I’m not an Elon Musk fanboy but I don’t dislike him either…. I do respect him for coming up with some cool stuff and then having fun with it. The idea of a notebook-sized satellite dish to get you internet in literally any part of the world is something that was virtually unthinkable a decade or two ago.
For survivalists, one of the great headaches has always been finding a balance between living in the sticks, or even ‘off grid’, but still maintaining some type of communication with other humans…especially your fellow like-minded individuals. Most ‘bugout locations’ are short on things like powerlines and phone lines. The reliable standby has been ham radio, which has its ups and downs…there is no one perfect solution. I remember years ago that there were things like ‘packet radio’ and other radio/internet hybrids. Nowadays you just drop a Starlink on the ground in a clear area and start downloading porn. We’re living in the future.
My needs are quite simple. I’d like to have email and VoIP for voice communication. I’d also like to access Google Earth, get the news, and that sort of thing. Additionally, I’d like to have some internet-connected cameras for real-time viewing. While Starlink appears to be able to do that, the issue of powering the darn thing reliably over time is the new constraint. I need to have a battery system in place that would give me as much time as possible between charges in case I need a few weeks to get up there. I suppose I could steal an RTG from the arctic somewhere but that seems like a lot of work.
I’ll be exploring solutions but before that I need numbers. So, after unpacking the box from FedEx, I have the Starlink setup in my yard running off a small lithium battery block. This particular power supply is Bluetoothed to my phone so I can track battery life as Starlink is out there doing its thing. Then, once I figure out average usage demands and whatnot I can start scaling a battery system. Yes, of course Im going to integrate some solar panels for charging…but I need some numbers so I can calculate needs and build in extra margins. In a perfect world I’d like to have enough panels up there to charge a battery that is capable of running the thing for a solid month.
And, as I am discovering, the internet is awash with all sorts of third-party items for this little piece of tech. Notably adaptors to let you run on Milwaukee and DeWalt power tool batteries. Thats rather convenient since I’ve got a bunch of them sitting around.
The subscription side of the StarLink equation got squared this week. You can put your subscription into a sleep mode when youre not going to be using it for a length of time and that drops your monthly sub to five or ten bucks. I went with their cheapest monthly plan which is about sixty bucks. I then dumped some money into a new brokerage account, bought a bunch of weekly dividend ETFs, set the brokerage to automatically move the dividends to a new checking account at the end of the month, and then StarLink bills the debit card attached to that account. Basically, a fire and forget arrangement.
My plan was to head up to the Beta Site this weekend and experiment with the StarLink but its raining pretty heavy and I really don’t feel like negotiating heavily rutted muddy roads. And…Im too lazy to go drag the SxS out of storage. So today will be spent on other Beta-Site-related projects. Most notably, I need to put together a secure container kit to put all the StarLink gear in for transit, I need to start calculating power needs, and another one or two projects I’ll post about in a few days.
My employer has remote sites with cameras on Starlink and my recollection is that there’s some technology hiccups that required creative thinking to get reliable connectivity because static IP addresses can’t be used on Starlink. I think they eventually setup a dynamic DNS server on a Raspberry Pi or something similar to phone home and reestablish connectivity for the camera monitoring server.
Be aware that ice buildup on the starlink antenna will negatively affect your performance. The starlink system is designed to sense the presence of ice and activate heating elements to de-ice the antenna. Obviously, ice buildup is random and weather dependent and requires considerably more power than normal operation. So keep this in mind when calculating for your winter power requirements.
Do you need to power it continuously? It seems to take you a while to get there, so you have no need to be a “first responder.” Can the system store photos and do a once a day dump? If the power can be put on a timer the requirements for solar panels and batteries can be dropped substantially.
Thats pretty much the direction Im thinking.
That seems like the same functionality as a cellular trail cam??? Or less; we set most of our trail cams to send at each detection. A couple can even take pics on command. We have one of those pointed at the cabin, so if we see a strange pickup backed up to the cabin we can tall it to take more pics. We’re hours away, so there isn’t much we can do but call the sheriff (who is also probably an hour away 🙁 ).
If the issue is no cell signal, Spypoint says they are putting out a model that will connect via satellite later this year. Dunno if that will pan out, but if it does it would be a lot simpler setup.
Cell signal is definitely an issue. Its a case of conditions being juuuuuust right for the cam to get a signal…and thats the one thats at the top of the hill. Some of the other ones have never even checked in once. The StarLink might give me some relief in that regard, but I need it also for regular internet duties as well…email, etc.
You may have tried this. We had connectivity issues on our farm. Spypoint makes an antennae (flexible) that attaches to the camera, we attached that to a sapling tree branch about 20′ tall and stood it upright along the trunk of the tree the camera was on. Got a signal, not perfect, but enough to send pictures, it lasted years, just replaced the sapling this spring & got it a little higher. But if cellphone coverage does not exist, it won’t be any help.
If you search Amazon for ‘trail camera antenna’ there are a zillion of them for all the major brands of trail cameras, for a lot cheaper than OEM (and AFAICT, identical). We have used both the co-ax ones and the replacement blades with good success.
(for the co-ax ones, if the tree isn’t easily climbable, get a 10 ft piece of 1/2 PVC pipe, attach the antenna and a bent wire hook on the other and hang it in the tree)
We have a starlink mini that draws 20 to 40 watts (depending on usage). That’s low power by grid standards but high power by off grid standards. We only have ours powered on when in use, so no biggie, but leaving it on 24×365 uses about as much power as our mini-freezer.
30w*24hr = 720wh per day; freezer’s rated use is 685 wh/day. And the freezer is actually an easier case; it draws a lot less power in the depths of winter when there is less sunlight, duh. The starlink will use as much in January as August.
Trying to run a starlink for a month off a battery would be 30*24*30=21600wh. That’s around $3k of battery. Putting up solar panels is a lot better idea. How many watts of panel, though? That’s a diminishing returns thing – driving the probability of running the battery to zero even in the longest storm drives the price to infinity :-).
If it were me, I’d be thinking of maybe a 5kw battery and 700+ watts of panels. Lithium of course, and self heating. For unattended operation in Montana, consider mounting the panels vertically, so they don’t accumulate snow. If you are there you can clear snow, but if it’s unattended you need it to be self clearing. In winter you get light reflecting off the snow so the penalty isn’t as much as you’d think.
The point above about self heating is an interesting one – since we use ours intermittently I don’t have a feel for that. Perhaps you could have the antenna inside an enclosure of something transparent to radio waves – maybe the plastic corrugated roofing panels – with a vertical wall (so no snow) for the path to the satellite (for us, to the north when we do the ‘orient your antenna’ drill).
(another thing … I think our starlink is supposed to run nominally on 12 to 48V, but that 12V is a really hard floor. A lot of times it won’t run off a nominal 12V (actually 12.whatever) battery because the starting surge causes a voltage sag below 12V and triggers a reboot, ad infinitum. Either plan on a 24 or 48v system or get one of the car adapters that boosts 12 to 24v.)
I appreciate your math. Saved me some trouble.
There’s a possibility that I’ve been bouncing around in my head, which is having a timer system to turn on the StarLink for, say , one hour a day to transmit/receive info from the Beta Site and then turn itself off until the next scheduled contact. My concern with this is that it means each time the system is powered up, theres the potential for something going wrong or requiring operator input…as opposed to turning it on, addressing whatever needs addressing, and then leaving it on. I would prefer to have a 24/7 operation but obviously thats going to require serious work on a batter and recharging system. I don’t mind spending $3k on batteries IF it gives me what I want. I need to sit down in front of the computer and calculate load usage, battery capacity, recharge rates, and worst case scenarios.
Be warned that there are is a lot of talk in the Starlink community that if you put it on standby for a while and then “turn it back on” you can get hit with “congestion fees”. $1500 is the number I see bandied about most often.
I leave my subscription active even when I don’t use it at all in a given month.
Thank you for talking about how you are setting up paying for it, I hadn’t though of doing something like that (even though my safety deposit box is at the same bank where my no-internet connected emergency fund sits and makes more interest then the safety deposit box fees.)
FWIW – I run a mini on the dashboard of my RV when we travel. Seems to work fine through the windshield and out of orientation, although I haven’t speed tested it.