Hacker News Reader

Comment by koeng | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know when starlink is going to be available for RVs or campers? I'd love to bring the internet while I camp around California, but right now there are range restrictions.

View on HN

They have been sending out surveys recently, seems like they are working out pricing and mounts for RVs.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/prgrbb/starlink_r...

Yo, SpaceX/Starlink employees. Hook me _up_ please

Indeed there are range restrictions with Starlink. What I did was order Starlink to the nearest post office to a place that has a unique intersection of lovely camping grounds that doesn't have internet access. The idea is to rotate between them. Use https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-coverage/index.html to calculate how big your cell is and then intersect with your camping guide :)

That site has seen no 2021 updates. I suspect it hasn't been updated with new orbits, cell maps or satellites.

Hi, yeah I created that and haven't updated it in a long time. You can pull the github repo and run it yourself to get a new map but there are some issues that have cropped up since that have prevented me from being able to update the site myself.

I guess it's all stars now if updated anyway, so not super interesting.

I did manage to run the simulation in May and surprisingly the data appeared to indicate less stars but higher average coverage time (by a few minutes). I didn't push this update because it wasn't much of a change from the current map, but I probably should have since that is interesting in itself.

I will note that the cells that I have rendering on the site there are for performance and download size reasons, and were never meant to correspond to any geographical restrictions that Starlink has put in place.

The power usage of a Starlink station is 90W. Seems not feasible for an RV unless at a campsite with electricity?

If you setup your eletrical system correctly then 90w at 240v is nothing. Answered at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28594552

Unless you have huge batteries, 90w constant draw is 2.1kW a day.

With all that other hardware, you'd have to be essentially tethered to the grid, or be recharging your batteries from grid regularly. (looks like you have 6x100 watt solar panels which won't do much for that kind of consumption)

They've submitted a proposal to the FCC, but I haven't heard anything further.

As a boat owner... I'm with you!

It’s in beta now. Set mine up. If it works the way it does now when the masses join you are going to really like it. Anecdotes in another comment here.

I guess the geofencing is for balancing loads. When there's ample bandwidth, coverage and maybe handoff support, they may remove the limitations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com