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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

#251

Post by _ea1k »

zaroth wrote: post #231
tyingq wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They put a non-automotive grade LCD in Teslas. I assume because they thought they knew better. I suspect hubris is at play more than full-on incompetence.

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…

Yeah, and their typical failure mode, yellowing around the edges, still looked better than a lot of other vehicles from its era.

I don't like their handling of it from a warranty perspective, but I'm also not sure that their initial decision was actually the wrong one.

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

#252

Post by 0xTJ »

tyingq wrote: post #189
aaomidi wrote: post #176

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?

They put a non-automotive grade LCD in Teslas. I assume because they thought they knew better. I suspect hubris is at play more than full-on incompetence.

I don't know, so this is a genuine question, but is that a safety-critical part in that case? If it's not it's still not ideal, you want to make sure that your parts will happily survive the car's environment, but it's not as bad.

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

#253

Post by da_chicken »

zaroth wrote: post #231
tyingq wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They put a non-automotive grade LCD in Teslas. I assume because they thought they knew better. I suspect hubris is at play more than full-on incompetence.

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.

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

#254

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#256

Post by _ea1k »

dylan604 wrote: post #106
newacct583 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the article, it's already been tested and works. Just throw a sprinkler on the thing. Clearly, though, the tolerances weren't chosen correctly when they designed the thing. 122F isn't actually that hot for a device designed to sit stationary in the sun all day.

> Just throw a sprinkler on the thing. Yeah, that's a brilliant plan for a part of the world that is severely restricted on water usage and is routinely in drought conditions.

Building a closed loop cooler isn't exactly rocket science. And, tbh, if I lived in an area where satellite internet was my only practical option, I'm not sure that I'd consider that particularly burdensome.

Despite all the hype, this is still basically a niche product.

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

#257

Post by tzs »

stagger87 wrote: post #194
new_realist wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This flaw was known to SpaceX before the beta began; SpaceX has publicly said the dishes are only certified to 104° Fahrenheit. Musk prefers to ship known broken products in the name of velocity, and out of a sociopathic contempt for the consumer. It’s happened to me more than once.

Is it even fair to call it a 'flaw' or 'broken' if they advertise the limitations? Almost all electronics will have some operational temperature range depending on power consumed and cooling available. Is there even active cooling on the unit?

It might depend on whether the advertising conveys the limitation correctly to the consumer.

I had a home router once that was cutting out in the summer. The operating environment section of the manual listed a temperature range that went up to something like 105 ℉. My apartment was below 80 ℉ so didn't think that was the problem.

It turns out that they meant 105 ℉ inside the router. Opening the router case and placing it so a fan I used to circulate room air was blowing over the router made the problem go away.

I think it is reasonable to assume when writing a manual that if you tell a consumer that the device can be operated in an environment with a temperature range of X-Y, the consumer will take it to mean that if the temperature in their room is in that range they can use the device. If that's not what the range means, you should tell the consumer.

Is the Starlink manual clear on this?

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

#258

Post by smoldesu »

Sebb767 wrote: post #142
smoldesu wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That's air temperature. 35°C can easily be enough to hit 50°C inside when the sun burns down on it all day.

Last week we had a heat wave that hit 37C, we had internet the entire time. Just my anecdata, but I have yet to see a thermal shutdown.

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

#259

Post by edoceo »

newsclues wrote: post #117
edoceo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why build a product for everyone you're marketing to when you can cheaply build a product that works for some but still sell to all. Caveat Emptor after all. Hit my OKRs for the quarter, I'm going to the pub.

Because the cost would go up, and marketing becomes harder which makes it harder to get data and revenue to continue engineering.

Google shows me loads of industrial SBC devices that operate from -40 to +85C(!) that are under $200 USD.

It's not reasonable for Starlink?

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

#260

Post by kortex »

jrockway wrote: post #206
aaomidi wrote: post #176

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?

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 pay out the nose for some serious engineering, or you just roll the dice. We rolled, and it turned out fine. That won't always be the case.

What Spacex is doing is smart, not sloppy.

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