@dfinn Dishy fits perfectly in the Pelican 1600 Case Case doubles as a step, box, seat, etc. I wouldn’t splurge for that “custom” case — I determined value wasn’t there after considering one myself.
I’d also recommend you permanently mount the router and wiring to expedite set up at camp. Takes my wife and I less than a minute to deploy ours at camp and maybe 2 minutes when I’m solo. I have a few photos of the setup on my build thread here.
To further simplify, I’ll even leave the dish mounted if next campsite is just up the same backroad and staying under 35mph (as I did as recently as this morning)
@cmc I’m in zoom calls basically all day — Just got out of one where I was presenting to a group of 20 peeps. No issues! Down in Baja the dish was routinely getting +100Mbps… in CAN/US speeds hover around 50mpbs which I know isn’t a “ton” in 2023 but more than enough for video calls, streaming, large photo/video dumps, etc. w/o lag. Both my wife and I have been on calls at the same time w/o issue, too.
You haven’t had any issues with the cable or connector that goes to the dish having issues from frequent plugging and unplugging? I’d hate to be on a trip somewhere like baja and relying on this to be able to work and not be able to because a connector failed.
Permanent mounting of router means I’m only ever exposing one end of the cable—which I have a 3D printed cap on when not in use (Found on Etsy). FWIW cable is quite sturdy IMO, not sure how folks are messing their connectors up, would have to really be a brute to damage.
@cmc I have Starlink in Albuquerque and it’s been rock solid on zoom/teams . Speeds are usually above 50mbps and get above 100mbps in the evenings. Latency is even low enough to play online multiplayer games.
@dfinn I haven’t had any issues with the cable other than an animal eating it. The dish end of my cable is on the roof in 110+ degree weather and really high winds. I’ve been pretty impressed with Starlink overall. Especially considering my next fastest internet option is 7mbps up and 2mbps down.
Just doing a shake down but my god…I love it. I have a 500wh battery generator that I am using and just tapped into the 175w panel on the roof. Will invest in a 200w portable panel most likely but right now and after ~2.5hrs, I have only dropped from 92 to 85% on the box with most of that time being shaded. Legit the future.
Got mine this week and doing the initial test now. Power draw for me is 40-50 watts (3.5 - 4 amps) and this is going through my inverter.
Speeds are awesome so far, 150 Mbps and 50ms ping times. I got this in my back yard in salt lake and the same out in the mountains a couple hours away. I’ll be taking this on a trip through BC in a few weeks to really test it but so far pretty impressed.
I run starlink off my LiFePo4 batteries, and have the pivot mount on the peak of my GFC roof. It works great, I’ve never had any issues unless I’m in deep canyons with lots of obstructions. I’m usually in Utah and Idaho.
I have a 300W solar array on my roof and 1200Wh of battery capacity and have never had issues with the power draw. I chopped into the wiring harness on my tacoma inverter to power it from the house battery, so the starlink router cable comes out in the camper.
I’m considering revamping my whole electrical system (I’m an EE) with something small and custom made just for truck campers that can manage the solar, the alternator, battery charging, USB-C power delivery outputs to all the common, and take care of powering dishy from the battery without the inverter requirement. I’m just dreaming at this point, but I’ve been scheming about it for at least 2 months. I’ll add more details in another thread when I get around to formalizing my ideas.
Last note - there’s supposedly enough satellites in orbit now that the flat mount rectangular dishy (not the HP one) should work really well. There’s sites out there that will show you all the visible sats at a given location. It’s pretty nutty that there’s at least 5 or so even if you point the dish south. Most of the time in the US, the dish ends up pointing north (for orbital dynamics reasons that I don’t know much about)
This is good info. I was thinking about the trade-offs last night of flatmounting Starlink with solar. My Starlink at the house always points north so I was thinking you could either have good service (pointing the vehicle north) or good solar (pointing the vehicle south).
Edit on what I posted earlier…So I have been doing a lot of testing lately. I just got back from 7 days of working remotely 8-9 hours a day with it. It works well. I have two mounts, one on the roof, and one on a small tripod that is awesome too if I am camped under trees, etc.
With my 200w of solar for my Inergy Flex, I get never drop below 70% of battery draw on remotely sunny days.
I’ve been running Starlink with the DC conversion, plugged into the 12v cigarette outlet on my Anker 757 battery with a little usb powered router. Seems to work really well. Not having to run the inverter does seem to be about a 1/3 gain in efficiency. With also charging my macbook (the M1/M2 has insane efficiency) I expect to get about 3, 8 hr work days. My battery is 1229wh and I don’t yet have solar panels.
As for storage, I bought a Husky weatherproof bin and used the cardboard the Starlink came with to have super cheap, water/dust proof storage. I did make a few modifications to fit more stuff. in the bin. Happy to post some pictures this week.
As for the internet quality of Starlink, it’s either great or gone. Mostly dependent on where you place the dish. In a pretty open area, you will get quality that can easily handle all video conferencing needs, but if there are some trees and obstructions (to your north) then you can expect it to drop in and out a lot. Otherwise, you’ll get a 30-sec drop every few hours. Very please with it so far.
I think the Husky is an easy step to keep your Starlink safer in transit.
As for the DC conversation, I liked being plug-and-play with my conversation or the original hardware, no splicing of the expensive Starlink hardware (which I can still use whenever). The price for that though isn’t trivial, I think it cost me like $200 when it’s all said and done. If the power additional power consumption isn’t an issue, and the original router works for your needs, I don’t think the DC conversion is worth it.
I have two ways I mount my Starlink, depending on whether I am in the trees or not.
Like many I have seen on here, I created a threaded bracket that is mounted on my upper tent and bolted the Starlink pivot mount mount to it. I use this for when I am in the open without obstructions.
When not in the open, I like the flexibility of moving the dish for an unobstructed view of the sky. I hated the huge base it came with due to size and found this super cool 3D printed mount for a tripod. Additionally, I use that same adaptor for transport. I mount it to an L bracket that is mounted to a small molle panel that is attached to my drawer system. I merely unscrew it from the molle when I get to my destination and mount it to the tripod below. It is secured further by this.
I bought this tripod, which breaks down into a small package for travel. It holds the weight easily, even in wind. I got the tripod and the mount in 1/4 inch.
Hope this helps. I have had zero issues even in pretty aggressive off-roading. Works great!
I’m in the process of designing a simpler power supply plus router system for Starlink. Currently I’m in the schematics phase. My motivation is eliminating the big losses of Dc to Ac to Dc. I’d guess between 20 and 30 percent of power from the battery in is lost to conversion in the inverter and power supply in the router. More soon.
