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Why pigeons mean peril for satellite broadband
- Turing_Machine 5y agoLikely not just "sitting", but something that sounds similar. I wonder whether they've measured the RF absorption of pigeon guano in that region of the spectrum.
- robbedpeter 5y agoPigeon poop has a place in the discovery of the cosmic microwave background: https://medium.com/massivesci/how-the-search-for-bird-poop-helped-us-understand-the-origins-of-the-universe-7a8c685742eb https://medium.com/massivesci/how-the-search-for-bird-poop-h...
- aksss 5y ago90% of this article seems to be background info on what Starlink is, the constellation, Elon, rockets. The tl;dr is literally “guy suffers outage when pigeon lands on dish”.
- sneak 5y agohttps://www.epsilontheory.com/why-am-i-reading-this-now/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/why-am-i-reading-this-now/
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- devoutsalsa 5y agoI’m waiting for a report to say that it’s been discovered that KFC had been capturing & serving pigeons because someone figured out they weren’t reporting a sufficient number of satellite internet outages.
- bradknowles 5y agoPigeons sitting on a satellite dish that might look like a waterless birdbath — yeah, I can imagine that might cause problems.
- russfink 5y agoObligatory RFC-1149 reference.
- geonik 5y agoThe pigeons surely concluded that RFC-1149 cannot compete with satellite broadband on technical merits alone, so they started sabotaging competitive installations with any means they have!
- tjr 5y agoRFC-1149 must be a joke, because pigeons aren't real.
- bradknowles 5y agoEach pigeon is an integer number of pigeons between 0 and 1. So, therefore they definitely are not real.
- Digit-Al 5y agoHave you not seen pigeons with a missing foot or something? I'd argue that counts as a fraction of a whole pigeon :-)
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoDid they solve the problem with these going into thermal shutdown if the dish gets to only 122 degrees F? For the pigeons I’d say they just need to ring it with those spiky things they put on buildings.
- panzagl 5y agoWho wants to fund my plastic dome startup?
- tsjq 5y agolike radome ? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=radome&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=radome&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=image...
- TeMPOraL 5y agoExcept 3D-printed, AI-designed, and as a Service. My startup is currently working on providing an easy-to-use NFT market, to allow our users to monetize the unique pigeon art on their StarDomes.
- hanselot 5y agoOf course, that would be only phase 1. Phase 2 would be using AI guided micro-transmitters to bounce internet off of pigeons mid-flight. At any time, anywhere on the planet, if you can see a pigeon, you can have internet. Never again shall an ISP be disparaged with jokes about sending data via carrier pigeon. Phase 3: We may be able to transmit even more data by encoding the message in the pigeon's DNA, allowing for vastly more capacity. In one revolutionary leap, we will move towards a greener future with our organic free-range internet delivered right at edge! Needless to say, there is no way to keep data consistency without employing a blockchain mesh network across all linked pigeons.
- ascorbic 5y agoWhen can we expect dish covers with lots of plastic spikes, like the ones on streetlights and roofs
- TeMPOraL 5y agoSpikes on a dish... make them metal (coated with plastic maybe), and perhaps they can be algorithmically designed to improve the antenna's performance.
- ascorbic 5y agoI'd imagine it's been pretty well designed for performance already. Best to stick with something that won't affect the signal.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoI agree, but engineering is all about tradeoffs. If you're considering anti-bird spikes on an antenna, it might be worth checking if this new requirement couldn't be leveraged into design change that improves the antenna itself. Of course it could just as well make zero sense. My HAM license didn't cover microwave antenna design, and all I know about phased array is that it's some sort of magic software-defined step motor/lens, built out of math.
- madaxe_again 5y agoCouldn’t say, but I’ve just helped a friend set up starlink at his remote homestead, where he can’t even get LTE - and we just put a loose basket of nylon chicken wire over the dish to keep the birds and cats from sitting in it. I’m on LTE here, with a Heath Robinson set of relay masts, and I’m considering getting starlink as a secondary connection - I get 80 up and down on LTE reliably, but would love some faster downstream speeds.
- gandalfian 5y agoLarge plastic owl? Large plastic owl connected to IOT by satellite on a subscription?
- phendrenad2 5y agoJust put some little scarecrows around your dish?
- thysultan 5y agoEmbed a pressure sensor that detects when a pigeon parches on it, then activate the electrocution mechanism of foreign biological organisms, also known as EMFBO.
- orbital-decay 5y agoSo... instead of a live pigeon blocking your signal, you now have a dead one doing the same.
- thysultan 5y agosprinkling a few dead pigeons around the feet of the device as a warning to would-be trespasser is the darwinian end-game in all of this.
- Akronymus 5y agoUntil you get pigeons that are electrocution resistant.
- ficklepickle 5y agoPigeons are really sensitive to infrasound. It causes them to take flight immediately. I built a device that created a ~1cm arc to scare away pigeons. You don't need to electrocute them, the sound alone does the job. I don't believe they can develop a tolerance as it is a survival instinct from living in cliff faces.
- gumby 5y agoIf you read the original Nobel-winning paper by Penzias and Wilson discovering cosmic background radiation, they explain that their original assumption for the background noise was “biological” in origin, i.e. bird droppings.
- charbonneau 5y agohttps://cybersquirrel1.com https://cybersquirrel1.com
- tyingq 5y agoA cone-shaped radome wouldn't be terribly expensive and might help with snow too.
- rito_ 5y agoWe in India have been facing a similar problem for a long time. Here, for TV satellite dishes, there are monkeys who want to jump on them, use it as a spot to jump to another spot, rotate it just for the sake of it- you get the idea. This problem is not very hard to solve. And it is very cheap to do so. Here are some solutions that I have seen IRL: * Use barbed wire and encircle the whole dish antenna. * Use a cage- metallic or plastic made, and cover the whole antenna with it. Make it dense enough so that pigeons cannot get through. * Use nets- plain fishing nets and use it to protect it from pigeons.