Starlink

[Citydude]

You folks that have gotten Dishy, is there any special day of the week they send out notifications that your dish is being shipped or do they do it every day?

Kind of confused on what your asking. They send you an e-mail and ask for permission to charge for the equipment. If you pay, they give you a ship date (expected) date.

 

[dmccarty]

We ordered our Dish in early Feb 2021 so I am hoping we get it soon. The website says mid to late 2021. Well it ain't mid 2021 anymore so hopefully soon.

We have been using UbiFi for a couple of years and they just put a bandwidth limit on us at 300MB per money, which really will not affect us since the most we have used is 170MB and average 130MB. What is a killer is that the price went from $89 to $119!

Need Starlink so we can cancel UbiFi....

Later,
Dan

 

[ernemats]

Kind of confused on what your asking. They send you an e-mail and ask for permission to charge for the equipment. If you pay, they give you a ship date (expected) date.

Just wondering if they send a batch of emails out on just one day of the week or do they send them out everyday. For example every Monday they send all the emails for the week?

 

[ponytug]

Just wondering if they send a batch of emails out on just one day of the week or do they send them out everyday. For example every Monday they send all the emails for the week?

Looking over at Reddit, I don't see a pattern of when emails are sent out, but that may change as Starlink comes out of beta, but I doubt it. You would want to keep shipping working uniformly as possible.

Currently, Starlink seem to be working through some complex system of people and cells of interest (social media influence, country of interest, latitude, adjacency to ground station, local population density...)

So, who knows?

All the best,

Peter

 

[aczlan]

Probably 3/4", I'd have to go check though. I wouldn't run anything through smaller than 3/4" these days. Better to pay a few bucks for bigger conduit than fight friction cramming stuff into to small of conduit & breaking wires or other stuff. Fiber is often stronger than you may think, but its still pretty fragile, especially when pulling it pre-terminated when you can't just cut off a mangled end. I generally go with 1" even now.

That being said, fiber is thin. As was noted, the connectors will be the hard part to fit through.

If it's going to be a one-off thing, I would buy a cable that comes with pulling baskets attached, we've done that at work and they work very nicely.

Aaron Z

 

[ponytug]

One thing about pulling fiber is that it is quite weak and doesn't tolerant forceful pulls, or sharp bends. Use lots of cable pulling lube, lube the conduit both ways first and be gentle. It is very different from pulling coax or electrical wires. (E.g. the use of sweeps, and don't use LBs)

I would also really oversize conduit. One broken fiber end will more than pay for the larger conduit.

+1 on the preinstalled pulling baskets which have the force applied to the cable not the connectors.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Rebeldad1]

Sofar I have moved my disc 3 times to find a perfect spot for it. I have a large shed about 40 feet from the house and set the dish on the roof. We have a bunch of trees around us.
I have set the modem in the shed and am getting a excellent strength wireless signal. The signal drops to medium at the back of the house. Also have a barn about 100 feet from the dish that gives a medium to fai signal.
Being a TOTAL novice untrained in modems and signal boosters.... what is a great option (that is real simple) to boost my signal?

also would cold weather affect the modem if left in the shed?

Thanks!!!

 

[LittleBill21]

Being a TOTAL novice untrained in modems and signal boosters.... what is a great option (that is real simple) to boost my signal?

https://amzn.to/3lnQSGj

 

[Hilbilly]

Like others here, I ordered Starlink in Feb and still nothing. One of my neighbors used a service address of his friend in the small town that is about 20Km from us and he got his set up within 2 weeks and it works great. My other neighbor acquired here fathers setup when they moved to the City. That dish was in a service area that is about 25km from us and it also works great.

I'm thinking of cancelling my order and reordering using a service address in the small town near us. Does anyone know if the same service address can be used for more than one setup and does the dish get delivered to the service address or the billing address?

 

[BigBlue1]

Sofar I have moved my disc 3 times to find a perfect spot for it. I have a large shed about 40 feet from the house and set the dish on the roof. We have a bunch of trees around us.
I have set the modem in the shed and am getting a excellent strength wireless signal. The signal drops to medium at the back of the house. Also have a barn about 100 feet from the dish that gives a medium to fai signal.
Being a TOTAL novice untrained in modems and signal boosters.... what is a great option (that is real simple) to boost my signal?

also would cold weather affect the modem if left in the shed?

Thanks!!!

Look into wifi mesh systems to distribute the connection. Possibly in combination with a wireless bridge that would beam your wifi network signal from your shed to your house.

 

[BigBlue1]

Like others here, I ordered Starlink in Feb and still nothing. One of my neighbors used a service address of his friend in the small town that is about 20Km from us and he got his set up within 2 weeks and it works great. My other neighbor acquired here fathers setup when they moved to the City. That dish was in a service area that is about 25km from us and it also works great.

I'm thinking of cancelling my order and reordering using a service address in the small town near us. Does anyone know if the same service address can be used for more than one setup and does the dish get delivered to the service address or the billing address?

I assume you didn't place and actual order in February ($500+), you paid a $99 deposit?

You can play around entering different addresses (i.e. from nearby your location by a mile or two) and see if any result in a "service is available" message. You can do that without cancelling your deposit. Based on some folks' posts on Reddit, some people have had success using an address within 6-7 miles of their actual location. Starlink's cells, which they use to map service areas, are about 13 miles across.

The address you enter becomes the 'service address' - where the system is expected to operate. You can specify a different delivery address at order time.

Rob

 

[bdhsfz6]

Sofar I have moved my disc 3 times to find a perfect spot for it. I have a large shed about 40 feet from the house and set the dish on the roof. We have a bunch of trees around us.
I have set the modem in the shed and am getting a excellent strength wireless signal. The signal drops to medium at the back of the house. Also have a barn about 100 feet from the dish that gives a medium to fai signal.
Being a TOTAL novice untrained in modems and signal boosters.... what is a great option (that is real simple) to boost my signal?

also would cold weather affect the modem if left in the shed?

Thanks!!!

I'm planning on doing the same thing. I haven't seen any specs on the operating temperature range of the modem / router.

 

[Fallon]

I'm planning on doing the same thing. I haven't seen any specs on the operating temperature range of the modem / router.

There were a pile of reports of things overheating this summer. Users got a shutting down due to temps exceeding 111 or 120 degrees or something. Basically easily achievable in the desert or a number of other areas. They resumed normal operation when things cooled down. The router never shut down (reported it was to hot the whole time), just the satellite modem part that creates most of the heat.

I wouldn't imagine any issues with cold, at least not until it got well under -20 or something. They put off a decent bit of heat, hence issues with high tempatures, but would help at low tempatures.

 

[ponytug]

The dish, "dishy", which is what counts, is rated -20 to 104F. Early beta versions went into thermal shutdown at 120F, so you can let that guide you on the actual limits. The dish has some built in heating capabilities, but 100W only gets you so much. I haven't yet seen a radar dome for dishy.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Hilbilly]

I assume you didn't place and actual order in February ($500+), you paid a $99 deposit?

You can play around entering different addresses (i.e. from nearby your location by a mile or two) and see if any result in a "service is available" message. You can do that without cancelling your deposit. Based on some folks' posts on Reddit, some people have had success using an address within 6-7 miles of their actual location. Starlink's cells, which they use to map service areas, are about 13 miles across.

The address you enter becomes the 'service address' - where the system is expected to operate. You can specify a different delivery address at order time.

Rob

According to the Starlink application I placed an "order" and they took a deposit for the order.

Thanks for the info. I'll try some different addresses to see if I can find a "service is available" location.

Both of my immediate neighbors are getting service, so it is obvioulsy available here but apparently not to my house. Crazy and there is no way to contact them to discuss it.

 

[ponytug]

According to the Starlink application I placed an "order" and they took a deposit for the order.

Thanks for the info. I'll try some different addresses to see if I can find a "service is available" location.

Both of my immediate neighbors are getting service, so it is obvioulsy available here but apparently not to my house. Crazy and there is no way to contact them to discuss it.

It is still in beta, where they clearly have some method for choosing beta testers that isn't first come, first served. It is supposed to exit this month, but that doesn't mean that they will fill orders quickly, as they clearly have manufacturing and supply (chips) constraints.

One thing to point out is that if you do get it for an adjacent cell, it may have some impact on the quality of service due to "perceived" obstructions.

No Elon Musk company invests significantly in customer relation or customer service. Expect them always to be hard to reach and slow to respond.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Rebeldad1]

We have texted the Starlink support team a couple times. They have gotten back by nert day at the latest and been very helpful

 

[Hilbilly]

We have texted the Starlink support team a couple times. They have gotten back by nert day at the latest and been very helpful

I understand that if you have the system then you can contact them but if you do not have the dish there is no contact information. I hope I am wrong and you can provide some contact information. It would be much appreciated.

 

[BigBlue1]

According to the Starlink application I placed an "order" and they took a deposit for the order.

Thanks for the info. I'll try some different addresses to see if I can find a "service is available" location.

Both of my immediate neighbors are getting service, so it is obvioulsy available here but apparently not to my house. Crazy and there is no way to contact them to discuss it.

Yes, a deposit, versus full payment for purchase, will have no expected delivery timeline until they are able to expand capacity.

The service is 'available' everywhere within the latitudes they currently cover, just with a limitation of only a certain number of customers per cell. A cell is their construct to map out the geography over the area they cover with hexagonal sections. Each cell is allowed some (apparently quite limited) number of customers. Someone else got in before you in your cell. Your deposit holds a place within your cell so when capacity rises you'll get a chance to have your order fulfilled.

They use these cells to limit connections to the sats as the sat is passing overhead within the cone of visibility of the dish on the ground. This is due to both the smaller number of sats in the sky and the limited number of receiving ground stations in place so far.

Rob

 

[BigBlue1]

Regarding support, once you are a customer they are very responsive. I've opened a couple cases with them and they provide good customer service.

They (apparently) want to limit the volume of work coming in from non-customers during the beta time. While it does deliver a less-than-stellar experience to prospective customers, it keeps their costs down as they build the business. Sensible for them... not as nice for future customers. Everything in business is a trade-off.

Rob