I have a Starlink, but I also live in Michigan, so it probably won't get exposed to temps like that. Guess I dodged a bullet?
Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
131–140 of 516 posts
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I agree: the bug here is humans building giant cities in the desert.
Not really Homo Sapians originated in the hot environs of Sub-Saharan Africa. Most early civilizations were in deserts, like Mesopotamia and Egypt. Their have been cities in deserts longer then there have been temperate climate cities. Humans are built for hot climates we just don't like them.
Mesopotamia and Egypt weren't deserts when those early civilizations got started.
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I agree: the bug here is humans building giant cities in the desert.
Not really Homo Sapians originated in the hot environs of Sub-Saharan Africa. Most early civilizations were in deserts, like Mesopotamia and Egypt. Their have been cities in deserts longer then there have been temperate climate cities. Humans are built for hot climates we just don't like them.
afaik Phoenix as a massive city wouldn't exist without the air conditioning. There's "humans can tolerate high heat" and then there's "so hot that we need technology to make it liveable."
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#134I’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
Palm Springs CA gets that hot, especially inside a vehicle.
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#135Several posters on r/Starlink report that they had seen their dishes at more than 122F, when this topic came up a few days ago.
It's entirely possible that this story (and 122 hn comments so far) is about a dish with a loose heatsink, and not a product that always shuts down at 122F.
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#136I’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
I think the issue is that these dishes might be routinely mounted onto roofs, concrete pads, asphalt pads, etc. And, by requirement, in direct sun. Where the temperature could be significantly hotter than the air temperature you hear on a weather report.
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#137Earlier 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.
I think you are confusing the efficiency of heating sources vs the inefficiency of A/C. However A/C just moves heat, it doesn't have to create it. This is why in climates in which they are appropriate heat pumps can be even more efficient than other forms of heating.
I will say there likely isn't a ton of good hard data on this for another reason, and that is that humidity plays a role, both in what temperatures are comfortable and maybe in some forms of temperature management.
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#138I’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
Spain, or the deserts of Africa, California, Chile, or the southwestern US, as well as a good chunk of the middle east? What about anywhere along the equator?
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#139Parting Shot: "To all beta testers using Starlink this summer, better come up with a dish heat management system or else face no connectivity. Not surprising, considering this is a company owned by Elon Musk."
"all beta testers" is a bit broad. I live in Michigan, and our highest recorded temperature is still 10 degrees lower than the point at which the dish would shut off. Maybe certain users should pay attention, but most beta testers were in northern latitudes to boot, so it's a little more nuanced than that.
Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit
#140Sort 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.
The Phoenix area is really only has a metropolitan statistical area rank of 10 so it's about the size of Atlanta or the Boston area in terms of population. By GDP it's only 16 which is lower than the Detroit area.
It is a lot of people but it's not even close to being #4 once you account for desert cities being physically larger due to geography and political needs.
That said, SpaceX/Elon should not have sold the product anywhere where it could not withstand the environment.