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Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

arstechnica.com

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Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#61

Post by mcguire »

brigade wrote: post #36
slownews45 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Netgear R8500 was 50 watts easily I'd say. My friends gaming computer DEFINATELY uses more than 100W. Basic computer use for cryptomining seems to use a lot more as well. It just doesn't seem like 100W for what this thing does is a ton.

More like 50 watts max, and 20 watts under normal load. The power supply can't even provide more than 60W. And gaming computers are more like 2-5W suspended, 20-50W idle/browsing, 200-500W gaming.

Exactly.

https://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/R8500/R8500_UM_4...

The power supply for an R8500 gives 19V / 3.16 A DC maximum.

And yes, a gaming PC can use a few hundred watts---that's why it has to have all of the thermal management and all of the hot air blowing out of it.

P.s. https://kb.netgear.com/23003/Maximum-power-consumption-for-N...

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#62

Post by gpm »

quanticle wrote: post #53
gpm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're obviously inappropriate They're unfortunately constraints, but for 95% of people they're workable constraints. If there are difficult problems with bumping these limits (I have no clue), it could just become part of the market definition.

Only if you're counting people who live in San Francisco and other similarly temperate climates. I live in Minnesota. Last week, the high temperature, in the shade, was about 40°C. A device in the sun would easily see its temperature exceed 50°C. In the winter, overnight lows can go to -40°C. An outdoor device with thermal limits of -30°C to +50°C is not fit for purpose in many parts of the Midwest.

I'm in Toronto incidentally, not sf.

I suspect overnight lows of -40 are ok, because it sounds like it's -30 after the self heating.

There are definitely reports of people having it work through 40 degree heat waves, but I suspect that's close to the limit. Keep in mind it is white, so the sun isn't as bad as it could be.

I don't have stats to back this up, but I think it's the case that most people live in reasonably temperate climates, 50 degrees is really frickin hot (dangerously so), -30 degrees is really frickin cold (dangerously so).

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#63

Post by V99 »

gspr wrote: post #46
marcinzm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a heatwave by US standards, that's a pretty common summer day for a decent chunk of the US. Arizona can get to around 50C.

I think you know that heat waves are defined relative to the local climate. And recall that all but the southern part of Germany is north of the US-Canada border. AZ should be considered uninhabitable (in a sustainable sense) even outside of heat waves.

A reasonably modern air conditioner to cool your house in Phoenix a few months in the summer is more efficient than many of the common ways you'd heat a house from potentially well below freezing in the winter in many other places.

And much of our power comes from solar (which is maximally available at the time cooling is maximally needed) and nuclear, while serious heating is often literally burning fossil fuels in your basement.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#64

Post by mcguire »

slownews45 wrote: post #21
trixie_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much energy does it use?

110W peak usage. I've seen wifi hotspots use this much and they don't have to connect to space. Is this really "energy pig" level of usage for space based communications? My former experience was with gimbled / gyro pointing dishes which were very energy intensive by comparison. 100W and little physical movement would have been considered very efficiant. How do other space com platforms handle deployment / install of…

Hughes Gen5 HT2000W .98m 1-watt Satellite Internet System (https://ispsat.com/product/hughesnet-gen5-ht2000w-98m-1-watt...) has a 73W power supply. Normal use seems to be about 40W (https://community.hughesnet.com/t5/Products-and-Plans/Gen5-H...).

900,000W? Wow, that's about 1200HP.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#66

Post by quanticle »

gpm wrote: post #62
quanticle wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you're counting people who live in San Francisco and other similarly temperate climates. I live in Minnesota. Last week, the high temperature, in the shade, was about 40°C. A device in the sun would easily see its temperature exceed 50°C. In the winter, overnight lows can go to -40°C. An outdoor device with thermal limits of -30°C to +50°C is not fit for purpose in many parts of the Midwest.

I'm in Toronto incidentally, not sf. I suspect overnight lows of -40 are ok, because it sounds like it's -30 after the self heating. There are definitely reports of people having it work through 40 degree heat waves, but I suspect that's close to the limit. Keep in mind it is white, so the sun isn't as bad as it could be. I don't have stats to back this up, but I think it's the case that most people live in reasonabl…

Agreed that 50°C is really hot, but you have to remember that 50°C includes the ambient heat plus the heat generated by the circuitry. My cable modem gets noticeably warm (and I can hear its internal fan spin up) when I download a large file that saturates my connection for a while. I could easily see the internal circuitry of the Starlink dish going over 50°C under load even when external temperature is 40°C.

From what I'm reading, it looks like the dish is passively cooled, which I find surprising. I would have expected at least a small cooling fan or something to provide a bit of airflow for convective cooling.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#67

Post by HarryHirsch »

gpm wrote: post #62
quanticle wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you're counting people who live in San Francisco and other similarly temperate climates. I live in Minnesota. Last week, the high temperature, in the shade, was about 40°C. A device in the sun would easily see its temperature exceed 50°C. In the winter, overnight lows can go to -40°C. An outdoor device with thermal limits of -30°C to +50°C is not fit for purpose in many parts of the Midwest.

I'm in Toronto incidentally, not sf. I suspect overnight lows of -40 are ok, because it sounds like it's -30 after the self heating. There are definitely reports of people having it work through 40 degree heat waves, but I suspect that's close to the limit. Keep in mind it is white, so the sun isn't as bad as it could be. I don't have stats to back this up, but I think it's the case that most people live in reasonabl…

Large tracts of the US have a continental climate, where temperature excursions are common. Remember that Starlink is marketed at people living in the flat countryside.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#68

Post by foobiekr »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #29

Sort of funny that the solution for streaming is to literally turn on a stream of water. On a separate note, even if you don’t live in Arizona, a litmus test for good engineering is whether or not you see reviews of a product melting in Arizona. Yeah, melt. Literally. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the US. If it doesn’t work here, it’s not mass market.

Networking vendors who know what they're doing literally put gear into ovens for extended periods as part of the DVT phase of testing, and put outdoor gear like cellular antennas/ptp wireless/ptp optical into stress environments prior to manufacturing. This again seems like the typical Musk venture, like the Tesla non-automative screens, where they didn't seemingly talk to anyone in the industry.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#69

Post by sixothree »

toss1 wrote: post #41
reaperducer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget beta. Apple's production iPhones go into thermal shutdown several times a year for me where I live. Most recently, yesterday. You can tell it's getting close because the screen will dim. The tech bubble has never understood that the rest of the planet doesn't have the same weather as San Francisco.

Yup, it's always incredible to see how myopic tge tech bubble is - starting with software that couldn't handle East Coast US 5-digit ZIP (postal) codes that begin with "0". Google Maps never shows the highway exit # until you're nearly there, but that's all we use on the East Coast, since there are many old roads that run parallel to the highways for many miles, so telling me to "get off at Rt110" is hopelessly ambig…

Does google maps still not know where subway entrances are?

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#70

Post by [deleted] »

ethanbond wrote: post #30
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #29

Sort of funny that the solution for streaming is to literally turn on a stream of water. On a separate note, even if you don’t live in Arizona, a litmus test for good engineering is whether or not you see reviews of a product melting in Arizona. Yeah, melt. Literally. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the US. If it doesn’t work here, it’s not mass market.

A good litmus test for good city location is whether or not melting objects/burns from touching objects is a daily concern

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