SpaceX Tuesday...
Discussion
eharding said:
Is this the first ever PistonPost over Starlink, or has somebody else beaten me to it?
Starlink kit duly delivered by DHL earlier. Postcode mangled by Starlink order site was still mangled, but DHL managed it anyway.
The world doesn't need another in-depth Starlink setup description, but I'd wager there hasn't been a photo of a dish with custard for scale....
...(note to self, state of lawn shocking, blaming the mole).
Speeds varying - the first ones I ran on the phone app where about 30mbps down, connected the desktop and seeing mostly ~90mbps down, fasted thus far 118mbps. Fairly stable at ~30mbps up. Had a ~10 second dropout as I was composing this...
Pings hovering around 30ms.
Speedtest.net thinks the my client IP of 176.116.125.17 is "Google Fi", but ipinfo.io identifies it as a UK IP address with Google as the ISP and SpaceX Services as the organisation.
Will get a slab to rest the disc tripod on, plus some ground stakes to hold it down.
Disc moves quite quickly - it ships in the vertical position, as you'd expect - plugged in, turned on, sat staring at it for a couple of minutes, turned around to get my phone, turned back and it was horizontal.
Was trying out the obstruction video test on the phone, hadn't twigged from the available YouTube videos that the area it tests for isn't circular, but a south-facing crescent (maybe due to my location?)
Cable coming in through the back door at the moment, have a through-wall duct elsewhere in the house for some old satellite cables, but will need to drill the hole out to a larger diameter - the POE cable has some form of larger diameter core close to the end, diameter ~20mm.
For the time being, I'm going to try the router outside in one of the observatory sheds which has mains power, see how well connecting through the french windows of my study goes. Just hope the telescope doesn't twig it's a Starlink router and starts being mean to it.
Edited: Latest speed test of 157mbps down....
Interesting, vewy interesting!Starlink kit duly delivered by DHL earlier. Postcode mangled by Starlink order site was still mangled, but DHL managed it anyway.
The world doesn't need another in-depth Starlink setup description, but I'd wager there hasn't been a photo of a dish with custard for scale....
...(note to self, state of lawn shocking, blaming the mole).
Speeds varying - the first ones I ran on the phone app where about 30mbps down, connected the desktop and seeing mostly ~90mbps down, fasted thus far 118mbps. Fairly stable at ~30mbps up. Had a ~10 second dropout as I was composing this...
Pings hovering around 30ms.
Speedtest.net thinks the my client IP of 176.116.125.17 is "Google Fi", but ipinfo.io identifies it as a UK IP address with Google as the ISP and SpaceX Services as the organisation.
Will get a slab to rest the disc tripod on, plus some ground stakes to hold it down.
Disc moves quite quickly - it ships in the vertical position, as you'd expect - plugged in, turned on, sat staring at it for a couple of minutes, turned around to get my phone, turned back and it was horizontal.
Was trying out the obstruction video test on the phone, hadn't twigged from the available YouTube videos that the area it tests for isn't circular, but a south-facing crescent (maybe due to my location?)
Cable coming in through the back door at the moment, have a through-wall duct elsewhere in the house for some old satellite cables, but will need to drill the hole out to a larger diameter - the POE cable has some form of larger diameter core close to the end, diameter ~20mm.
For the time being, I'm going to try the router outside in one of the observatory sheds which has mains power, see how well connecting through the french windows of my study goes. Just hope the telescope doesn't twig it's a Starlink router and starts being mean to it.
Edited: Latest speed test of 157mbps down....
Edited by eharding on Monday 18th January 15:48
geeks said:
Interesting, vewy interesting!
Some more geek stuff - the hub (whether it is actually the hub or the dish isn't clear - all of the clever stuff seems to be in the dish) listens on ports 80 and 22 - port 80 gets redirected with a 303 to https://www.starlink.com. SSH into port 22 returns a login challenge and then disconnects. I think the iPhone app is getting data from the hub over HTTP, but haven't managed to see what it is yet.The app has some statistics reports - looks like my dropouts over the past 24 hours were a total of 4 minutes due to obstructions, 2 minutes due to no satellites and 49 minutes planned beta downtime. I might try shifting the dish but presumably as more satellites are available the obstructions such as they are won't be so significant. Starlink sell some alternative mounts, one of which is a weighted roof apex mount - having the dish out on the lawn is OK at the moment - I've just staked it down as we're due a storm - but a roof mount looks the best bet for a permanent installation.
eharding said:
geeks said:
Interesting, vewy interesting!
Some more geek stuff - the hub (whether it is actually the hub or the dish isn't clear - all of the clever stuff seems to be in the dish) listens on ports 80 and 22 - port 80 gets redirected with a 303 to https://www.starlink.com. SSH into port 22 returns a login challenge and then disconnects. I think the iPhone app is getting data from the hub over HTTP, but haven't managed to see what it is yet.The app has some statistics reports - looks like my dropouts over the past 24 hours were a total of 4 minutes due to obstructions, 2 minutes due to no satellites and 49 minutes planned beta downtime. I might try shifting the dish but presumably as more satellites are available the obstructions such as they are won't be so significant. Starlink sell some alternative mounts, one of which is a weighted roof apex mount - having the dish out on the lawn is OK at the moment - I've just staked it down as we're due a storm - but a roof mount looks the best bet for a permanent installation.
Are you allowed to share a screenshot of the app?
eharding said:
Some more geek stuff - the hub (whether it is actually the hub or the dish isn't clear - all of the clever stuff seems to be in the dish) listens on ports 80 and 22 - port 80 gets redirected with a 303 to https://www.starlink.com. SSH into port 22 returns a login challenge and then disconnects. I think the iPhone app is getting data from the hub over HTTP, but haven't managed to see what it is yet.
The app has some statistics reports - looks like my dropouts over the past 24 hours were a total of 4 minutes due to obstructions, 2 minutes due to no satellites and 49 minutes planned beta downtime. I might try shifting the dish but presumably as more satellites are available the obstructions such as they are won't be so significant. Starlink sell some alternative mounts, one of which is a weighted roof apex mount - having the dish out on the lawn is OK at the moment - I've just staked it down as we're due a storm - but a roof mount looks the best bet for a permanent installation.
Sounds like it could do with a little protective radome like they have on boats. The app has some statistics reports - looks like my dropouts over the past 24 hours were a total of 4 minutes due to obstructions, 2 minutes due to no satellites and 49 minutes planned beta downtime. I might try shifting the dish but presumably as more satellites are available the obstructions such as they are won't be so significant. Starlink sell some alternative mounts, one of which is a weighted roof apex mount - having the dish out on the lawn is OK at the moment - I've just staked it down as we're due a storm - but a roof mount looks the best bet for a permanent installation.
I've seen some videos from beta testers in Canada and snow build up (and indeed falling snow) is an issue in terms of signal.
Edit: Oh and the Starlink launch has been put back again to Wednesday due to weather.
geeks said:
eharding said:
geeks said:
Interesting, vewy interesting!
Some more geek stuff - the hub (whether it is actually the hub or the dish isn't clear - all of the clever stuff seems to be in the dish) listens on ports 80 and 22 - port 80 gets redirected with a 303 to https://www.starlink.com. SSH into port 22 returns a login challenge and then disconnects. I think the iPhone app is getting data from the hub over HTTP, but haven't managed to see what it is yet.The app has some statistics reports - looks like my dropouts over the past 24 hours were a total of 4 minutes due to obstructions, 2 minutes due to no satellites and 49 minutes planned beta downtime. I might try shifting the dish but presumably as more satellites are available the obstructions such as they are won't be so significant. Starlink sell some alternative mounts, one of which is a weighted roof apex mount - having the dish out on the lawn is OK at the moment - I've just staked it down as we're due a storm - but a roof mount looks the best bet for a permanent installation.
Are you allowed to share a screenshot of the app?
Not sure what the criteria are for picking the beta clients - I listed 30mbps as my speed in the survey they sent out last week. I did write "Take my money! - the sooner I start paying for Starlink the sooner SpaceX can get to Mars!" in the comments section at the end of the survey (sooner by about 3 milliseconds obviously, but every little helps) - so maybe some gratuitous toadying had an influence.
There isn't much to the Starlink app - it initially lets you set the SSID and password for the router, then has a link to a speed test at fast.com, options to reset the wifi, stow the dish back to the vertical and reboot the system. There is a debug page which is a dynamic display of a chunk of JSON with some system details (I just noticed it has its own speed test updated every second or so), and finally a statistics page with a few charts....
Can't see the harm in posting a picture of the stats - compared to other folk ripping their dishes to bits on YouTube and the dozens of other videos...
Beati Dogu said:
I've seen some videos from beta testers in Canada and snow build up (and indeed falling snow) is an issue in terms of signal.
Apparently the dish is pulling about 100 Watts and a good chunk of that will be dissipated as heat which would help stop snow accumulation in moderate cases - no sign of any active heating elements in the dish from the teardown, perhaps Starlink will offer different models for extreme climates - perhaps some with active cooling in places like the middle east. I don't know if you've seen this moving map of the Starlink coverage:
https://satellitemap.space/?fbclid=IwAR2vl0O7dmhk7...
You can zoom in and out and rotate the earth to see the situation in any given place. E.g.:
Satellites are listed by their mission number - so "11-M" being from Starlink-11 and satellite number, 12 (They don't use the letters I or O). Then they double up the letters - AA etc, then BA etc to get up to 60.
https://satellitemap.space/?fbclid=IwAR2vl0O7dmhk7...
You can zoom in and out and rotate the earth to see the situation in any given place. E.g.:
Satellites are listed by their mission number - so "11-M" being from Starlink-11 and satellite number, 12 (They don't use the letters I or O). Then they double up the letters - AA etc, then BA etc to get up to 60.
Great resource, isn't it! - had been using it to see if I could correlate gaps in coverage with downtime, as some other Beta clients on YouTube have done - however, given that most of the downtime is listed as "Beta Downtime" (we changed the code / turned it off and on again) rather than "No Satellites", it might be a moot point.
Interestingly, this video from a Beta client in Kent implies there are still very few units deployed in the UK (I think the second one in Devon he refers to might be me - it is a Tesla channel, which might get some cross-over from PH). The one thing to note is that he's getting fairly slow speed as measured from the fast.com test on a mobile device, and I'm seeing the same when compared to speedtest.net on a desktop - I've just run a back-to-back test and my iPhone/fast.com gives 9,1Mbps, whereas PC/speedtest.net is showing 117Mbps. It certainly feels like 100+Mbps when browsing from the PC, not sure what is up with the iPhone/fast.com test (but that's the one the Starlink app invokes as a speed test) - but strangely if I then run the fast.com test from the PC, it's saying 120Mbps.
Interestingly, this video from a Beta client in Kent implies there are still very few units deployed in the UK (I think the second one in Devon he refers to might be me - it is a Tesla channel, which might get some cross-over from PH). The one thing to note is that he's getting fairly slow speed as measured from the fast.com test on a mobile device, and I'm seeing the same when compared to speedtest.net on a desktop - I've just run a back-to-back test and my iPhone/fast.com gives 9,1Mbps, whereas PC/speedtest.net is showing 117Mbps. It certainly feels like 100+Mbps when browsing from the PC, not sure what is up with the iPhone/fast.com test (but that's the one the Starlink app invokes as a speed test) - but strangely if I then run the fast.com test from the PC, it's saying 120Mbps.
Edited by eharding on Wednesday 20th January 01:02
I guess that's why they call it the 'Better Than Nothing Beta' . 
I like their nickname for the dish of “Dishy McFlatface".
Meanwhile the Starlink-16 mission has launched and landed for the 8th time. Looks a bit rough out at sea, so hopefully the robot will lash it down before they lose it over the side.
I like their nickname for the dish of “Dishy McFlatface".
Meanwhile the Starlink-16 mission has launched and landed for the 8th time. Looks a bit rough out at sea, so hopefully the robot will lash it down before they lose it over the side.
Beati Dogu said:
I guess that's why they call it the 'Better Than Nothing Beta' .
I like their nickname for the dish of “Dishy McFlatface".
Meanwhile the Starlink-16 mission has launched and landed for the 8th time. Looks a bit rough out at sea, so hopefully the robot will lash it down before they lose it over the side.
Watched the Starlink launch over Starlink I like their nickname for the dish of “Dishy McFlatface".
Meanwhile the Starlink-16 mission has launched and landed for the 8th time. Looks a bit rough out at sea, so hopefully the robot will lash it down before they lose it over the side.
eharding said:
Watched the Starlink launch over Starlink
That out-of limits landing was impressive, rough sea, waves crashing over the front of the drone ship, soaking, pitching deck, screen goes blank aaaaaand..... perfect landing. It never gets old. The energy SpaceX has put back into things is great. I thought we would be left dicking around in low-earth orbit for the next five decades, and certainly didn’t expect to see another manned lunar landing in my own lifetime. In the space of a few years we’ve seen an incredible transformation in terms of cost, reusability etc and not only will we see manned lunar landings I reckon there’s bloody good odds on a Mars landing if not this decade then for sure the next (I think Musk is going a bit far with his timescale expectations- though I guess nothing should be surprising anymore(look at the doubts and nay-sayings on the first few pages of this thread)). I think we should be odds on that a living Apollo moonwalker will live to see at least one of the above, which will be nice.
Electrifying stuff!
hidetheelephants said:
SI units lack relatability; ask people what a newton metre is and they'll stare at you like a dog that's been shown a card trick. It should renamed the apple yard. 
I find it actually pretty easy to visualise a ~100g weight on a 1 metre lever, and what that would mean. I know it's more like 102g, but still.If it helps to fall back to imperial, you can alternatively imagine the torque imposed by 5 weetabix, on a lever a yard away
CraigyMc said:
hidetheelephants said:
SI units lack relatability; ask people what a newton metre is and they'll stare at you like a dog that's been shown a card trick. It should renamed the apple yard.
I find it actually pretty easy to visualise a ~100g weight on a 1 metre lever, and what that would mean. I know it's more like 102g, but still.If it helps to fall back to imperial, you can alternatively imagine the torque imposed by 5 weetabix, on a lever a yard away
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