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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

#261

Post by alisonkisk »

aaomidi wrote: post #176
blhack wrote: post #154

Starlink is in beta. The entire purpose of the beta is to find stuff like this. They found something, and I'm sure that the next iteration of this before it goes to mass market will account for it. You're just seeing the system work.

If your engineering team had to wait for a product failure to realize an item that's going to be outdoors in the sun is going to get hot, what on earth else are they missing?

There is an interesting article about this.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/06/starl...

> Officially, SpaceX has said that "Dishy McFlatface" is certified to operate from 22° below zero up to 104° Fahrenheit. Temperatures reached about 120° yesterday in Martin's town of Topock,

> the Starlink app provided an error message saying, "Offline: Thermal shutdown." The dish "overheated" and "Starlink will reconnect after cooling down," the error message said.

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

#262

Post by alisonkisk »

da_chicken wrote: post #253
zaroth wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The put a non-automotive grade LCD in the original Model S because it was that LCD or nothing. The automotive screens didn’t exist in the size they needed and they weren’t at a stage in their company where they could design their own. They took a risk to achieve the product vision that they were determined to bring into the world given the technical constraints of the age. I’d say overall it paid off. IMO it wasn’t a…

I agree, it wasn't arrogance. Deliberately going forward with something in spite of knowing for certain that it's not fit for purpose is called engineering malfeasance, not arrogance.

Making practical tradeoffs to get what's important is engineering reality.

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

#263

Post by alisonkisk »

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #179
babesh wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link is mostly a honeypot for Elon Musk haters. I wonder if they have bothered looking at the operating temperatures of other satellite Internet dishes? A simple search will net you heating and cooling devices for satellite dishes. If you face more extreme temperatures, you need only go buy a heating and cooling unit. http://www.dishcamo.com/dish_heater.htm

Surprisingly, the heating element built in appears to be pretty solid, or at least that's been the responses on /r/starlink. You're definitely right that people are hating on it. Most of the people I know in real life that knocked it have access to land based internet. Once you get out into rural areas where 4g is the basis for your internet, it's amazing.

It's far easier to build a heating unit than a cooling unit.

Thermodynamics FTW

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

#264

Post by m4rtink »

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #179
babesh wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link is mostly a honeypot for Elon Musk haters. I wonder if they have bothered looking at the operating temperatures of other satellite Internet dishes? A simple search will net you heating and cooling devices for satellite dishes. If you face more extreme temperatures, you need only go buy a heating and cooling unit. http://www.dishcamo.com/dish_heater.htm

Surprisingly, the heating element built in appears to be pretty solid, or at least that's been the responses on /r/starlink. You're definitely right that people are hating on it. Most of the people I know in real life that knocked it have access to land based internet. Once you get out into rural areas where 4g is the basis for your internet, it's amazing.

Well, in general cooling something down is much more complicated than heating it up.

For one you need a sophisticated reverse heat engine, for the other a piece of wire with high enough resistance.

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

#265

Post by Rebelgecko »

brianwawok wrote: post #159
user3939382 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palm Springs CA gets that hot, especially inside a vehicle.

You don’t put a star link inside a vehicle

When the ambient temperature is 123°F (e.g. yesterday) where are you supposed to out it? Does the terminal work indoors? Even on cooler days in the low 100s your home's roof is going to be significantly warmer than 120f

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

#266

Post by rootsudo »

murgindrag wrote: post #145
nickysielicki wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 band…

It's not impossible either. Cheap brute force hack: Have a chip burn power to heat the chip up to a constant temperature. This was done in one of the early precision band-gap references. More expensive brute force hack: Stick a Peltier cooler on the thing, and servo to a well-controlled temperature. Communication equipment is critical to work for emergency use, and coincidentally, emergency use is when you're most li…

While you are 100% right, starlink is not marketed for the military.

Starlink, is like Tesla a decade ago. This is their roadster.

Will I get it, yes. Will I complain about early adpotee stuff, yes.

Is my life better just having it along? 1000% yes.

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

#267

Post by washadjeffmad »

aaomidi wrote: post #176
blhack wrote: post #154

Starlink is in beta. The entire purpose of the beta is to find stuff like this. They found something, and I'm sure that the next iteration of this before it goes to mass market will account for it. You're just seeing the system work.

If your engineering team had to wait for a product failure to realize an item that's going to be outdoors in the sun is going to get hot, what on earth else are they missing?

I mean, the units didn't fail randomly, they shutdown.

They're beta, so it could be that the thermistor was placed poorly in a redesign, that they intended 122°C instead of °F, that they shipped with a dummy value used in an older fw during testing, etc.

All in all, a little embarrassing but not that significant, assuming this is certifiably not a scam.

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

#268

Post by alisonkisk »

failwhaleshark wrote: post #186
failwhaleshark wrote: post #166

It should work at an extension of military temperature ranges for global use indoors, outdoors, and in odd semi-indoor scenarios like the back of a hot truck: -75 to +125 C / -103 F to 257 F. Treating it as retail consumer electronics shit isn't rugged enough for real use.

Speaking of which, how could mobile phones be made to work in extremely hot temperatures for emergencies without shutting down?

Well you don't leave them out to bake all day, usually.

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

#269

Post by sokoloff »

nickysielicki wrote: post #160
murgindrag wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not impossible either. Cheap brute force hack: Have a chip burn power to heat the chip up to a constant temperature. This was done in one of the early precision band-gap references. More expensive brute force hack: Stick a Peltier cooler on the thing, and servo to a well-controlled temperature. Communication equipment is critical to work for emergency use, and coincidentally, emergency use is when you're most li…

The military is not a business with business constraints. If cost and power draw is no concern, then sure, it's possible. Hell, put a little AC unit beside the enclosure. These are CPEs and they're sold at a tremendous loss already (a quick google says a whopping $2500 loss on a $500 price tag!). They won't stay in business long if they burn an extra $500 per device to make it suitable for a couple thousand extra cus…

Every one of their dev teams likely costs more in a year than that $1M increment in BOM costs.

I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but it’s probably not going to be a kill the company expense.

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