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

arstechnica.com

361–370 of 516 posts

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

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wide temperature (-40C to +85C) DIMM and SSDs are available.. Companies like ATP and Apacer carry them. Intel's Xeon D series are meant for wide temps.

-40C is very close to 0F (-32C) claimed above. Update: -40F is -40C, oops, my bad, I don’t understand Fahrenheit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Um, -40C is -40F.

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

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A pump, a home depot bucket in shade, some duct tape and tubing would probably be sufficient.

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

#363
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 watts seems like a lot for a receiver. Any idea where all that energy is going? Signal amplification?

It also has to send using a phased array as well.

Oh right duh. Thanks.

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

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wide temperature (-40C to +85C) DIMM and SSDs are available.. Companies like ATP and Apacer carry them. Intel's Xeon D series are meant for wide temps.

-40C is very close to 0F (-32C) claimed above. Update: -40F is -40C, oops, my bad, I don’t understand Fahrenheit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

-40° Celsius is actually equal to -40° Fahrenheit, it's the temperature at which the two meet. 0° Fahrenheit is about -18° Celsius, did you perhaps multiply 0 by 5/9 then subtract 32 instead of the other way around?

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

#365
post #135

Several 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.

I have Starlink and I'm in Pahrump, NV. We hit 111F today and my dishy is in direct sunlight on the ground so it was easily over 120F. Hell, my direct sunlight thermometer showed over 130F! Didn't go into thermal shutdown, no disruptions in service, and I didn't have to water it either.

It can also be that it fails not due to absolute excessive temperature value, but rather after some heating-cooling cycles.

Hot summer is like 3-4 months over there, so about 100 very-hot-cold cycles per year.

Let’s see if it withstands that.

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

#366
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.

Speaking from experience in this same industry, this is the wrong way to look at it. They significant amount of engineering goes in to designing the ground systems such that it can tolerate all different types of environments. Currently with Starlink you are only seeing probably less than 5% of the environments that it would be rolled out in.

This is mainly due to how they are targeting RDOF areas to appease the government from winning all that money. Heat is one thing, but freezing temperatures are also very difficult to deal with. A deicer is common on high-end antennas to melt ice off in subzero temperatures.

I would be surprised if SpaceX changes the design at this point. To manufacture it antennas in the quantities that they need, they would have had to order a lot of the parts 6 to 9 months ahead of time in large quantities, especially given that they lose money on the terminal cost currently.

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

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wil…

This is a problem when Arizona was above 100 degrees for 144 days out of the year last year.

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

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry HW engineer here and I strongly disagree. You don’t ship hardware like this. 122F is only 50C. Most components can handle 85C so shutting down at 50C means the thermal rise is >35C. This is simply poor design.

Directv dishes are only rated for 140F or 60C[0]. Pretty close, but it clearly makes a difference in Arizona. 0: https://www.att.com/support/smallbusiness/article/smb-direct... .

That is not pretty close at all. You don't get ambient temperatures anywhere near 140F.

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

#369
post #173
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.

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

Why are you showing links to heaters? You ask if other manufacturers have this problem, then you provide links to the exact opposite problem which is freezing temperatures. The answer to your original question is no, other manufacturers do not shut down anywhere near this temperature.

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

#370
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn’t need that size, they could have gotten by fine with a smaller size just like every other car company.

This is just the wrong angle to look at this. The big screen was one of the features that was talked about the most. It was genius marketing, and also part of why the car felt like the future.

a lot of things can feel like the future when you don’t have to support them through their lifetime.
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