Anyone else a Starlink beta tester?

[North Idaho Wolfman]

I got mine yesterday and I'm super impressed!
I haven't been able to lug it down.
Watched my first streaming movie with no interruption.
We were using HughesNet and it was super slow!

I did have to tweak the setup a bit, as I didn't want it on the tripod on the ground, so I made a post mount for it.

This will be really nice for the new house considering about everything in it is high tech and need the internet to update or run.

This takes people like us that live out in the woods, and give us fast internet!
Way to go Elon Musk and the Starlink team!

 

[SidecarFlip]

Never heard of it Woifman. We live in the woods to but have ultra high speed fiber optic.

 

[Fordtech86]

@North Idaho Wolfman you got a link to what you got? Would be interested in it, we have HughesNet at the house and its terrible

 

[PoTreeBoy]

I got mine yesterday and I'm super impressed!
I haven't been able to lug it down.
Watched my first streaming movie with no interruption.
We were using HughesNet and it was super slow!

I did have to tweak the setup a bit, as I didn't want it on the tripod on the ground, so I made a post mount for it.

This will be really nice for the new house considering about everything in it is high tech and need the internet to update or run.

This takes people like us that live out in the woods, and give us fast internet!
Way to go Elon Musk and the Starlink team!

I've been following but I live too far south anyway.
1. How accurately does the antenna have to be oriented - similar to satellite tv?
2. How suited to mobile use (RV/motor home for example) would it be? Do you have to commit to a fixed location to qualify? It would be interesting to see a snow-bird's experience heading south.

 

[hope to float]

I got mine yesterday and I'm super impressed!
I haven't been able to lug it down.
Watched my first streaming movie with no interruption.
We were using HughesNet and it was super slow!

I did have to tweak the setup a bit, as I didn't want it on the tripod on the ground, so I made a post mount for it.

This will be really nice for the new house considering about everything in it is high tech and need the internet to update or run.

This takes people like us that live out in the woods, and give us fast internet!
Way to go Elon Musk and the Starlink team!

I don't like the whole idea of it. I mean, who gives him permission to fill the sky with satellites? Already there is a heap of them not working, so basically more junk up there. I presume they will have to be shunted out of their orbit to be replaced by working ones. Where will they go? And he has permission for 30,000 of the things. They already nearly had a collision with a european satellite (Didn't see the email). And some are going to be sold to the military.
Like I said, I don't like the whole idea of it

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

@North Idaho Wolfman you got a link to what you got? Would be interested in it, we have HughesNet at the house and its terrible

As of right now it's only available to the far northern latitudes as a beta, but they are sending up more and more satellites to get more coverage.
And yes this beats the pants off of HughesNet!

Starlink

High-speed internet. Available almost anywhere on Earth.

www.starlink.com

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

I've been following but I live too far south anyway.
1. How accurately does the antenna have to be oriented - similar to satellite tv?
2. How suited to mobile use (RV/motor home for example) would it be? Do you have to commit to a fixed location to qualify? It would be interesting to see a snow-bird's experience heading south.

To answer what I think I know about it.
#1: No pre alignment required, you drop it on the ground (Tripod base) doesn't matter which way you set it, it zips around and aligns itself
#2: There is lots of talk about RV/ Boat/ camping setups with it and so far it's only being targeted to rural users. I don't think it will take long for it to get used in multiple ways.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

I don't like the whole idea of it. I mean, who gives him permission to fill the sky with satellites? Already there is a heap of them not working, so basically more junk up there. I presume they will have to be shunted out of their orbit to be replaced by working ones. Where will they go? And he has permission for 30,000 of the things. They already nearly had a collision with a european satellite (Didn't see the email). And some are going to be sold to the military.
Like I said, I don't like the whole idea of it

There is a whole consortium of countries that agreed to it.
One thing about the type of satellites they are using is that they are low earth orbit and they will not become space debri when they end their lives, they simply de-orbit and burn up.
I don't know of a single space X (Starlink) satellite that is not working, i do believe so far they have had a 100% success rate.
Yea they need to work out a few bugs in the system as far as traffic control goes, they do fly in a zone where no other satellites fly but when they launch a one they have to cut through there flight pattern.

 

[dlsmith]

Sounds good for people that need it, but it's going to ruin the skies for a lot of ground based telescopes. They are supposed to be changing the coatings on the satellites so they aren't so reflective, but that isn't going to help with the ones that are already in orbit.
The big problem I see coming, is that eventually if they put up the 30-40,000 of them they are planning, there is going to be a collision, and that will lead to a cascade of collisions with the debris. Once it starts, it will render a lot of the low Earth orbital space unusable for centuries. It will also make it dangerous the send spacecraft up through the debris field. It's beend named the Kessler Syndrome.

Sounds good in theory, but I'm afraid it might not end well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

 

[bearbait]

Thanks for sharing Wolf, much of the day our internet here is below 1MBPS. I can't really see any clear cut way to sign up for it however I did sign up for emails.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Thanks for sharing Wolf, much of the day our internet here is below 1MBPS. I can't really see any clear cut way to sign up for it however I did sign up for emails.

Thanks for sharing Wolf, much of the day our internet here is below 1MBPS. I can't really see any clear cut way to sign up for it however I did sign up for emails.

I think they are going to roll out Canadian Beta here shortly, and yes get on the list when it come out, it will change what you can do on the internet drastically.

We streamed another couple shows last night with zero issues!

 

[bearbait]

I think they are going to roll out Canadian Beta here shortly, and yes get on the list when it come out, it will change what you can do on the internet drastically.

We streamed another couple shows last night with zero issues!

How's the new place coming, any pictures?

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

How's the new place coming, any pictures?

Just got the Combi unit ( Hydronic Heating and DHW ) mounted to the wall, now I've got to run a bunch of pipe to get it all hooked up.
It's going to quite the jungle of pipes.
Also trying to finish up small details so we can get drywall and insulation in and up.

I"ll see if I can get some good pictures this weekend.

And FYI: I just read that Starlink is just waiting on Canadian government approval to roll out the beta up there.

 

[bearbait]

Just got the Combi unit ( Hydronic Heating and DHW ) mounted to the wall, now I've got to run a bunch of pipe to get it all hooked up.
It's going to quite the jungle of pipes.
Also trying to finish up small details so we can get drywall and insulation in and up.

I"ll see if I can get some good pictures this weekend.

And FYI: I just read that Starlink is just waiting on Canadian government approval to roll out the beta up there.

Well at least you'll be working inside for the most part. Sure hope you had most of what you needed bought if the prices there gone as crazy as what they've gone here. As far as waiting for Canadian government approval that's not very encouraging, I could be dead and gone before they make a decision

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Well at least you'll be working inside for the most part. Sure hope you had most of what you needed bought if the prices there gone as crazy as what they've gone here. As far as waiting for Canadian government approval that's not very encouraging, I could be dead and gone before they make a decision

I just heard Canada approved Starlink, go to starlink.com to sign up.

 

[bearbait]

I just heard Canada approved Starlink, go to starlink.com to sign up.

Thanks Wolfman, here's what I get and yes I did sign up for emails

Starlink

High-speed internet. Available almost anywhere on Earth.

www.starlink.com

 

[mikester]

Can you post your traceroute results? I'm interested in seeing what kind of latency you get. Open a command prompt

on a mac/linux use:
traceroute 1.1.1.1

on a windows pc:
tracert 1.1.1.1

 

[RCW]

Can you post your traceroute results? I'm interested in seeing what kind of latency you get. Open a command prompt

on a mac/linux use:
traceroute 1.1.1.1

on a windows pc:
tracert 1.1.1.1

mikester - - what does low latency mean?

EDIT (looked it up) - - means the delay inherent in the network. Does that mean less buffering/improved streaming? We stream some TV via ROKU.

 

[random]

mikester - - what does low latency mean?

EDIT (looked it up) - - means the delay inherent in the network. Does that mean less buffering/improved streaming? We stream some TV via ROKU.

Yeah, Hughes is high latency - because the satellite is 25,000 miles above the surface, it's a 100,000 mile round trip for the signal to go there, back to the ground, and then back - that's more than half a second at lightspeed. This happens for each connection - so when you load a website with a lot of images, for example, it can take a while to load. But if you download a single file, it can still go pretty fast, depending on the size of the chunks it sends.

I've found that streaming services can be very different. Netflix plays best with Hughes, Hulu doesn't play at all. Prime is hit or miss.

Starlink is in such a low orbit the lightspeed delay is negligible, so you should see faster loads on complex web pages (which is most anymore) and probably better streaming on most services.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Can you post your traceroute results? I'm interested in seeing what kind of latency you get. Open a command prompt

on a mac/linux use:
traceroute 1.1.1.1

on a windows pc:
tracert 1.1.1.1

Is this what you're looking for?