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First look at the upcoming Starlink Mini

starlinkhardware.com

71–80 of 208 posts

Re: First look at the upcoming Starlink Mini

#71

I plan to work and travel in Europe for 1.5 months this summer and I hope they will release it soon. Hotel/AirBnB wifi is often unstable and unreliable - you never know if Zoom will work or not. With Starlink I will have backup and at minimum will be able to take calls in the car. We will have rental car so planned to get regular Starlink but this one will be much better option.

Depends on where you're planning on going, but if you're talking Airbnb/ hotel it's probably Urban or suburban, you could probably just get a local SIM card and use the hotspot feature on your phone.

We traveled around Columbia for a month this year, and was able to work from 90% of the places we were in using the hotspot. And we were pretty rural a lot of the time.

Re: First look at the upcoming Starlink Mini

#73
post #41

Is there a way to make a Starlink dish that is viable for backpacking (i.e. 5kg at most, but preferably 0.5-2kg, including the solar panel and battery needed to power it) or is the satellite LTE service the only possibility?

[flagged]

Yup, my issue with Starlink is giving money to a company owned by Musk. I will avoid that as much as possible.

Re: First look at the upcoming Starlink Mini

#74
post #18

I wish “mesh” WiFi was more standardized. I don’t think there’s any good reason that a device like this should require specifically a Starlink mesh mode instead of an industry standard WDS device.

There was a standard a few years ago IIRC, EasyMesh. I even bought a kit that supported it.

https://www.netgear.com/au/home/wifi/mesh/mk62/

I was most pissed off when I bought another (orbi?) kit from the same vendor a couple of years later and it didn't support easymesh, and wasn't compatible at all. Does seem to be a mess!

Re: First look at the upcoming Starlink Mini

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah they don't force you into some weird shitty contract. you can buy the hardware outright, and then not pay for a subscription until you actually want to use it for the month of Outober.

Can you sign up using Starlink itself? It would by annoying if you needed another ISP when your ISP is down.

Yes

Re: First look at the upcoming Starlink Mini

#76

So is this device any less capable bandwidth wise? I noticed a price cut in the current flat dish and was planning to pull the trigger to swap with my home ISP but if this will suffice I'd rather have the portability factor too.

Yes, if not it would be worse reception wise

Re: First look at the upcoming Starlink Mini

#77
post #41

Is there a way to make a Starlink dish that is viable for backpacking (i.e. 5kg at most, but preferably 0.5-2kg, including the solar panel and battery needed to power it) or is the satellite LTE service the only possibility?

[flagged]

If you are considering clothes, its also used for soldiers.

Re: First look at the upcoming Starlink Mini

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Garmin inReach (and others like it) is probably the nearest readily-available solution for that use case. Not broadband internet obviously, but it provides access to basic, essential communication methods. It does so at a much, much lower price point than Starlink/HughesNet/etc can offer, making it more palatable as an "emergency backup" product.

Well Starlink here in Spain costs 40€ per month. That's a lot less than the unlimited Garmin inreach plan (74,99€!!) that only allows you to send short messages! And that's the regular plan. Deprioritised Starlink costs €29/month! Still way way more useful service than inreach. I have inreach and for €19,99 I get 10 SMS per month (i don't subscribe every month) and I also have to pay a €39,99 yearly fee. Starlink is…

WTF? Entry price for starlink is £75/month in UK! ADSL is typically ~£25-30 for unlimited 80/20 for comparison

Re: First look at the upcoming Starlink Mini

#79
post #36
post #2

The lack of DC power is rough for boats, vans, and RVs. If someone wants to put this in a backpack they really need to get a DC power supply version. There are solutions out there at this point for the standard dishy but the flat high performance has a crazy power supply with it.

Buy a $50 inverter. They are tiny and it's not like this thing is using enough power for the efficiency hit to make a difference.

Iirc the hit from ac/dc conversion is 10-20%? So excluding ac from the equation saves 20-40% power use
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