System hardware

[RKFost]

I've looked at a lot of You Tube video's but not seeing what I'd like to know.What are the dimensions of the Power Supply/Power Brick. How warm does it get?110/120 supply power requirements? watts/ampsMy plan is to have the power for the Starlink on it's own service line and located in the crawl space beneath the house. Power supply in it's own sealed enclosure. Running a cat7 or 8 line to my office in my home.Any help or suggestions are welcomed.

 

[Guest]

the wattage appears to vary based on a few factors. I've been monitoring mine from the initial deployment over a month ago. Under ideal conditions (no significant obstructions, relatively clear skies, and above freezing temps), mine runs a fairly steady 40 watts, which is pretty decent really. With heavy skies, 70-90 watts average. HOWEVER, and to my mind this a major design flaw which wastes a lot of energy needlessly, when the temp drops to freezing or below, there's a thermostat relay that calls for additional current to send to the heating elements in the dish. This is presumably to prevent ice buildup on the dish surface. My average now runs up to 180+ watts, on a clear night, which is ridiculous really. Accordingly, the power bricks gets pretty hot. I will hate to see what this thing consumes when is cold, overcast, AND searching for sats all at the same time. They really could have been smart about this and allowed for the app to disable the thermostat to save considerable amounts of absolutely unnecessary current draw, but lazy engineering is as lazy engineering does, I guess.

 

[9thousandfeet]

"....when the temp drops to freezing or below, there's a thermostat relay that calls for additional current to send to the heating elements in the dish."Actually, no, that's not true.There are no "heating elements" in the dish, nor is there a thermostat. If communication with satellites is compromised for any reason - rain, snow, obstructions, whatever, increased power will be sent to the arrays and this generates heat, which in turn will melt snow or ice.The more "difficulty" the dish has with satellite contact, the more power it will use. That's it. Also be aware that the system is still in beta, and power consumption is often affected by firmware updates. There are reports of some updates really jacking up power consumption for a while until they are replaced by newer updates. This has happened quite often.There's a video of a complete teardown of a dish in the following link. There are no heating elements.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/12/teardown-of-dishy-mcflatface-the-spacex-starlink-user-terminal/

 

 

[Guest]

I installed the rectangular antenna and modem yesterday. I left all the settings at their defaults to see how all worked out over night. FYI, we are off grid and our 48vdc lithium batteries are good for the majority of their rated 300ah. At this time of year with the shorter days the battery state of charge is around 70% in the morning and right now we are running without any solar for around 13 hours. As fate would have it the outside temp dropped to 25F so presumably the dish was generating some heat and it was not needed. This morning before I had any solar I was below 65%. So power draw is certainly noticeable for those making their own juice. I still have the Hughes system up JIC so disconnecting that will help. I did shut off the Starlink dish "heater" until I need it. Well see how things look tomorrow. Of note: the dish. Yesterday at power up it rolled around all over the sky, mostly to the north. After it finally settled down it was about 15 degrees off horizontal almost directly northerly. It was still there this morning. If it is moving its not distinguishable from inside the house. FYI we are about even with Vancouver WA. I'm still curious about the front face of the WiFi/power supply and what the diagrams mean. It looks like there could be some LEDs in there but nothing illuminated.