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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

#271

Post by MichaelApproved »

kortex wrote: post #260
jrockway wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that everyone on the team missed the fact that electronics get hot outdoors in the summer. Rather, they probably chose to launch a product that breaks when it gets hot, because it's an easy problem to fix later. Now that something is out in the field, they can debug their network, satellites, RF hardware, installation instructions, management applications, and figure out what kind of customers want to buy thi…

This is exactly the whole "agile" vs traditional/waterfall mentality, scooters before motorcars, etc., put into practice. Hardware is hard . > It's also completely possible that the parts simply aren't available Fun fact: they don't make (commercially available) GPUs, NICs, pretty much any PC components rated below 0°F. If you need to design a system which needs to sit in an aircraft in Deadhorse, Alaska, you either…

> We rolled, and it turned out fine.

Who is “we”?

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

#272

Post by alisonkisk »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #140
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.

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 pro…

the device works fine if you dont put it in an inuslating box open to the sun on top.

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

#273

Post by kortex »

Hey, remember that time the entire power grid in Texas was crippled due to things going out of temperature range spec? Only in that case, it wasn't a beta product, it was critical infrastructure, that they were warned about and had ample opportunity to fix.

Getting components rated outside of "normal operating conditions" is a PITA on a good day, and impossible otherwise. You straight up don't design for every possible condition for the beta. That's bad engineering and a waste of time and money. Pick the number of 9's you want, estimate the conditions, draw a line in the sand, and build the damn thing, knowing damn well X% of customers will have an issue. Revise, fix it, refine your product and process.

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

#274

Post by falcolas »

throwaway69123 wrote: post #234
tptacek wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? If you advertise a flaw, it remains a flaw.

Hard to call this a flaw no product ever invented isn’t without limitations

However, products are frequently created to not shut down in “average” summer temperatures. It’s a well known operating parameter throughout the US - temperatures break 105°F even up in Canada.

It’s not even the hottest part of the summer yet. I can’t imagine this problem getting better.

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

#275

Post by msrenee »

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

This isn't the hottest month though. And the air temperature doesn't have to be 122F, just the dish.

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

#276

Post by jazzyjackson »

swiley wrote: post #226
ganoushoreilly wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And it's not like 4g hotspots and old cell phones don't overheat either.

Yes, my iPhone went into thermal shutdown sitting by the pool on a 90 degree day but I don’t see a hacker news discussion on it…

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

#277

Post by jazzyjackson »

Black101 wrote: post #244
knownjorbist wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most ridiculous characterization. It's literally a beta.

This was programmed in... it is not a bug... it is just a known flaw. Has nothing to do with it being beta. Beta means that unknown bugs might pop up...

It also means it’s not the final product and doesn’t make promises about operating in all environments

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

#278

Post by jazzyjackson »

daniellarusso wrote: post #165
digikata wrote: post #121

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.

I have always had a bizarre fascination with refrigeration engineering. It is amazing all the things this has enabled for humanity.

Well, I’ve heard of preserving food and transporting vaccines, but as an enthusiast have you got any exotic examples for me?

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

#279

Post by kortex »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #271
kortex wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the whole "agile" vs traditional/waterfall mentality, scooters before motorcars, etc., put into practice. Hardware is hard . > It's also completely possible that the parts simply aren't available Fun fact: they don't make (commercially available) GPUs, NICs, pretty much any PC components rated below 0°F. If you need to design a system which needs to sit in an aircraft in Deadhorse, Alaska, you either…

> We rolled, and it turned out fine. Who is “we”?

Company I worked for. We built an aerial multispectral imaging system for monitoring seals, polar bears, and other mammal populations. It's 3 high power rugged PCs, semi-affixed in a shock mount case in the tail of a Twin Otter. There's no hangars available at the airbases in e.g. Kotzebue, Deadhorse, Utqiagvik, so it sits on the tarmac and experiences some intense temperature swings.

It's made it 2 winters and dozens of missions so far.

The customer is NOAA and they really don't have oodles of cash to spend on this thing, so it's mostly commodity hardware. Initially we designed this whole crazy insulated case to keep it from getting too cold, but the aircraft engineers nixed it due to fire hazards. The airframe isn't airtight so it gets most of the brunt of the diurnal swing.

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

#280

Post by 8note »

kelnos wrote: post #55
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.

> The tech bubble has never understood that the rest of the planet doesn't have the same weather as San Francisco. Two things: first, Apple is headquartered in Cupertino, which gets quite a bit warmer than San Francisco. Second, I've seen phones overheat and shut down in the summer in SF. This isn't a bubble thing; this is a company prioritizing miniaturization over proper functioning. Form over function.

Its really apple protecting its users from low temperature devices.

People buy iPhones because they know apple knows cold devices are bad

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