Starlink system

[chickenminer]

As miners are are always looking at options for remote communications/ connectivity. Over the years I have used and installed satellite systems for Starband, HughesNet and iDirect and was currently using a HughesNet system.

I was intrigued by Starlink's dish engineering and the LEO satellite system Musk was putting up, so over a year ago I put in a deposit for one of his Starlink kits. About 6 weeks ago it arrived and I have been testing it since. I purchased the residential kit.
The Dish was simple to put up. I still have it temporary up on my cabin roof.


So far the performance has been amazing! Fastest speeds I see are 148 MBPS down and 12 MBPS up. Slowest I have seen during peak hours is 30 MBPS dwn / 5MBPS up.

I had seen posts on forums questioning cold weather use, since the Starlink documentation states operating temps only down to -22C. During our last cold spell of 10 days where the low was -64 F and the highs were -50F, the system performance was flawless. I could tell no difference.

Another item I was concerned about, since we are off-grid with battery bank system, was power consumption. I knew the design of the Starlink dish used more power as a 'heating element' for snow removal. So I placed a Kill-A-Watt meter on the system to monitor consumption.
My old HughesNet 7000 modem used 20-25 watts when operating. The Starlink system is a whole different cat! When first powered up and the dish is "searching" for signals the power draw can spike to over 100 watts. The same if you have snow sitting on the dish. Once dish is cleared and you are "online" the power draw drops to a steady 30-35 watts with occasional spikes.

Those are my initial impressions of the Starlink system. I cancelled our horrible HughesNet service!
Time will tell how the Starlink dish engineering holds up to a constant freeze/thaw cycle, but for now the service is amazing.

[Jim_Alaska]

Thanks for this Dick. I sent a link to your post to my friend down here that lives on a remote mining claim. He is also off grid and has internet and internet phone access, but he is always complaining about how slow it is.

[Slatco]

Always awesome to get real world reviews! Thanks Chickenminer!

[waveaction]

I love reading your review Dick. Elon Musk's SpaceX has done a marvelous job of putting the Starlink into action.

[chickenminer]

Update...
After one year of use I wanted to give an update on my Starlink system. I have the Version 2 dish. Starlink now has a version 3 for new customers.
So far the performance has been flawless. With Starlink having launched more polar orbiting LEO satellites, we never seen any drop-out times anymore. Speeds have been great with 150 Mbps avg down and 35 Mbps up.
We have had no issues during rain storms, snowstorms or extreme cold weather.

[gabbie]

thank you for the update we have been looking at them for our remote mining site sounds like what we need
thanks doug

[chickenminer]

Doug...
Yes, system works great! I cancelled my sat phone because we can use wifi calling over Starlink and the phone calls are perfect. Plus I no longer have to stand outside and freeze my butt off to make a phone call

[Slatco]

THanks for the feedback Chicken. I cancelled my Xplorenet and am ordering the RV package of Starlink as I have a couple minesites and I will take it from site to site to use as needed.

[chickenminer]

Slatco...
Cool! You will love it. If you are just ordering I bet they ship you the V3 dish. It's a flatter profile and doesn't have the little drive motors in it for alignment. Which I think is a good thing. The new modem is suppose to be better also. You will have to update us when you get it and have it set up.

[DanAK]

All,
I purchased my first Starlink last year (12-22) to try out at my home address before moving it to my mining address, at home there were obstructions and they did cause some brief interruptions… overall it was acceptable and very fast, in March of 23 I moved it to the mine site and hoped it would work the same as it did at home as there are hillsides close by to my camp location.. as it turned out there were obstructions there also but even with them the system worked absolutely great, we streamed tv and used internet and had a no interruption working telephone at camp for the first time ! Keep in mind the easy do it yourself installation, a plug and play system ! That and very high speeds and no data limit.
I did keep my Hughesnet gen 5 active just in case there were outages but there were none that prompted me to use the Hughesnet service, and disconnected that last fall.
I ordered my second Starlink in December and installed it at home in the same location as the first unit and was pleased to see that it had an unobstructed view of the sky, it has been working great at home since I installed it.
The second Starlink will go to the mine site also for use at my diggins location as it is about 2 miles from camp, that way I will have communication with camp and the world while I am away at work. The diggins location unit will be used at the mine site then brought back home to use in the off season, a simple change of address within the modem will keep it working at either location, both systems are on the “residential” plan.
I am anxious to try Starlink “phase 2” cellular service, it is said to provide standard cellular service anywhere on the globe !