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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

#301

Post by duskwuff »

devit wrote: post #283
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…

You could also add a heater.

And, fwiw, that's exactly what SpaceX did to make Dishy tolerant of low temperatures (and to help it clear snow/ice from the dish). There's just no equivalent solution for high temperatures.

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

#302

Post by zie »

sfblah wrote: post #243
iamhamm wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I have Starlink and I'm in Pahrump, NV. We hit 111F today and my dishy is in direct sunlight so easily was over 122F on surfaces. Didn't go into thermal shutdown, no disruptions in service, and I didn't have to water it either.

What do you do in Pahrump, NV!? Such a remote place!

It's about a 1hr drive from Vegas but cheaper land.

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

#303

Post by [deleted] »

toss1 wrote: post #45
kemonocode wrote: post #43

I wonder why such an aggressive thermal cutoff too, 50C ain't that hot even for consumer-grade electronics. Is it related to all that heat reducing SNR to unacceptable levels? If so, that frankly sounds like a pretty severe design shortcoming.

Yup, the basiv spec for this device intended to be used remotely should be summer in the Saudi desert, or at least Death Valley (in the same US state) - with solar heating also expected. It's nice that they at least check & shut down to protect the device, but this shouldn't have made it out of the prototypes, nevermind Alpha or Beta testing...

[deleted]

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

#304

Post by kcb »

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.

What? No it shouldn't. Retail consumers want to be able to afford this thing and their use case is plenty "real". It can't cost $10,000+ per unit. Maybe in the future they can create an industrial/military grade unit but that's clearly not required for the mass market product.

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

#305

Post by zamadatix »

duskwuff wrote: post #301
devit wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also add a heater.

And, fwiw, that's exactly what SpaceX did to make Dishy tolerant of low temperatures (and to help it clear snow/ice from the dish). There's just no equivalent solution for high temperatures.

I used to think it was just a matter of product cost to do active cooling... really the problem isn't the temperature it's the dew point! Which I guess could probably be solved with enough hardware, planning, and cost as well... but a ridiculous amount compared to adding an electric heater for the opposite problem.

Come to think of it does anyone know of a consumer device that utilized active cooling (as in would get colder than ambient not just fans or whatnot)?

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

#306

Post by kiadimoondi »

tomc1985 wrote: post #138
MattGaiser wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I guess you could consider border states of Mexico as the same geographical region as the southwestern US, but those too. Anecdotal, but I've seen routine thermal throttling on macs in a border state with outdoor temperatures of 45, ambient indoor temperatures of 30-33, so you basically need either AC or some other external cooling system to manage more performance than a web browser and office apps.

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

#307

Post by catblast01 »

m4rtink wrote: post #264
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.

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.

> For one you need a sophisticated reverse heat engine

This is a very obtuse way of saying “refrigerator”, which is a type of heat pump.. a technology over a hundred years old. The simplest refrigerators/heat pumps are pretty simple — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator

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

#308

Post by HarryHirsch »

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.

I have yet to see cellphone towers shut down because the summer is too hot.

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

#309

Post by wumpus »

alisonkisk wrote: post #268
failwhaleshark wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I left my Palm Pilot on the dashboard of my car one day, and the LCD melted.

Fortunately, I had seen this before in undergraduate physics lab, the day our LCD experiment was interrupted by the room thermostat breaking, sending the temp > 100F. The nice thing about LCDs is that the crystals reform when it cools. All you have to do is wait. Probably works for most modern phone displays.

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

#310

Post by stefan_ »

V99 wrote: post #63
gspr wrote: post #46

Earlier 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…

Yes, if I want to be locked inside 24/7 it turns out it does not matter much specifically where I do that.

What does it take to spend a vacation day outside working in your garden? At 30F that's just a thick jacket away, what kinda clothing can make your body work at 120F and sun?

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