SUPER FAST INTERNET on a BOAT with STARLINK - Sink or Swim 219 

dude I was just talking about Starlink last week, been waiting for it to go public so I can get in early with 5-10 grand, thanks for this you're the first person I've seen actually review it although I knew it would be good quality if Musk was involved

You have a link for a specific mount you have in mind?

@@was100ify The only one that comes to mind is one for a GoPro, but if you know someone with CNC milling and machining capabilities, a large enough version could be built to hold a satellite antenna. There are lots of gyro stabilizers on ebay, as well, which can be used to control the mount's motor drives.

@ThomasGrillo my question really is how much pitch and roll is too much? Is this dish locked on a specific satellite and constantly tracking it until it needs to switch to the next one? Say worst case connection bounces in and out. Most marine applications only need to update weather apps or radar. So at worst it would still be better than nothing. My concern with this unit is how resistant to salt spray is it. It's probably not designed for such a harsh environment.

@@was100ify Well, if swells are producing pitch, and roll moments greater than 15 degrees, I'd recommend shutting the Gyro sat mount down, and getting on the helm. However, I would think you could design one that could handle at least 45 degrees, depending on how far above the deck house it is. I'd also recommend designing it, so the motors are concealed, inside the arms, and joints, with o-ring seals. The mount needs to me made from aluminum, to prevent corrosion from salt spray. I do know the Starlink system doesn't just latch on to one satellite. It takes data from multiple satellites, as they pass over. Kind of like GPS. Both are in low Earth orbit, and are moving 17500 plus miles per hour, ground track, vs the 0MPH ground track of a geostationary orbiting satellite for conventional coms. Starlink's antenna uses an array of many antennas, which pickup the signals from the many sats that whiz by. If the Starlink antenna dish is on a moving substrate, then it's drive motors have to work overtime, and eventually burn out, trying to track the constellation. Being on a gyrostabilized mount will take the workload off the antenna's motors, and reduce power consumption on the antenna. Still need some power for the gyro mount, though.

@ThomasGrillo thanks for the info. Got some things to think about.

Is that in marina or anywhere Moored and or if wind changes direction on anchor?

It works in your cataraman in what speed?

Hi friend, how many miles form shore can you still receive starlink signal? I'm a cargo ship seafarer, I want to know if I can use when passing opansea? Like pacific?

But I don't understand why they said that it will cost a cheap price or will be free for users at the beginning when promote starlink. What happened with that?

@@LouisVillemaire When did they ever say it would be free? Been following it since the first test launches and never heard that it would be free.

I like how he took the time to discuss that it would take somewhere between 50-100watts (minifridge, pc, etc.) I would like to think integrating a smart "home network" might be able to best prioritize power consumption vs up/down speeds. I have been following Sailing UMA and think that a simple integration on a sailboat like it could be quite efficient.

Phased arrays still lack the gain needed in the maritime industry. VSAT is very finicky.

I would wait until Starlink comes with the mobile solution. When you are in a harbour, you probably have 4G or 5G coverage anyway, and I do not think you can move like a mobile between cells yet. They have a new squared antenna now, and its about 50% lighter than "Dishy", probably much the same performance with the similar electronical steered beamforming..

Plastic does affect the signal at these frequencies. I have seen people experience issues after just putting a plastic camouflage sticker on the dish, so a dome is unlikely to have good results.

Not needed, the dish doesn't track individual satellites. The antenna array is electrically steered, just needs to be in the general direction of the satelite tracks.

@@encoreimages how precise exactly does the alignment need to be? the poster of the original video specifically mentions that latency as well as power usage increases a lot in stormy conditions, which would intuitively read as if the electrical steering was being engaged far more frequently than in non-stormy conditions to counter the tracking problems induced by them. It might well be that a gimbal wouldn't be enough to offset this but if it were it could both fix the mentioned latency as well as energy consumption issue.

Most gimbals rely on the center of gravity to stabilise, it might actually worsen the tracking as when the dish moves, the gimbal will overcorrect instead.

@@clou09 I believe it will be no different in a gimble than set up on your roof. My opinion.

Yeah I’m researching that now

You'd have to be careful to allow heat to vent.

You will have to first Simon has a Version 1 Version 2 just around the corner secondly StarLink is Geolinked as in for the area you live in if you move you can of course change it I have heard they allow this once a month. Good news this is purely a business model protocol and as long as you are in coverage nothing to stop you technically. StarLink are going to come out with a maritime version in the near future it will probably be more expensive. This will take some time because it will require the next generation of satellite's to be launched. These will be equipped with lasers to allow them to communicate satellite to satellite so even if you are in the middle of the ocean they can just pass on your signal until it can get to one in range of a ground station.

@@glennedwards1449 sounds great!

You and me both.

He said it was reporting in megabytes. Multiply by 8 to compare to the typical megabits...

Actually 10 is probably a better multiplier assuming full packets. Bits speed is a raw bit speed (which is why it is used so much) but bytes are what you get after the all the packaging of the packet is removed. This includes the MAC, IPs, any error correction information. The smallest IP packet is 64 bytes... even if you only send one byte of cargo. Now, assuming you are looking at an https site also include encryption info. While there are oversized packets available, most networks have at least one router/server that has a max size of 1500 bytes, meaning that almost nobody bothers to even try to send larger packets. Add to this extra header information your down/up load sw uses to keep track of itself and traffic it sends in the opposite direction (and waits for) to acknowledge or ask for resend and the idea that 8 bits = 1 byte is just not realistic.

@@lenwhatever4187 Interesting point. 8 bits to a byte is factual, but your statements introduce the the real world transfer complexities. I guess my question would then be, is the speed test data measuring the results after overhead and not the total data sent? Seems you would really want both. One showing the actual amount of data that passed to understand the connection throughput, and another showing the useful user data that passed. The difference giving an efficiency number that accounts for packet loss and overhead, as well as true user performance.

@@court2379 any software measuring transfer speed, only measures the cargo speed. The OS network stack has already removed packaging. Depending on the SW used, (ie. the browser's shown speed) the encryption overhead has probably also been removed. Bit speed is always the speed bits move in any one packet but I suspect starlink does not really allow the user to see that. I think you will find the the up/down link protocol is not any standard that is documented outside of starlink. IP traffic in and out but who knows what in between. So in this case, 8 bits does not really = 1 byte. They really are measuring or meaning two very different things. Anytime _bits_ is used, it is talking about the physical rate the transmission changes from 1 to 0s but with _bytes_ it is always talking about unpacked data. Bits is like carrier frequency (not the same thing but similar), bytes includes the whole data path including the slowest server in the path.

@@court2379 It’s around 160 Mbits, not Mbytes.

I saw someone rig up one of those gimbling things for cameras to one. That seemed kinda complicated though xD

@@MrShiggitty We rigged them on aircraft so you have in flight WiFi. Not much different. I am sure it would be decent.

Love it. A bit of positivity. "A ray of sunshine amongst all that darkness" to quote a movie that could never be made today.

Starlink is currently geofenced. Meaning it isn't able to be used beyond a point of its service address. (1km or so is what people have been reporting)

Several RVers have found they can activate roaming as of the last few days. Might be worth a try.

Roaming has been activated. Guess I’ll find out how far it goes.

Pretty much the same as on land. When they release the dish for marine use (so it will be taking into account boar movements) you won't notice a difference.

@@izybit you have installed in you boat? Works OK when you are anchor and the boat moves o the connection give error all time?

I have seen many RU-vid channels cover star link and they have all said it is really easy. I think you only have to do is plug it in. Setup the dish…

It's still in Beta testing phase so lower speeds and connection drops are to be expected, but installation is just plugging in cables and picking a spot for the antenna to see enough sky, the app even helps with that. The more satellites SpaceX shoots up (latest batch launched last week) the better the connection and once all sats are laser linked with version 2.0 (planned to be launched with Starship) speeds get better as well.

now we just waiting on ghost town living to get his

Acceptable

@@findingsimon Honey needs her own channel so she can pay her way for her food bills 🤣