Why pigeons mean peril for satellite broadband | Hacker News Reader

Why pigeons mean peril for satellite broadband

bbc.com

45 pointsjonbaer35 comments

If you read the original Nobel-winning paper by Penzias and Wilson discovering cosmic background radiation, they explain that their original assumption for the background noise was “biological” in origin, i.e. bird droppings.

Likely not just "sitting", but something that sounds similar.

I wonder whether they've measured the RF absorption of pigeon guano in that region of the spectrum.

Pigeon poop has a place in the discovery of the cosmic microwave background: https://medium.com/massivesci/how-the-search-for-bird-poop-h...

My first thought exactly. There's a deep, historical connection between pigeons and microwave antennas. They belong together.

Maybe they are antennas? Maybe they are drones..

https://cybersquirrel1.com

When can we expect dish covers with lots of plastic spikes, like the ones on streetlights and roofs

Spikes on a dish... make them metal (coated with plastic maybe), and perhaps they can be algorithmically designed to improve the antenna's performance.

I'd imagine it's been pretty well designed for performance already. Best to stick with something that won't affect the signal.

I agree, but engineering is all about tradeoffs. If you're considering anti-bird spikes on an antenna, it might be worth checking if this new requirement couldn't be leveraged into design change that improves the antenna itself.

Of course it could just as well make zero sense. My HAM license didn't cover microwave antenna design, and all I know about phased array is that it's some sort of magic software-defined step motor/lens, built out of math.

Couldn’t say, but I’ve just helped a friend set up starlink at his remote homestead, where he can’t even get LTE - and we just put a loose basket of nylon chicken wire over the dish to keep the birds and cats from sitting in it.

I’m on LTE here, with a Heath Robinson set of relay masts, and I’m considering getting starlink as a secondary connection - I get 80 up and down on LTE reliably, but would love some faster downstream speeds.

Large plastic owl? Large plastic owl connected to IOT by satellite on a subscription?

Who wants to fund my plastic dome startup?

like radome ? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=radome&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=image...

Except 3D-printed, AI-designed, and as a Service.

My startup is currently working on providing an easy-to-use NFT market, to allow our users to monetize the unique pigeon art on their StarDomes.

Of course, that would be only phase 1.

Phase 2 would be using AI guided micro-transmitters to bounce internet off of pigeons mid-flight.

At any time, anywhere on the planet, if you can see a pigeon, you can have internet.

Never again shall an ISP be disparaged with jokes about sending data via carrier pigeon.

Phase 3: We may be able to transmit even more data by encoding the message in the pigeon's DNA, allowing for vastly more capacity.

In one revolutionary leap, we will move towards a greener future with our organic free-range internet delivered right at edge!

Needless to say, there is no way to keep data consistency without employing a blockchain mesh network across all linked pigeons.

90% of this article seems to be background info on what Starlink is, the constellation, Elon, rockets. The tl;dr is literally “guy suffers outage when pigeon lands on dish”.

https://www.epsilontheory.com/why-am-i-reading-this-now/

A cone-shaped radome wouldn't be terribly expensive and might help with snow too.

Pigeons sitting on a satellite dish that might look like a waterless birdbath — yeah, I can imagine that might cause problems.

Just put some little scarecrows around your dish?

Obligatory RFC-1149 reference.

RFC-1149 must be a joke, because pigeons aren't real.

Each pigeon is an integer number of pigeons between 0 and 1.

So, therefore they definitely are not real.

Have you not seen pigeons with a missing foot or something? I'd argue that counts as a fraction of a whole pigeon :-)

Aside, ten years ago most of the pigeons in London seemed to be dirty with feathers sticking out and have manky feet, but of late they do seem a lot healthier. No idea why.

The drop in air pollution, from covid lockdowns?

The pigeons surely concluded that RFC-1149 cannot compete with satellite broadband on technical merits alone, so they started sabotaging competitive installations with any means they have!

Embed a pressure sensor that detects when a pigeon parches on it, then activate the electrocution mechanism of foreign biological organisms, also known as EMFBO.

So... instead of a live pigeon blocking your signal, you now have a dead one doing the same.

sprinkling a few dead pigeons around the feet of the device as a warning to would-be trespasser is the darwinian end-game in all of this.

Until you get pigeons that are electrocution resistant.

Pigeons are really sensitive to infrasound. It causes them to take flight immediately.

I built a device that created a ~1cm arc to scare away pigeons. You don't need to electrocute them, the sound alone does the job. I don't believe they can develop a tolerance as it is a survival instinct from living in cliff faces.

Did they solve the problem with these going into thermal shutdown if the dish gets to only 122 degrees F?

For the pigeons I’d say they just need to ring it with those spiky things they put on buildings.

I’m waiting for a report to say that it’s been discovered that KFC had been capturing & serving pigeons because someone figured out they weren’t reporting a sufficient number of satellite internet outages.

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