y agoCertified operating temperature range would be one.
- kosievdmerwe 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- confused_corbin 5y agoIf you ever work on hardware, please talk to people who actually know what they are doing. Anyone with a six week internship worth of experience would have tested this in an environment chamber. It’s bad enough when idiot “first principals” MEs and EEs toss this stuff over and I have to deal with it, but it doesn’t fucking reach customers with faults that bad.
- dathinab 5y ago122° Fahrenheit is not "just" hot, a lot of things will have problems operating normally at that degree of heat. Like in the area where I life a satellite dish reaching 50°C would be the rear exception. And if the alternative is not having proper internet at all other days, Startlink would still be the better option, even if there are a very few days where it fails during the afternoon of the day.
- slipframe 5y agoEh, while 122F would probably be a rare temperature in most areas, judged by weather reporting, I think if you consider hyper-local effects it might not be too rare. If a dish were positioned over or near tarmac, it would experience weather several degrees hotter than the weather channel was reporting for that area. You'd also want to avoid placing it near the radiators of air conditioning systems, and other things like that. Just something to keep in mind during installation I suppose, not insurmountable problems by any means.
- alksjdalkj 5y agoI'm not sure, it seems like 110+F is pretty common nowadays in parts of the US. Adding a dozen degrees if the dish is in direct sunlight seems pretty realistic. (not saying things won't break at that heat, just that it's not unrealistically high)
- mmmBacon 5y agoSorry HW engineer here and I strongly disagree. You don’t ship hardware like this. 122F is only 50C. Most components can handle 85C so shutting down at 50C means the thermal rise is >35C. This is simply poor design.
- judge2020 5y agoDirectv dishes are only rated for 140F or 60C[0]. Pretty close, but it clearly makes a difference in Arizona. 0: https://www.att.com/support/smallbusiness/article/smb-directv/KM1215602/#:~:text=Maximum%20safe%20operating%20temperature%20is%20140%C2%B0 https://www.att.com/support/smallbusiness/article/smb-direct....
- shaklee3 5y agoSpeaking from experience in this same industry, this is the wrong way to look at it. They significant amount of engineering goes in to designing the ground systems such that it can tolerate all different types of environments. Currently with Starlink you are only seeing probably less than 5% of the environments that it would be rolled out in. This is mainly due to how they are targeting RDOF areas to appease the government from winning all that money. Heat is one thing, but freezing temperatures are also very difficult to deal with. A deicer is common on high-end antennas to melt ice off in subzero temperatures. I would be surprised if SpaceX changes the design at this point. To manufacture it antennas in the quantities that they need, they would have had to order a lot of the parts 6 to 9 months ahead of time in large quantities, especially given that they lose money on the terminal cost currently.
- awesomeusername 5y agoPreemptive thermal shutdown at this temp doesn't mean the units aren't designed to handle much higher. It means at this stage in the beta program they aren't ready to push the envelope with customer deployed hardware. I always back off from the maximum limits for the gear I design then after years in the field and proven reliability you can remotely update it and push things a bit. And that's in production. This is beta
- shaklee3 5y agoYou don't know that. It's highly likely that they know it will do damage above those temps and are doing this to prevent damage. We will see in a year or so.
- awesomeusername 5y agoResponding with 'you don't know that' to a comment with no specific assertions, followed by 'its highly likely...' is a good example of 'irony'. We need more of those on US centric forums as a public education service. Thanks.
- 5y ago
- EADGBE 5y agoIt’s like when Tesla finally realized their imaging cameras weren’t worth crap during the winter with road crust all over them. Proving the moderately-self driving capabilities moot. Ideal conditions during development may not replicate real-world use.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoThis is not something to find in a beta. This is a built-in feature and operating temperatures are not picked at random (they should not be, at least)
- MobiusHorizons 5y agoThe _service_ is in Beta, but they are still selling a product to consumers, which means they are expected to follow normal engineering practies. This type of mistake is simply failing to meet best practices. I think it is roughly the hardware equivalent of using 3DES encryption, storing passwords in plain text, or allowing SQL injection. When you sell a device to consumers one of the considerations you have to consider is the operating range of that device especially if that device is used outdoors. Operating ranges are somewhat standardized, and most components will specify their operating range in the datasheet precisely because this is one of those fundamental considerations (like power requirements). Examples: [1] The least stringent automotive standard I could find (AEC-Q100 grade 3) expects components to operate from -40°C (-40°F) - 85°C (185°F). [2] A pretty basic article on designing outdoor products suggests at least -20°C(-4°F) - 70°C (158°F). This is a standard part of the design flow precisely so that you don't make a mistake as monumental as shipping an outdoor device that can't withstand the weather at the location you shipped it to. [1] https://community.cypress.com/t5/Knowledge-Base-Articles/Meaning-of-AEC-Q100-KBA220733/ta-p/248018 https://community.cypress.com/t5/Knowledge-Base-Articles/Mea... [2] https://suntsu.com/2017/09/15/the-great-outdoors-designing-products-for-outdoor-temperatures/ https://suntsu.com/2017/09/15/the-great-outdoors-designing-p...
- DevKoala 5y agoThe reception hardware is the front end of an amazing aerospace engineering effort. Honestly, I am not worried at all, since these issues will get ironed out in new iterations of the hardware. I am more interested in seeing the service achieve streaming latencies required for video games and trading. The day that happens, I have no need to live near a city anymore.
- rualca 5y ago> The entire purpose of the beta is to find stuff like this. No, it really isn't. The point of a test is to verify that the system works as designed, and in case it doesn't then there's planned room to iterate out unexpected issues. If a system designed to be operated on the outdoors is not designed to operate with temperatures above 50C then this is a collosal screwups and gross oversight, as this sort of stuff is well-known for decades. https://web.mit.edu/parmstr/Public/NRCan/CanBldgDigests/cbd047_e.html https://web.mit.edu/parmstr/Public/NRCan/CanBldgDigests/cbd0...
- optimiz3 5y agoYou can bet the social media teams of Verizon, Comcast, and the rest of their ilk will be pushing this article through social networks hard.