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Comment by devit | Hacker News Reader

Is there a way to make a Starlink dish that is viable for backpacking (i.e. 5kg at most, but preferably 0.5-2kg, including the solar panel and battery needed to power it) or is the satellite LTE service the only possibility?

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If they made it possible to disable the heating element (ie. require a human to wipe snow off it) then it would be a lot more viable for hiking.

The large version draws 45-70w so a airplane carry-on legal USB-C powerbank could power it for 1-2 hours.

Fairly sure the heat is just a byproduct of the phased array antenna no?

I think you may be right, I read a HN comment a long time ago saying that they had a heater but it seems they do not.

They do have a heater in some versions - uses another 30-50 watts and is for melting snow.

It's just running the chips hot.

previous HN thread on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29943898

I guess any sufficiently inefficient computer is indistinguishable from a space heater.

I thought it was for comforting cats.

They have it.

This is from the official docs [1]: Snow Melt Capability: Up to 25mm / hour (1 in / hour)

[1] https://api.starlink.com/public-files/specification_sheet_mi...

It's not just a byproduct. There's a definite mode it switches into, that can be disabled, that draws additional power in order to heat the dish up. There is no heating element, but the community understanding is that the radio elements are themselves used to do the heating.

You already can disable the heating element from the app on the current models

This new dish should be under 5kg.

It weights 1.16 kg (2.56 lb) with Kickstand. It's quite impressive.

Source: https://api.starlink.com/public-files/specification_sheet_mi...

This is under 2kg

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