I’ve worked on multiple projects where, at the early prototype stage, we limped along with off the shelf generic heatsinks, or even no heatsinks, for a phase or two because for some reason, it was long lead or high expense or low priority to fit a custom high performance heatsink. It sometimes seems like thermal work is as eschewed by electronic engineers as mechanical engineers often avoid HVAC.
Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
121–130 of 516 posts
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Given the size of Phoenix, people don’t give a fuck about their resource use.
I read an article some time back, maybe a link from here, talking about how the up tick in population of AZ/NV were during an unusual wet period which people thought was acceptable and normal. Now, it seems the area is going back to its more natural dry period. Mother Nature's perception of time is very different than human's.
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
And where does your water come from?
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#124122 F seems to be 50 °C. Are those things designed for space or for home office ?
+100F in Sun isn't at all uncommon during a hot summer in the upper Midwest if the object is dark. Air temperatures of over 100 are a semi-annual occurrence, typically around August, so a dark object (such as a roof or blacktop) pushing 120 wouldn't be a surprise at all. Still not as bad as AZ, but it's not that much different. We aren't even close to a desert or space either- forests, plains, lakes and rivers abound…
It was 102° F in St. Louis today. Not hard to imagine 20° hotter on some roofs.
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yeah the defrost cycle limits the heat pumps heating ability, but AC units have a similar limit wrt how much they are able to lower the temperature of the air. AFIAK they can do about 20 F. At this point you need to do some math and add additional units and run them 24/7 nullifying this benefit.
Geothermal heat pumps and good insulation solve both.
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because lots of people made the same decision doesn’t make it smart or reasonable.
I just don't understand comments like this. 7 million people didn't decide to move here this year . Conditions in Arizona have dramatically changed over the lifetime of the state. It doesn't make sense to live where you can freeze to death or don't have access to water, either, does it? Except those two scenarios include most Americans . Without modern infrastructure, it hardly makes sense to live anywhere.
Obviously 7 million people didn’t move there over the course of this year. If that’s what you thought I was getting at, I’m not surprised you were confused. Conditions have changed, but are people reconsidering their own decisions?
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because lots of people made the same decision doesn’t make it smart or reasonable.
Please. The whole point of Starlink is that it's suitable for places where there is poor existing infrastructure. The desert tops the list! They also have service area restrictions for sign up. Just say Tesla dropped the ball on this engineering prototype and V2 will work on the sun.
To be clear, I hope Tesla fails in everything they do. That wasn’t really the point I was making though.
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#128I’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 not trivial to do things at tens of gigahertz at a wide range of temperatures. They didn't engineer it this way because they didn't consider the existence of Arizona, Texas, and Southern California. The thermal limits exist because RF is absurdly difficult. Maybe in 30 years we'll have TCXOs and other RFICs that make it trivial. Right now it's not.
tl;dr: Your phone doesn't have radios capable of talking on bands like 10.7–12.7 GHz (X/Ku band) and 37.5–42.5 GHz (Ka/V band)
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#129I’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…
As a Canadian, 32F seems like an oddly high lower limit to me. Things should operate down to at least -40.
fascinating how a post about inclusive design manages to have a blind spot that it does not consider. A wonderful demonstration on why diverse backgrounds in engineering is important.
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not a safety issue like car regulation, engineering choices have costs. Just because it doesn’t work in your environment doesn’t mean that it’s not suitable elsewhere and the burden of spec changes for your climate may make the cost go up for people elsewhere who don’t have the same requirements
* This product is not intended for sale in AZ, NV, NM, TX, Parts of Utah, California, Idaho and the Dakotas in the summer, direct sunlight, and most roofs.
Is it common to have a car on the roof?