> It's powered through PoE++ (using around 100W of power continuously)
Not familiar with Sat gear, but this number seems extremely high to me for just powering an antenna (and some motors occasionally)
Not familiar with Sat gear, but this number seems extremely high to me for just powering an antenna (and some motors occasionally)
Power consumption could probably be a bit lower, but there are limits. Keep in mind that this is a phased array maintaining a relatively high bandwidth and high SNR link with the satellite. This is complicated microwave electronics design, a whole different ball game than old grandpas bragging about how they made a contact with someone across the ocean with 5W on their homebuilt HF radio. Starlink may have also made a conscious decision to make the user terminals "overpowered" so they can use a less sensitive receiver on the satellite, saving SpaceX weight, power usage, construction costs, and launch costs. The cost of more power usage is paid for by the user with an extra penny per month in their electric bill.
For reference, this is an order of magnitude greater than the typical power consumption for existing satellite dishes / 4G modems, which typically operate at around 10W of power consumption.
Is it transmitting anything to the satellite when you are not actually trying to send internet data?
Motors weren't being used during my measurement period either.
The dish gets pretty warm in operation (it was already a warm spring day, so it wasn't trying to de-ice or anything).
Here in Australia, for 100W / hour I'm going to be paying ~ A$250 / year to keep it powered. That's about 160 euro, or 200 usd.
Teardown showing PCB at: https://youtu.be/iOmdQnIlnRo?t=2152
And more detailed RF analysis at https://youtu.be/h6MfM8EFkGg
It's actually a whole satellite terminal as well as all the electronics for controlling the phased array. It can operate entirely without the router they give you - plug in a computer, or another router (into the white port on the POE injector), and off you go.
e:
If you're interested in watching a Teardown of Dishy, you can see one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOmdQnIlnRo
I am not talking about ordinary cheap consumer grade hughesnet or viasat stuff, but if you were to do the power budget for an idirect x3 modem and a traditional geostationary ku-band VSAT setup with a 20W BUC, the actual AC wall power consumed would be quite a lot more. Just the BUC is going to be 200W.
What I was referring to is the class of VSAT equipment much more costly than a proprietary viasat or hughesnet terminal, which the ordinary consumer will never see, that's capable of doing a dedicated 100/15.
https://joteo.net/en-us/electricity-usage-calculator/electri...
Moreover, comparing a parabolic receiver with a phased array is quite unfair. The amount and complexity of the electronics and processing power required is several orders of magnitude different.