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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

#101

Post by infogulch »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #12
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it is a beta test after all. This is when the design gets a real life shakedown.

It's a bit weird though to not test these at different temperatures beforehand, given that's probably pretty easy to do. Maybe it's more like an alpha test than a beta in practice.

You would think that people working in software would understand the idea that your assumptions about the environment your product is in are very often invalidated during real world testing, but this thread doesn't seem to bear that out. Perhaps the mountain of abstractions, automated retries, fault tolerance, and error correction that makes technology as reliable as it is, has made us complacently unaware of just how hard it is to build something new.

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

#102

Post by beervirus »

MattGaiser wrote: post #77
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #6

I’m always surprised how poor engineering gets exposed in products I purchase being an Arizona resident. No, failing at 122F is not acceptable. If your hardware is exposed to outside conditions, it should operate easily below 32F, and well above 140F. Considering that phones can operate below 0F and near 122F, that’s embarrassingly bad. Same thing in vehicles. If you’re driving consistently at interstate speeds, you…

122F is 50C. How much of the world actually gets that hot? AZ is currently the hottest place in the world at the moment. Not the upper range. The hottest place. https://www.wx-now.com/Weather/WxExtremes?hottest=true

A piece of metal sitting in the sun can get that hot pretty easily in lots of places, even if the ambient temperature is much more reasonable.

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

#103

Post by pbreit »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #6

I’m always surprised how poor engineering gets exposed in products I purchase being an Arizona resident. No, failing at 122F is not acceptable. If your hardware is exposed to outside conditions, it should operate easily below 32F, and well above 140F. Considering that phones can operate below 0F and near 122F, that’s embarrassingly bad. Same thing in vehicles. If you’re driving consistently at interstate speeds, you…

It's a v1 beta. Maybe put it in the shade.

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

#104

Post by jayd16 »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #84
chairmanwow1 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You live in a desert. I feel like the extremes of your environment are not a useful barometer for a reasonable operating temp.

I also live in the fifth most populous city in the United States. So, yeah, it is. If anything, you should fully expect, at this point, that how we deal with extreme conditions in Phoenix is a harbinger of what is to come for other parts of the nation.

>I also live in the fifth most populous city in the United States. So, yeah, it is.

But that's still less than half a percent of the US population.

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

#105

Post by CapitalistCartr »

MattGaiser wrote: post #77
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #6

I’m always surprised how poor engineering gets exposed in products I purchase being an Arizona resident. No, failing at 122F is not acceptable. If your hardware is exposed to outside conditions, it should operate easily below 32F, and well above 140F. Considering that phones can operate below 0F and near 122F, that’s embarrassingly bad. Same thing in vehicles. If you’re driving consistently at interstate speeds, you…

122F is 50C. How much of the world actually gets that hot? AZ is currently the hottest place in the world at the moment. Not the upper range. The hottest place. https://www.wx-now.com/Weather/WxExtremes?hottest=true

Where I live in Florida, roofs routinely get hotter than that. Listed temps measure air temp, in a ventilated box 5 feet above grass. This is nothing like being on a roof in Summer here. We aren't a desert and we have tens of millions of people. This isn't going to work.

An aside, I was dating a woman from The North. She came here and we were travelling around the State. We stopped in Venice at a restaurant, I wasn't paying attention, and she just hopped out of the car barefoot! Only did that once, though.

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

#106

Post by dylan604 »

newacct583 wrote: post #22
spuz wrote: post #11

This sounds like the perfect opportunity for Linus from Linus Tech Tips to show us how to watercool a Starlink dish.

Per the article, it's already been tested and works. Just throw a sprinkler on the thing. Clearly, though, the tolerances weren't chosen correctly when they designed the thing. 122F isn't actually that hot for a device designed to sit stationary in the sun all day.

> Just throw a sprinkler on the thing.

Yeah, that's a brilliant plan for a part of the world that is severely restricted on water usage and is routinely in drought conditions.

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

#107

Post by marcinzm »

bart_spoon wrote: post #86
V99 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I actually believe that the opposite is true. It takes much more energy to cool off a home with AC than it does to heat a home in cold weather.

No it doesn't. An AC essentially transfers more heat energy out than electricity it consumes. Most heating generates exactly as much heat as energy consumed (electric heaters, burning fuels, etc.). Heat pumps are an exception but they don't work well before freezing temperatures.

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

#108

Post by adamcstephens »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #84
chairmanwow1 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You live in a desert. I feel like the extremes of your environment are not a useful barometer for a reasonable operating temp.

I also live in the fifth most populous city in the United States. So, yeah, it is. If anything, you should fully expect, at this point, that how we deal with extreme conditions in Phoenix is a harbinger of what is to come for other parts of the nation.

Just because lots of people made the same decision doesn’t make it smart or reasonable.

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

#110

Post by andrewmcwatters »

jayd16 wrote: post #104
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also live in the fifth most populous city in the United States. So, yeah, it is. If anything, you should fully expect, at this point, that how we deal with extreme conditions in Phoenix is a harbinger of what is to come for other parts of the nation.

>I also live in the fifth most populous city in the United States. So, yeah, it is. But that's still less than half a percent of the US population.

I guess we should also avoid rust proofing metals since most people don't live by the ocean, too.
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