Starlink for a Mobile World
In a previous blog post of mine, I retrofitted my camper trailer with a cellular internet solution for remote work. After having over a year to gather data on the practical, real-world performance of the Peplink router, I've come to the realization that I am a huge nerd and want even more technology! In this post, I'll show you my journey with Starlink and my impressions with its usefulness as a remote-work solution.
Background¶
You may be asking yourself whether Starlink is really necessary for a remote working solution, to which I'm happy to proclaim a resounding no. I suppose I shouldn't be so dogmatic with that determination because it certainly depends on where exactly you plan on travelling. If you want to stay near civilization in any capacity, cellular internet at this point in 2024 is in almost all respects superior to anything else. It's not affected by weather (1) or trees, and it's available in nearly all locations that contain a small critical mass of people.
- For the most part, obviously some cell towers rely on microwave relays to locations with real underground cables.
It didn't use to be this way. I remember the days when cell technology was atrocious, and getting access to a tower with decent throughput was a bit like winning a $2 lottery (and equally as satisfying. It's a quick jolt of dopamine until you realize that $2 ain't a lot of money, and you spent a lot of time trying to find that $2). With advances in signal processing and increased bandwidth sales from the FCC, cell has come a long way.
Over the last year with my Peplink solution, I found that if I was ever near any small town, or any interstate at all, I almost always had access to decent cell coverage. In the instances where I didn't have good cell coverage, 90% of those situations wouldn't have been saved by Elon's solution due to tree coverage. So you may ask, why get Starlink? I already told you, I'm a technology nerd and I like to brag to people about how cool my remote work solution is.
Jokes aside, the real reason comes from the recent product improvements Starlink has made, namely:
- Reduction in price of their antenna.
- Full support for internet-in-motion.
- Data plans tailored specifically to RVers. Their mobile plans offer unlimited data and the ability to pause and restart your plan at will. This is the killer feature that I was awaiting because being tied to inflexible billing schemes or plans that require stationary antennas were all non-starters.
- Increased reliability with the ongoing additions to their constellation.
What's Included¶
When you buy the Starlink antenna, it comes with three components:
- The antenna itself
- A WiFi router
- An AC-DC adapter
Any semi-experienced RVer will immediately balk at the idea of running an ACDC adapter due to the fact that the DC battery from the RV has to be inverted to 60Hz AC, then converted back to DC by the adapter. You might also balk at the idea of running a separate router when we already have our Peplink Cellular modem/router! Not to fear, as a quick search on the internet shows that technically speaking, the Starlink antenna does not need these two components to operate.
There exist third-party Starlink PoE conversion kits that are powered by 12V DC and will step up to 50V DC required by the antenna. The "ethernet" cable that the antenna uses is a proprietary form factor despite having the same number of wiring pins as ethernet. These conversion kits will bridge the gap between the Starlink ethernet, which requires the 50V PoE line, and the standard ethernet that you can send directly to your router. The other benefit is that it cuts out the Starlink-specific router which further aids in power efficiency.
For my proof-of-concept build, I will just use all the standard Starlink equipment and optimize it with a conversion kit at a later date.
Setup¶
The setup was surprisingly simple. I downloaded the Starlink app and it took me through a series of setup tasks. After having plugged in the ACDC converter, the router, and the antenna together, the system for the most part set itself up. The antenna determines what cardinal direction it's pointing and will inform you that it prefers to point north. I found this wasn't strictly necessary and was in fact ill-advised because to my north-east was a large oak tree. After pointing the antenna directly north as instructed, the reliability and throughput tanked to an almost unusable level.
The obstruction visualization had me scan the sky with my phone's camera. I'm assuming it does some rudimentary "blue pixels good, anything else bad" algorithm where it determined the tree to be disruptive. The app also gives fairly detailed metrics into things like power draw, ping success rate, latency, throughput, and outage timelines.
Performance¶
An Unfair Situation¶
I spent a night in the Middle of Nowhere Nebraska and ran a few tests. The campsite I was at had a large oak tree that obscured about half of the sky, so we can consider this rather unfair, although informative of what we can expect in non-ideal situations.
The first test was a simple speed test in the middle of the night, where I was able to pull 147 Mbps down. The next speed test I took was at around 2:30PM the following day where I got 41Mbps down/28Mbps up. While that's over three times slower than the middle of the night, it's still fast enough for most activities.
Ping success rate, for my purposes, is the most important metric. I was able to get around 90% success rate in the middle of the day which is going to be an issue for realtime workloads like video calls or gaming.
Video Calls¶
I tested Starlink in a video call with about 20 participants. It performed fine for the most part but it would drop about every 10 minutes for sometimes longer than 15s. The Big Oak Tree (BOT for short) almost certainly is playing into this droppiness. It happened frequently enough to be distracting, and if I had been talking in this call, it would have been disruptive to the natural flow of communication and probably pretty annoying to the other participants.
The performance in this scenario is poor enough that I can't say I would rely solely on Starlink for video calls. I would want to switch to a cell connection if it's available.
A Fair Situation¶
Another campgroud I stayed at had a much clearer view of the sky. It was dotted with some trees but overall it gave a fairly unobstructed view for starlink. I placed the dish on the top of the trailer and ran the same tests as above. I was able to achieve similar throughput, but in this case I obtained 99.8% reliability. That's pretty remarkable and is approaching an acceptable level for basically all workloads.
Video Calls¶
Video calls in this situation was pretty much seamless. I was able to communicate with fairly little interruptions, and it was nearly impossible to tell that I was using satellite internet!
Installation¶
Roof Mount¶
The first step was to install the dish on the roof. Starlink provides a metal roof mount that comes with bolts. My particular trailer doesn't enjoy having bolts sent through its roof due to the fact that it consists of 3 thin layers: the outer fiberglass, an insulating layer, and particleboard. I didn't want bolts sticking through the ceiling so I opted to use 3M adhesive. I used 3M Scotch VHB tape and cut the strips into the exact shape of the mount. I cleaned the roof thoroughly using Lysol wipes and drying it with paper towels.
Once the mount was adhered to, I applied a liberal amount of Dicor Self-Leveling Sealant around the edges of the mount and inside of the holes where the bolts were supposed to go. You can see in the pictures above that the process is quite simple.
Roof Cabling¶
For the cabling, I followed the same strategy I employed when I did my Peplink cellular install. I didn't take pictures of this process because it's identical to what I've already done. Here are the pictures from that blog post:
The only difference this time is that I drilled 1" holes in the wall next to the shower and used 3/4" rubber grommets around the holes to protect the cables from the sharp edges. I realized my mistake of not using grommets for the Peplink install almost immediately after I was done, so I took the opportunity to fix those cables as well.
Interior Mounting¶
I drilled a hole next to the fuse box and routed the Starlink cable through it. My temporary setup using all of the Starlink-provided hardware looks something like this:
