Starlink - pre-order available in NZ

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81 posts

Master Geek

#2677347 19-Mar-2021 19:11

wratterus:

I'd want a larger diameter pole [...] or this, with a 45mm diameter.

Ok, the specs for the Starlink Pipe Adaptor say it takes up to 2.5" diameter, which is a bit more than 60mm, so I can see that they might expect at least 45 mm.

I guess it would be easy enough to replace the J-pole with a bigger one. The location seems ideal according to the app and I don't use the antenna any more.

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sidney

81 posts

Master Geek

#2677352 19-Mar-2021 19:25

Zander:

Gosh, my app shows me southwards. Its possible there's an element of pointing to the nearest ground station as well as where the starlinks are. I gather in the USA, pretty much all the Dishies are pointing north - likely towards where the densest satellites are. I'm in Bay of Islands.

I talked to the guy at satellitemap.space and he had the 'home location' pointing north, mostly because no-one has the dish in the southern hemisphere to tell definitely and all the Dishies in USA pointing north - its not based on official knowledge for NZ, yet. He's actually based in Australia.

I presume you can't do a 'full order' from Warkworth - just a deposit pre-order?

Right, just a deposit pre-order. Availability mid to late 2021.

I just checked the app again, and it definitely wants me pointing straight north to get the most area, though it's still happy a bit to the west or a bit more to the east of north. But not south.

I don't see why Dishy would care where the ground station is, but maybe it has to look south to find a satellite that is in position to see the Warkworth ground station.

Or maybe the satellites just happen to go over North Island and contact the Warkworth station somewhere between Warkworth and Bay of Islands so that's where we look at.

Oblivian

7275 posts

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#2677355 19-Mar-2021 19:34

sidney:

I don't see why Dishy would care where the ground station is, but maybe it has to look south to find a satellite that is in position to see the Warkworth ground station.

Or maybe the satellites just happen to go over North Island and contact the Warkworth station somewhere between Warkworth and Bay of Islands so that's where we look at.

They are a flat dinner table. And reflect down. So depending on where the mesh passes over, the nearest groundstation to bounce onto from your point may be in either direction due spacing. And each one possibly also pitched different orientation themsevles.

The website doesn't appear to list any of the NZ stations when you enable the overlay. Just the US ones. So perhaps it's not got all 3 of the live ones yet to do it's calcs.

quickymart

13717 posts

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#2677399 19-Mar-2021 21:11

I don't quite get how the map works. I thought the satellites were stationary over NZ (like Sky is) - but I see them moving on that map, with lots of parts of the country not covered. Yet there will be 6 in one spot over the ocean with hardly anyone there to use them. Or am I just misreading it.

Oblivian

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#2677404 19-Mar-2021 21:22

quickymart:

I don't quite get how the map works. I thought the satellites were stationary over NZ (like Sky is) - but I see them moving on that map, with lots of parts of the country not covered. Yet there will be 6 in one spot over the ocean with hardly anyone there to use them. Or am I just misreading it.

Draw a 8x8 square with dots at the intersections of diagonal lines. Now angle it so they are 52 Deg from bottom left to top right and in-line.

Now make them move north in the direction of the lines and imagine NZ sitting underneath.

The entire constellation is moving. We roll by underneath it There are only 58 geostationary ones being the 'lead' units. The rest are in lines of 60, spaced out. All whizzing past 1 after the other in a line. With 3-4 (or more) being able to be 'seen' by the dish at any time

1 line ends, the next row that is along side it takes over. Meanwhile the other ones are going the opposite direction

Jase2985

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#2677405 19-Mar-2021 21:24

@quickymart:

I don't quite get how the map works. I thought the satellites were stationary over NZ (like Sky is) - but I see them moving on that map, with lots of parts of the country not covered. Yet there will be 6 in one spot over the ocean with hardly anyone there to use them. Or am I just misreading it.

They are not geostationary/synchronous satellites that stay in one place over the earth at about 35,786 kilometers, they are in an orbit around the earth not to dissimilar to the ISS, they are Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at an altitude of approximately 550km to 1100 km orbit every 91 minutes to 108 minutes.

Oblivian

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#2677408 19-Mar-2021 21:28

Exhibit A. 13 second exposure. And this is when they are in a line a few days after launch. Take a few weeks to get to full spacing/height.

(also why astronomers are upset)

And this is _1_ lot of 60. There are 22 launches of them thus far... (some early gen ones are de-orbiting this week)

The only reason there is a small gap offsetting is our rotation.

Pretty sure the one crossing over them was a set at full altitude much more spaced.

Zander

75 posts

Master Geek

#2677466 19-Mar-2021 23:08

A general reply to some of the comments above -

There are no geo-stationary Starlinks - they are all in very low earth orbit (LEO), and so travelling very fast. Hence they rely on huge numbers of starlinks, spaced out, to maintain constant coverage. They're so low that they will burn up pretty quickly if they fail to stay in orbit.

The satellites are flat, but have powerful phased-array electronically steerable antennas. Though they effectively 'bounce' the signal from Dishy to the Groundstation, its very much an active process. Though still need to have both in range of the satellite. Dishy needs to point to where it can get the best combination of satellite 'numbers' (towards the poles) but also where those satellites can also reach a Ground Station (which may not be towards the poles). When there's loads of satellites and ground stations, that may just be straight up.

See my map earlier to get an idea of Groundstation locations. https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=281278&page_no=7#2677159. Until more Ground Stations are added, there could be quite a chunk of users on the North Island pointing north towards Auckland.

I chatted to the satellitemap.space guy, and gave him a list of NZ ground station locations. He just hasn't got around to it yet. His 'data' is not official, just his interpretation of it.

Oblivian

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#2677469 19-Mar-2021 23:38

Oops. Calling them geostationary (thinking the ones to inter-link the ones whizzing around), was thinking of the ones that are polar (went up recently in a ride-share rather than the full 60)

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-21-34A1.pdf

Might be 6 on the map. But don't believe they are all currently up.

Tech document initially called for higher orbit level, and at that point ~40deg dish angle. Also has the frequency bands for those wondering. So presumably that may drop down to the mid to high 30s instead

https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=1158350

That said. Isn't dishy packed with servos and a GPS module to sort itself out. (and prevent you moving it elsewhere...)

Zander

75 posts

Master Geek

#2677475 20-Mar-2021 01:09

Oblivian:

Oops. Calling them geostationary (thinking the ones to inter-link the ones whizzing around), was thinking of the ones that are polar (went up recently in a ride-share rather than the full 60)

That said. Isn't dishy packed with servos and a GPS module to sort itself out. (and prevent you moving it elsewhere...)

Oops :) Yes, 10 were deployed on the rideshare mission into a polar orbit. Probably more to go up that way too eventually, maybe on more rideshares. I guess they're testing them out, and they're lower priority compared to rest of world. You can see launches and satellite numbers here for example - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink

Dishy has a couple of servos to get into position, and possibly some GPS. Apparently it just faces vertically for a bit til it can get signal, downloads its initial data, then points itself pretty-much fixed where to go. After that its just phased-array directional control.

Starlink works on radio 'cells' a bit like mobile phones. Its possible your Dishy is fixed to one cell, a number of cells, or it may just be a GPS geo-fence.

sidney

81 posts

Master Geek

#2677561 20-Mar-2021 12:00

I've placed my pre-order and now have an account at starlink.com. I still can't get to shop.starlink.com to find out about mounting and cable routing kits. Does that become available only after the order gets actually processed later this year? So I can't get the kits shipped at the same time as Dishy?

Chrisclarke

195 posts

Master Geek

#2677567 20-Mar-2021 12:20

sidney:

I've placed my pre-order and now have an account at starlink.com. I still can't get to shop.starlink.com to find out about mounting and cable routing kits. Does that become available only after the order gets actually processed later this year? So I can't get the kits shipped at the same time as Dishy?

My understanding is that you get an email before dispatch and have the option to add extras - that seems to have been the case in the US and UK. Perhaps one of the lucky NZ'ers on here who have their order confirmed can help?

sidney

81 posts

Master Geek

#2677570 20-Mar-2021 12:36

I think I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how the app check for obstructions function works and just had an epiphany about what it is doing. Maybe someone can say if I'm now correct in my understanding.

I run the app, select check for obstructions, and then if I tilt the phone around to different positions I can find the boundaries of a circular area in the sky where the app shows the camera view, surrounded by blacked out screen. I can't see the entire clear circle on my phone's screen at once, I have to pan around to get it all. At first I thought I was supposed to find a place to point the camera so it showed a clear unobstructed view of the sky. But now I'm thinking that Dishy is supposed to be placed where the entire circle shows sky with no obstructions. So the right way to use the app is to put the phone where Dishy is going to go and pan it around to confirm that everywhere that the app does not black out the screen has a clear unobstructed view of the sky. Is that correct?

Zander

75 posts

Master Geek

#2677571 20-Mar-2021 12:45

sidney:

I think I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how the app check for obstructions function works and just had an epiphany about what it is doing. Maybe someone can say if I'm now correct in my understanding.

I run the app, select check for obstructions, and then if I tilt the phone around to different positions I can find the boundaries of a circular area in the sky where the app shows the camera view, surrounded by blacked out screen. I can't see the entire clear circle on my phone's screen at once, I have to pan around to get it all. At first I thought I was supposed to find a place to point the camera so it showed a clear unobstructed view of the sky. But now I'm thinking that Dishy is supposed to be placed where the entire circle shows sky with no obstructions. So the right way to use the app is to put the phone where Dishy is going to go and pan it around to confirm that everywhere that the app does not black out the screen has a clear unobstructed view of the sky. Is that correct?

That's correct. Dishy needs to see the entire 'bright' area of the circle, and there shouldn't be anything in the camera blocking that 'bright' circle view. The 'direction' Dishy will adjust to face is the lowest point of that bright circle. Is that still north, or where?

sidney

81 posts

Master Geek

#2677572 20-Mar-2021 12:55

Zander:

That's correct. Dishy needs to see the entire 'bright' area of the circle, and there shouldn't be anything in the camera blocking that 'bright' circle view. The 'direction' Dishy will adjust to face is the lowest point of that bright circle. Is that still north, or where?

Yes, straight north. The thing I'm not sure of is whether mounting it on the north side of the house on the pole I showed in that picture I uploaded is sufficient so that the roof behind it to the south is not in the bright circle's field of view. I still have the problem that I can't see anything on the phone screen when I am outside. Even though the screen is bright enough to see when I run the camera app, the starlink app dims the "bright" circle too much to see in daylight. I asked about that on the starlink_support reddit and was told that behaviour seems to have started about last week and seems like a new bug in the app.

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