Starlink

[John_Mc]

I tried that app the other day when I got notice that Starlink was available to order in my area. Couldn't get it to do anything other than open a camera. It just kept saying 'turn phone, tilt phone' but never an outcome.

Decided I'd wait for a few months because 1) $550 is a steep entry; and 2) It's winter and I don't want to go up on the roof right now. To give it a fair shake and evaluate well within the 30 day refund period I want to wait for warmer weather and get it on my roof.

Rob

Launch the app and aim the camera on the phone straight up, you'll see a normal camera view of the sky. Now slowly bring it down toward the horizon. Roughly half way down, you'll see that the image is now partially grayed out. If you turn in a circle, you'll see a circle of normal view in your camera. The dish needs a view upward - imagine a cone about 110˚ wide. Anything poking into the normal camera image area is an obstacle which will affect your satellite reception. The grayed out area does not matter. In my area, this "cone of visibility" is not quite straight up: it's tilted to the north by roughly 20˚. You need to find a spot for the dish where nothing pokes into that cone. There never is any output from the obstruction check just look around and find a spot that has no obstacles blocking the critical view area.

As far as I know, the app does not "locate the satellites", it's purely a visual sighting aid.

My temporary location is sitting on the picnic table in our side yard. It's been working great for coverage. In the spring, when things warm up, we'll mount it on the roof and figure out a permanent routing for the cable.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

I cannot find it now, but on an AM newsfeed, Musk owns 1/3 of the orbiting satellite community already. That's amazing.

I didn't know that.

Until Musk started landing and reusing rocket engines I guess I just bought the the internet bull crap about the man. First I read the 2015 book about him and started watching interviews over the past 20 years.

Then I realized negative remarks were coming mainly from low end to high end jealous posters.

 

[BigBlue1]

Launch the app and aim the camera on the phone straight up, you'll see a normal camera view of the sky. Now slowly bring it down toward the horizon. Roughly half way down, you'll see that the image is now partially grayed out. If you turn in a circle, you'll see a circle of normal view in your camera. The dish needs a view upward - imagine a cone about 110˚ wide. Anything poking into the normal camera image area is an obstacle which will affect your satellite reception. The grayed out area does not matter. In my area, this "cone of visibility" is not quite straight up: it's tilted to the north by roughly 20˚. You need to find a spot for the dish where nothing pokes into that cone. There never is any output from the obstruction check just look around and find a spot that has no obstacles blocking the critical view area.

As far as I know, the app does not "locate the satellites", it's purely a visual sighting aid.

My temporary location is sitting on the picnic table in our side yard. It's been working great for coverage. In the spring, when things warm up, we'll mount it on the roof and figure out a permanent routing for the cable.

Interesting. That's all the app does is provide a camera view with a gray mask area to indicate the boundaries of the 'view' the dish needs? That has to be one of the least intuitive apps with a lack of guidance I've seen. At a minimum, they could have said "make sure nothing protrudes into the non-grayed areas of the camera view" to give some advice on how it should be used.

Thanks for the clarification though. That helps me understand.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Launch the app and aim the camera on the phone straight up, you'll see a normal camera view of the sky. Now slowly bring it down toward the horizon. Roughly half way down, you'll see that the image is now partially grayed out. If you turn in a circle, you'll see a circle of normal view in your camera. The dish needs a view upward - imagine a cone about 110˚ wide. Anything poking into the normal camera image area is an obstacle which will affect your satellite reception. The grayed out area does not matter. In my area, this "cone of visibility" is not quite straight up: it's tilted to the north by roughly 20˚. You need to find a spot for the dish where nothing pokes into that cone. There never is any output from the obstruction check just look around and find a spot that has no obstacles blocking the critical view area.

As far as I know, the app does not "locate the satellites", it's purely a visual sighting aid.

My temporary location is sitting on the picnic table in our side yard. It's been working great for coverage. In the spring, when things warm up, we'll mount it on the roof and figure out a permanent routing for the cable.

Thanks for that detailed write up.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

I cannot find it now, but on an AM newsfeed, Musk owns 1/3 of the orbiting satellite community already. That's amazing.

Elon Musk's SpaceX now owns about a third of all active satellites in the sky - CNN

Found this just now.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Interesting. That's all the app does is provide a camera view with a gray mask area to indicate the boundaries of the 'view' the dish needs? That has to be one of the least intuitive apps with a lack of guidance I've seen. At a minimum, they could have said "make sure nothing protrudes into the non-grayed areas of the camera view" to give some advice on how it should be used.

Thanks for the clarification though. That helps me understand.

Didn’t help me. Lol

 

[BigBlue1]

Didn稚 help me. Lol

The short answer is that the app does nothing other than give a crude visualization of what might be in the way by placing a dark mask area on your camera view as you move the phone around.

 

[ning]

The short answer is that the app does nothing other than give a crude visualization of what might be in the way by placing a dark mask area on your camera view as you move the phone around.

I got a notice that I could sign up so I downloaded the app and checked this also - I agree the app is not intuitive, I moved it all around and determined that it was giving no feedback and finally decided it was just showing me what the needs clear.

I'd jump on the service except my company pays for truly unlimited 4gLTE which works fine for me at about 14Mbps with no drops, so I'd have to justify $500+$99/mo for occasional visitors convenience in not having to piggyback off of my phone's hotspot.

I'm still tempted but I can buy a grapple pretty soon on that money instead...

 

[buckeyefarmer]

The short answer is that the app does nothing other than give a crude visualization of what might be in the way by placing a dark mask area on your camera view as you move the phone around.

One can go outside and look up and get that. The app should at least tell you what direction to look, and what look angle. Best I can tell by the app, everyone is good, just aim it straight up and see clear sky.
Hope the install instructions are better than the app.

 

[cqaigy2]

One can go outside and look up and get that. The app should at least tell you what direction to look, and what look angle. Best I can tell by the app, everyone is good, just aim it straight up and see clear sky.
Hope the install instructions are better than the app.
View attachment 686307

I think you're too used to apps that do a bunch of stuff, this app is really very simple. You point it up, that's where the satellites are, as described earlier, the grayish part towards the horizon, you can ignore, the brighter part above the horizon, is where the sats would be if you were to have the service. So if you are in the clear, so to speak, than your in the clear, if you don't have open sky in the clear part, than you are not going to be happy. For instance, if you went into a car port, and used the app, you would see the roof/ceiling, in the clear part, and the sides would be in the grey part.

 

[BigBlue1]

I think you're too used to apps that do a bunch of stuff, this app is really very simple. You point it up, that's where the satellites are, as described earlier, the grayish part towards the horizon, you can ignore, the brighter part above the horizon, is where the sats would be if you were to have the service. So if you are in the clear, so to speak, than your in the clear, if you don't have open sky in the clear part, than you are not going to be happy. For instance, if you went into a car port, and used the app, you would see the roof/ceiling, in the clear part, and the sides would be in the grey part.

What people are dissing this app for is the fact that it isn't clear what it is supposed to do. If it just said "make sure the non-gray area is clear of obstruction" it would be much more useful. Barring that it looks like it isn't doing anything useful. If users need to come to a tractor forum to learn how to use your app you have failed as an app designer for a satellite company.

Rob

 

[downsizingnow48]

I was expecting something more complicated. There are just two instructions that I recall. 1. Tilt your phone up. 2. Install dish where the sky is not obstructed. I kept looking for something more but that is it. I did not need the app to tell me where the sky is open. Maybe it is more useful in places where it is hard to get enough open sky.

 

[cqaigy2]

I was expecting something more complicated. There are just two instructions that I recall. 1. Tilt your phone up. 2. Install dish where the sky is not obstructed. I kept looking for something more but that is it. I did not need the app to tell me where the sky is open. Maybe it is more useful in places where it is hard to get enough open sky.

Maybe that's true, i have many 100+ foot trees, and i walked around a bit to find a bit of sky that didn't have a tree in it. My head was in the clear part of the display, but figured it wouldn't be there normally.

 

[John_Mc]

One can go outside and look up and get that. The app should at least tell you what direction to look, and what look angle. Best I can tell by the app, everyone is good, just aim it straight up and see clear sky.
Hope the install instructions are better than the app.
View attachment 686307

The Starlink dish is not just looking straight up or at a single fixed point in the sky. That's the old satellite tech that Hughesnet used. Their dish aims at a single satellite in geo-syncronus orbit (to be geosyncronus, the satellites haw to be at a much higher orbit - 22,236 miles - and stationed over the equator.) Since the satellite stays in a fixed location relative to your position on earth you just aim for that point. As long as that line of sight is clear, you'll get a good signal.

With Starlink, there are multiple satellites in a far lower orbit. Since they are in that lower and non-equatorial orbit they move in relation to your point on the ground. With the current, limited number of satellites, areas that even have coverage need to have an unobstructed 110˚ (approximately) wide "cone" of visibility to get good coverage. In my area, the center of that cone is about 20˚ north of straight up - then picture spreading out 55˚ in all directions from that centerpoint. In some places, it's obvious that you have enough sky visibility. However, in a lot of places, you can't just eyeball it. I suppose if you knew where the center was supposed to point, you could use a protractor to sight all around that center point. This is where the app helps. It knows which direction should be the center in your area, and provides an easy visual reference to see if other obstructions in the area will be a problem. The app also does other things: it's used to set things up during your initial connection to the Starlink system - functions that have nothing to do with obstruction visualization.

I believe I read that once the full complement of satellites are up, you'll be able to get by with less than that 110˚ cone of visible sky, since there will be more satellites in view at any time.

 

[John_Mc]

What people are dissing this app for is the fact that it isn't clear what it is supposed to do. If it just said "make sure the non-gray area is clear of obstruction" it would be much more useful. Barring that it looks like it isn't doing anything useful. If users need to come to a tractor forum to learn how to use your app you have failed as an app designer for a satellite company.

Rob

Yep, I'll agree with that. The app does a poor job of explaining itself. On the other hand, thousands of people have managed to figure it out somehow.

 

[Alan W.]

I received my invite to purchase. It said mid to late 21 for my area.
Our Hughes Net is to slow for the wife to work from home and do video conferencing.

 

[lostcreekranch]

Our Excede works great for streaming movies .. as long as you don't mind the 2-3 second halts .. every 4-5 seconds.

 

[BigBlue1]

Yep, I'll agree with that. The app does a poor job of explaining itself. On the other hand, thousands of people have managed to figure it out somehow.

To be fair, shrugging your shoulders in confusion and saying "must be good enough" probably nets the same effect as the app so there's no real way to tell how effective it was.

 

[cqaigy2]

To be fair, shrugging your shoulders in confusion and saying "must be good enough" probably nets the same effect as the app so there's no real way to tell how effective it was.

:laughing: I kinda spit some coffee. But you're probably right.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

This video shows setup, and shows the look angle (in Oregon) It’s pretty high on the horizon.

Starlink Setup and Testing - YouTube