5 ms·

The lack of DC power is rough for boats, vans, and RVs. If someone wants to put this in a backpack they really need to get a DC power supply version. There are

The lack of DC power is rough for boats, vans, and RVs. If someone wants to put this in a backpack they really need to get a DC power supply version. There are solutions out there at this point for the standard dishy but the flat high performance has a crazy power supply with it.

stavros 2y ago
Do we know it's not DC?
- teraflop 2y ago
  Page 7 of the linked FCC application says: > Power requirements: 30 V DC / 2 A via 100-240V AC/DC adaptor Presumably, when people talk about "running it from DC power" they mean a standard 12V automotive power supply, which would require a 12V to 30V step-up converter to replace the supplied AC adapter.
  - stavros 2y ago
    I wonder if that's what the adapter supplies, and the device can actually do 12-30V or whatnot.
    - IshKebab 2y ago
      Not many devices that run off 30V will run off 12V too. It's too big of a difference. But 12V to 36V boost converters are readily available and very cheap.
      - stavros 2y ago
        I imagine most of those devices have a buck converter inside, no?
        michaelt 2y ago
        If you're drawing 30V 2A (60W) through a connector rated for 2.5A, and you try to draw the same 60W at 12V i.e. 5A you're in trouble because the connector's not designed for 5A. And not every DC-DC converter is sized for a wide range of input voltages. A DC-DC converter with a "2:1 input voltage range" might accept anything from 18 to 36 volts, whereas a converter with a "4:1 input voltage range" might accept 9 to 36 volts. The wider input voltage range generally costs a bit more too.
      - cma 2y ago
        No sure about vans, but aren't lots of cars moving to 48V?
        IshKebab 2y ago
        Yeah because higher voltage reduces the cost of wiring, and 48V is still under the 50V legal limit for "low voltage". Not sure what your point is though.
        fragmede 2y ago
        if the are power electronics chip they use is rated to handle 12 VDC to 48 VDC, which 30 VDC happens to be in-between, then they could just use that chip and you could give it 12V or 48V, whichever you had handy. If all cars are moving to 48V, that makes that more likely.
        yencabulator 2y ago
        That's a very wide range and to build a gadget to take that range would cost more, and thus it's not done. Most "12 V" gadgets only accept the rough range of what a 12 V battery might give them, which is usually only up to 15.4 V while charging.
        fragmede 2y ago
        USB-C 3.1 PD does 240 watts by raising the voltage to 48V, so the chips to accept that already exist, even if they're expensive right now.
        cma 2y ago
        > Not sure what your point is though. If it runs off 30V all you need is a cheap resistor to run it (with 40% loss), or I believe boost convertors are less efficient than buck convertors so it is a win there.
        yencabulator 2y ago
        Some manufacturer RVs and DIY builds are 48VDC now with stepdown converters for the legacy stuff that expects 12V. The problem with that is that practically every RV gadget on the market assumes 12V. It's a chicken-and-egg problem.
  - nativeit 2y ago
    It isn’t necessarily implied, but if this thing is pulling a nominal 30W-40W (assuming considering the 60W PSU) then I don’t know how much use this would be for a portable device, even for RVs. That’s a pretty significant load, even for an amplified antenna, I would have thought?
    - ryukoposting 2y ago
      Did some quick research on a major American car parts retailer's website. The biggest batteries they sell are rated as high as 188Ah (though they use a weird industry-specific unit to say that). Many are closer to 25-50Ah. Definitely enough juice to power a terminal for several hours. This lines up with my personal experiences. I have personally used a car battery to keep a big gaming laptop charged for an entire weekend, and it was being used (if not under heavy load) for about 10 hours a day. Those big batteries are extremely heavy and very expensive, but we're talking about people who want broadband internet service on their boat. Money is not a concern here. I'm sure Starlink has different power modes for these things, but the average consumer is likely far more interested in optimizing for connection speed and latency.
      - SkyPuncher 2y ago
        You likely wouldnt be running this off a lead acid car battery. You’d have a lithium battery and an additional power source, like solar or generator, to top that battery off.
        ryukoposting 2y ago
        I was operating under the assumption that the system would be wired into the boat/car's existing electrical system, which in most cases will use one or more lead-acid batteries. Edit: a vanlifer showed up and informed me that Lithium conversions are a thing. Turns out you can have your Lithium and eat it too. Cool stuff.
      - wyre 2y ago
        Needing to add an extra battery to an off grid power supply just to power a “portable” router designed to accept grid power and not 12V is a huge fail on starlinks part, regardless of the cost of the battery to power it. For reference 60w is similiar power draw to a Dometic fridge or a laptop. Also adding a huge heavy battery to a boat is a non-negligible consideration in a lot of cases.
  - inemesitaffia 2y ago
    It's DC with support for USB
swader999 2y ago
Most van / RV setups have an inverter but I agree, DC is best.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
pen2l 2y ago
The other disappointing thing (correct me if I'm wrong) is that it's not quite portable in a true sense; if I take the Starlink equipment I bought in United States to.. say, Argentina or Germany, it won't work there. I wish it could work like that, without a lot of hassle, but it doesn't appear to be the case.
- kortilla 2y ago
  “Global roaming” is the plan that allows that and it costs twice as much IIRC
  - wongarsu 2y ago
    And asking for more money in return for completely ignoring their capacity planning seems fair to me.
- grecy 2y ago
  It works perfectly fine crossing any borders. it even (currently) works in all the countries in Africa where the governments have requested for it to stop working. It is unknown if SpaceX will disable it in those specific countries.
  - lazide 2y ago
    With Elon’s general attitude towards rules, hopefully they’d only do it if someone was silly enough to put an address within the country in the account and ignore the physical location hah.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
14u2c 2y ago
Buy a $50 inverter. They are tiny and it's not like this thing is using enough power for the efficiency hit to make a difference.
- katbyte 2y ago
  Iirc the hit from ac/dc conversion is 10-20%? So excluding ac from the equation saves 20-40% power use
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  It's absolutely significant in at least some of the situations where you'd use this. A friend and I are planning on taking a small sailboat across the atlantic next year and were looking at communication options. We had decided the normal starlink is just not feasible on a small solar-only boat so this caught my attention. It's still too high though. It would take slightly more power than all the other systems combined if it were DC. With an inverter it pushes it over and there just isn't that much prime panel space on a sailboat.
lazide 2y ago
There are poe injectors that also fit the weird plug on the dishy and work well (48v). That said, you’re still talking 50-80 watts which is significant on a battery. It takes awhile for the signal to stabilize too, so it’s not the type of thing that does well turning it on for 15 minutes of usage.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  > for the signal to stabilize too Weirdly analog expression, considering a device that hops from satellite to satellite very frequently. It takes ~10 minutes for Dishy to get a GPS fix and to do a wide beam slow-bandwidth download of exact satellite location data.
  - lazide 2y ago
    It also takes some time to build high resolution obstruction data. If you have perfect views, not an issue, but that is rare. Until that happens, you’ll experience unpredictable short loss of signal when it can’t talk to a sat it expects to be able to for a second or two due to a branch, building, etc. Usually 30 mins to a couple hrs and you’re fine, depending on the site and how much traffic. The more traffic, the faster it can find the ‘dead pixels’ and route around them. Remarkable tech!
helpfulContrib 2y ago
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stavros 2y ago

Do we know it's not DC?

teraflop 2y ago
Page 7 of the linked FCC application says: > Power requirements: 30 V DC / 2 A via 100-240V AC/DC adaptor Presumably, when people talk about "running it from DC power" they mean a standard 12V automotive power supply, which would require a 12V to 30V step-up converter to replace the supplied AC adapter.
- stavros 2y ago
  I wonder if that's what the adapter supplies, and the device can actually do 12-30V or whatnot.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Not many devices that run off 30V will run off 12V too. It's too big of a difference. But 12V to 36V boost converters are readily available and very cheap.
    - stavros 2y ago
      I imagine most of those devices have a buck converter inside, no?
      - michaelt 2y ago
        If you're drawing 30V 2A (60W) through a connector rated for 2.5A, and you try to draw the same 60W at 12V i.e. 5A you're in trouble because the connector's not designed for 5A. And not every DC-DC converter is sized for a wide range of input voltages. A DC-DC converter with a "2:1 input voltage range" might accept anything from 18 to 36 volts, whereas a converter with a "4:1 input voltage range" might accept 9 to 36 volts. The wider input voltage range generally costs a bit more too.
    - cma 2y ago
      No sure about vans, but aren't lots of cars moving to 48V?
      - IshKebab 2y ago
        Yeah because higher voltage reduces the cost of wiring, and 48V is still under the 50V legal limit for "low voltage". Not sure what your point is though.
        fragmede 2y ago
        if the are power electronics chip they use is rated to handle 12 VDC to 48 VDC, which 30 VDC happens to be in-between, then they could just use that chip and you could give it 12V or 48V, whichever you had handy. If all cars are moving to 48V, that makes that more likely.
        yencabulator 2y ago
        That's a very wide range and to build a gadget to take that range would cost more, and thus it's not done. Most "12 V" gadgets only accept the rough range of what a 12 V battery might give them, which is usually only up to 15.4 V while charging.
        fragmede 2y ago
        USB-C 3.1 PD does 240 watts by raising the voltage to 48V, so the chips to accept that already exist, even if they're expensive right now.
        cma 2y ago
        > Not sure what your point is though. If it runs off 30V all you need is a cheap resistor to run it (with 40% loss), or I believe boost convertors are less efficient than buck convertors so it is a win there.
      - yencabulator 2y ago
        Some manufacturer RVs and DIY builds are 48VDC now with stepdown converters for the legacy stuff that expects 12V. The problem with that is that practically every RV gadget on the market assumes 12V. It's a chicken-and-egg problem.
- nativeit 2y ago
  It isn’t necessarily implied, but if this thing is pulling a nominal 30W-40W (assuming considering the 60W PSU) then I don’t know how much use this would be for a portable device, even for RVs. That’s a pretty significant load, even for an amplified antenna, I would have thought?
  - ryukoposting 2y ago
    Did some quick research on a major American car parts retailer's website. The biggest batteries they sell are rated as high as 188Ah (though they use a weird industry-specific unit to say that). Many are closer to 25-50Ah. Definitely enough juice to power a terminal for several hours. This lines up with my personal experiences. I have personally used a car battery to keep a big gaming laptop charged for an entire weekend, and it was being used (if not under heavy load) for about 10 hours a day. Those big batteries are extremely heavy and very expensive, but we're talking about people who want broadband internet service on their boat. Money is not a concern here. I'm sure Starlink has different power modes for these things, but the average consumer is likely far more interested in optimizing for connection speed and latency.
    - SkyPuncher 2y ago
      You likely wouldnt be running this off a lead acid car battery. You’d have a lithium battery and an additional power source, like solar or generator, to top that battery off.
      - ryukoposting 2y ago
        I was operating under the assumption that the system would be wired into the boat/car's existing electrical system, which in most cases will use one or more lead-acid batteries. Edit: a vanlifer showed up and informed me that Lithium conversions are a thing. Turns out you can have your Lithium and eat it too. Cool stuff.
    - wyre 2y ago
      Needing to add an extra battery to an off grid power supply just to power a “portable” router designed to accept grid power and not 12V is a huge fail on starlinks part, regardless of the cost of the battery to power it. For reference 60w is similiar power draw to a Dometic fridge or a laptop. Also adding a huge heavy battery to a boat is a non-negligible consideration in a lot of cases.
- inemesitaffia 2y ago
  It's DC with support for USB

swader999 2y ago

Most van / RV setups have an inverter but I agree, DC is best.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

pen2l 2y ago

The other disappointing thing (correct me if I'm wrong) is that it's not quite portable in a true sense; if I take the Starlink equipment I bought in United States to.. say, Argentina or Germany, it won't work there. I wish it could work like that, without a lot of hassle, but it doesn't appear to be the case.

kortilla 2y ago
“Global roaming” is the plan that allows that and it costs twice as much IIRC
- wongarsu 2y ago
  And asking for more money in return for completely ignoring their capacity planning seems fair to me.
grecy 2y ago
It works perfectly fine crossing any borders. it even (currently) works in all the countries in Africa where the governments have requested for it to stop working. It is unknown if SpaceX will disable it in those specific countries.
- lazide 2y ago
  With Elon’s general attitude towards rules, hopefully they’d only do it if someone was silly enough to put an address within the country in the account and ignore the physical location hah.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

14u2c 2y ago

Buy a $50 inverter. They are tiny and it's not like this thing is using enough power for the efficiency hit to make a difference.

katbyte 2y ago
Iirc the hit from ac/dc conversion is 10-20%? So excluding ac from the equation saves 20-40% power use
giraffe_lady 2y ago
It's absolutely significant in at least some of the situations where you'd use this. A friend and I are planning on taking a small sailboat across the atlantic next year and were looking at communication options. We had decided the normal starlink is just not feasible on a small solar-only boat so this caught my attention. It's still too high though. It would take slightly more power than all the other systems combined if it were DC. With an inverter it pushes it over and there just isn't that much prime panel space on a sailboat.

lazide 2y ago

There are poe injectors that also fit the weird plug on the dishy and work well (48v). That said, you’re still talking 50-80 watts which is significant on a battery. It takes awhile for the signal to stabilize too, so it’s not the type of thing that does well turning it on for 15 minutes of usage.

yencabulator 2y ago
> for the signal to stabilize too Weirdly analog expression, considering a device that hops from satellite to satellite very frequently. It takes ~10 minutes for Dishy to get a GPS fix and to do a wide beam slow-bandwidth download of exact satellite location data.
- lazide 2y ago
  It also takes some time to build high resolution obstruction data. If you have perfect views, not an issue, but that is rare. Until that happens, you’ll experience unpredictable short loss of signal when it can’t talk to a sat it expects to be able to for a second or two due to a branch, building, etc. Usually 30 mins to a couple hrs and you’re fine, depending on the site and how much traffic. The more traffic, the faster it can find the ‘dead pixels’ and route around them. Remarkable tech!

helpfulContrib 2y ago

[dead]