Starlink Standard Gen2 vs Gen3 Dish - Hands on Analysis of Power Use, Speed & Form Factor

he [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] hey and we're live and um I think Dan let's see are you you're not muted are you talking there Dan let's hear you can you hear me now perfect there you are awesome um hey we are live and for the first time we are live with a remote guest coming to us via starlink from the other side of the country so I'm uh Chris dunia the one of the co-founders of the mobile internet Resource Center my partner Sheree is right over Yonder um behind the uh there she is um man Manning the chat room and a guest today is Dan Heming one of the team members on the mobile internet Research Center he's been with us for quite a few years now two years now and he's been also a full-time traveler since 2017 and we've kind of made him our starlink Guru um he spends all his time obsessing over and playing with in testing and geeking out over Starling he answers a lot of questions in a lot of places and uh well Dan you want to say hello and say a little bit more about yourself sure hi I'm Dan Heming and uh as Chris said I've been full-time since 2017 um I've had Starling since the very beginning the round gen one the uh gen two for a couple years and now the Gen 3 and so I've had a chance to play with them back to back and we're going to talk about them today and see you know is it worth it for you to upgrade or should you um what decision should you make on that so look forward to talking to Chris about it yeah so cool so the first off is hopefully nobody's been living under a rock and and we don't have to explain too much about just what starlink is but it is a spacex's mega constellation of low earth orbit satellites um and we we've covered it we've covered starlink since before it even had an official name you know way way back we've been writing about it since they first uh dropped hints that they were working on this and have covered it every step of the way over at the mobile internet Resource Center um and it is actually pretty impressive they are up to as of today 5,442 operational satellites in orbit so we're almost getting to the point where there are more starlink satellites in orbit than all other satellites of all types combined which is a pretty amazing undertaking and makes it going to be really interesting for Starling competitors eventually to try to catch up we've covered that in Prior videos um the you know the basics you know to to just get started with starlink um you know 599 for the dish and the plan 150 and Dan you want to talk about the guide you've written that cover goes into a lot more depth on what those options are and how you can tweak them and the other things there absolutely so we have a guide at RV mobile internet.com for starlink um we talk about the different Hardware uh the different plans um While most people probably are on the RV or well now now it's called the uh Regional Mobile plan for $150 a month we do um provide some information on other plans in there such as residential and changing your service address also business there's a couple there's a very affordable business plan so um we talk about the hardware we talk about the differences in the routers and um give our feedback in the guide so it's a great place to start and then after that you can check out some of our other um starlink resources yeah danis Dan has spent a ton of time keeping that guide updated and then updated again and updated again as starlink keeps changing things so for all the big questions about starlink definitely check that guide out but today we're going to focus on very specifically Starling Gen 2 versus Ben 3 so here is kind of a a rundown of all the the currently and still basically available startling form factors and then one upcoming one there is the starlink standard which is Gen 3 the flat high performance the starlink standard actuated which is Gen 2 which has been retired and that's what we're going to be comparing that's the one that a lot of people already have and then we're not going to talk about it much because there's not a lot known but we do know the physical size of it so we can show the comparison of it there's a starlink mini that Elon has said will fit in a backpack that is coming out sometime this year so that is a a future dish to be aware of um anything you want to mention about these uh the different form factors before we dive into gen two versus gen 3 in particular um we'll talk about the size comparison and while the standard is 3 in taller and 3 in wider than the standard actuated because it doesn't have any Motors it actually you know it's a lot thinner and so the perception we'll we'll get into like how that feels moving around in a mobile application compared to the pole especially if you forgot to Stow your startling before you were gonna pack it up and the pole sticking straight out the back so some nice not having a pole that even worry about so cool so let's move on um so okay I guess they know that was the the the physical form factors yeah the the the the pole on the old dishy is um is both a blessing and a curse in some ways because you know what makes that the starlink actuated is is you know the motors in it and the aiming infrastructure and everything else um the the Starling gen 3 by going fully physically flat um it it's a bigger pizza box but it's a flatter pizza box and you know you know I you've said that that actually makes it a lot easier for you to store and absolutely yeah the nice thing is the kickstand that's on the back is almost like a handle you can grab it by the kickstand um carry it around um and definitely for storing I'm in a truck camper I'm actually in my truck camper right now storage space is a premium Chris and Tre have a van and uh I think Chris has shared you know they've stored their gen two and a pillowcase in the back but the Gen 3 takes up a lot less space in fact in my truck camper I can kind of scoot it up against the wall it's out of the way um it stays put so right away the the larger size wasn't really a negative to me um I saw that you know being thinner actually paid off and it's so nice pick up and carry around so nice yeah cool now let's talk about the the next thing we had here is the the one of the big changes from gen two to gen 3 and this is actually the one that I think aside from the technology inside the dishy advancing that I think a lot of people are most excited about is the horrible cables that were on the Gen 2 these proprietary special end cables that went from the the router inside to the dishy outside are gone and been replaced with a standard more typical RJ45 plug oh my God you you want to describe some of the pain of the old cable and what the advantages of the new absolutely well that old cable if you've been around social media you know people have had cable issues they see this starlink disconnected message it's almost always that cable on the dish side that just kind of falls out or people try to jam it in it gets broken it gets fried um Chris you fried a cable or two I I I had Sparks I had actually a literal Sparks shooting out the end of our cable when some salt uh salt water splashed on it a little bit of salt crystals I think condensed inside of it because we're on a boat and you Starling didn't design these cables they designed them to be plugged in once and not repeatedly and uh yeah it was kind of exciting to have Sparks shooting out of a cable um and SpaceX did replace the cable under warranty but uh it took them almost two months to do that so I was very glad I had a spare absolutely I've carried around a I think I've had two or three spare cables with me um I've made my original cable last but certainly um I've had cable issues I've had my Starling tell me the St the cabl disconnected and I've had to go on the roof and mess with it um or wherever it was set up so for me the RJ45 cables coming from the Gen one since it had RJ45 going to the proprietary going back this was a big decision for me why I wanted the Gen 3 was I wanted to get away from that proprietary cables and I'm glad to see um Starling went to them as you can see they're very they're more typical RJ45 they're not exactly like your ethernet land cable but they're very close um they've got the waterproof connector on them or the the plug that kind of blocks it out the other thing you'll notice is there's a little ramp on both sides because this plug is recessed into the router into the dish you can't really get in there to unlock it so a little snug pole releases it but it actually locks in there with some security which is nice to see so yeah and I guess one of the other things is the cables are symmetrical so it doesn't matter you know that with the old Gen 2 the there was one end was the only end that physically could plug into the router and the other end was the only end that physically could plug into the dishy and yeah that weird L-shaped and and some people had that all sorts of challenges when you're trying to route that wire through tight spaces with this weird L-shaped end um it was it was a bad design I'm really glad to see SpaceX has gotten rid of that um so that was one of the the the basic changes between gen two and gen 3 just on the physical side and yeah here's the more on the cables is is that the the gen two on the right there so just a little bit of vibration a little bit of of tension on the cable could disconnect your starlink and we've had that happen so many times where I've had to climb up on the ladder on the back of our van or up on the Radar Arch in our boat and just get a tiny fraction of a centimet millimeters of just more tension on the cable pushing it up into the dishy to get a better seal and uh get back online after startling drops because the cable vibrated loose so yay for cables that actually lock and if you see on the lefthand picture the the cable for the Gen 3 kind of slides in and like I said it's a firm connection you can tell it slides in you can give it a little tug it doesn't come back out so hopefully this will prove to be a much better design in the long run so yay and and it's you know behind the scenes and the wiring is still you know um RJ45 you know you you always been able to um kind of hack the wires and you know you know people have done ethernet adapters and stuff so the cable the the behind the scenes the cable is still kind of technically the same but it's just having better more standard ends um and hopefully more reliable ends that will prove out over time will uh end up being a a very happy making thing absolutely so now one of the big changes between uh gen 3 and Gen 2 is the side router because well the the Gen 2 router was designed for that special proprietary connector on the bottom and oh you've got it there yeah and it had yeah it had only two two connections on the bottom one for that special cable that would go out to the starlink and one for a power cable a waterproof special connector for power um and no other ports no other lights even it's a it's a completely I had one light on the bottom that would light up but and then this was glass people have actually broken this before this has some weight to it too because it's got the power the whole power for the dish is built into this um and then yeah so this is um a nice Improvement going to the Gen 3 which I can't show the Gen 3 because I'm operating off of it right now but it's a lot lighter it's got a nice low profile um it sits up nice and it's got ethernet ports on it which is awesome so hardwire um you have the the the ethernet dongle if you wanted an ethernet port if you want wanted to do physical wiring with the old starlink you had to do this incredibly awkward thing where you plug that in with its weird special connector it's keep bring it to the center of your frame there yeah that weird special connector uh you're slightly there it is yeah you plug the starting to it on one side that weird special connector into the bottom of the router and then your ethernet onto the other so you'd have this Rat's Nest of stuff and that was actually introduced a lot of um caused a lot of ethernet issues the the ethernet um coming out of the Starling Gen 2 um through that ethernet adapter wasn't quite up to ethernet standard so sometimes G getting a gigabit Ethernet connection would not be reliable and it was just a mess it was like who designed this and fortunately on gen 3 I think the next slide actually has the picture of it not only is the Gen 3 a Wi-Fi 6 versus wi-fi 5 router it has land ports and here they are so here's the a look at the bottom you got two real normal ethernet ports that you can work with and that port on the very left is actually the also cable we just showed previously that waterproof connector that's on the very left side that's the um W connection from the dish then the two land ports that can come out so yes and so much better and then on the right is the the um Barrel connector a waterproof brail connector to the power supply so that is one of the differences Is the Gen 3 has a second box separate box for the power supply whereas the Gen 2 it's built in um which you know still they both require AC power but you know theoretically this means either third parties or um maybe SpaceX themselves someday can come up with a a something that would run directly off of DC power that could power the Gen 3 router which would be great and so uh next up one of the things that is very significantly different with the Starling gen 3 versus 2 is um the Gen 3 is is bigger it's it's got some more Electronics in it and it's theoretically you know more advanced electronics but the big mission for SpaceX with Gen 3 was to make it cheaper and a big part of the way they made it cheaper the cheaper manufacturing is they got rid of the stock and the motors and everything so the Gen 2 when you power it on it tilts and aims and rotates and finds a spot in the sky it's optimal angle of of view of the sky and aims at it the Gen 3 has no moving parts so it's given up those parts it's presumably cost SpaceX a lot less to manufacture so they're no longer losing money on it as badly as they were but it's uh uh needs to be manually aimed and some people were worried it's like well what is this manual aiming going to be like is it a bad process the app will tell you hey aim your starlink you're out of alignment and you want to describe your um experiences with that absolutely yeah this has been something that comes up a lot on social media people like you got to aim this the gen three star link and they make it look as a bad you know as a bad thing but I've learned this is actually pretty simple um this is not like the old days of trying to line up a geostationary satellite where you had the pinpoint you know a direct spot in space uh in fact if you've got other starlink users around you point it the same direction it's going to boot up and be fine Bring up the app and you can see there's a square outside that I have it perfectly aligned in this one but real time as you adjust the dish it will move the little drawing on the screen and show you and we're going to show you some other screenshots I've tested this flat um and you know not not the aim the correct direction the app complains a little bit but then it works fine so um the one on the left is not quite aimed correctly but it's still in the box um the one on the right it's actually laid flat um and Starling complained the Tilt was incorrect but I was getting speed still well in like 200 to 250 even doing that so um and then just to see how bad I could make it I put it 90 degrees out of um aim the wrong way worked fine and even tilted 180 degrees the wrong way and while that probably by far um it still worked so really you can just set your Starling gen 3 up point it North Northeast whatever look at the app and adjust it and you're done you won't have to mess with it again so it's really not an issue at this point so yeah and and and as people have discovered with both the Gen 2 and the Gen 3 a lot of people like your yourself included have have disabled the Motors on the Gen 2 and just mounted it flat on the top of their RV and the Starling it it adjusts it it doesn't complain too long that it can't aim the way it wants to um it deals with it and this was an issue a lot more in the early days when there were just a thousand starlink satellites now that there's 5,000 there's a much better odds of a of a satellite being in the field of view even if you're flat or even if you're aimed slightly in the wrong direction so the aiming has become a lot less of an issue and that was one of the technical changes between between the Gen 2 and the Gen 3 is the Gen 2 has 100 Dee field of view of the sky and the Gen 3 has 110 degree field of view of sky so it can see more of the sky which helps make up for that it's not being able to have Motors to optimize it if you really want to be optimized for being flat you can pay $2500 and get the star starlink um a flat high performance the their kind of their pro model that has a 140° view of the sky that's the one that they technically recommend for installation on vehicles and such that is not going to have any opportunity to to do any sort of um manual aiming or Auto aiming and stuff so um but again in practice you're not really seeing the the needing to manually aim or even aim at all being much of an issue at all correct at this point it's more for probably precipitation runoff and as Chris said my Gen 2 has been flat that's the only negative is during a hard rain the rain might pull up on a dish and interrupt my signal um other than that it works fine flat and it's been flat for over two years and the Gen 3 there's people already coming out with flat mounts for it um I think it's going to be a popular option for people to mount this on a van or an RV using an optional third party Mount and just leaving it up there and then you can take all the mountain and set on the kickstand if you're under trees or need to get away from some obstacles so yeah yeah it it' be nice to have mounts that were quick release mounts even so you can you know put it on your roof and then oh you do want to get it out from under or you cuz you know that that's still star links's Nemesis is obstructions can have dropouts um and having the ability to take it out on its cord and uh go someplace is a good thing speaking of like taking it out on its cord though that's actually one change starlink made I guess also to save money is the cord that comes with the Starling gen 3 by default is shorter than the Gen two isn't it I thought it was still around 50 feet I'm not sure I'd have to look back at our at our I thought they went from 75 to 50 when they went to the Gen 3 but uh yeah they might have made that change earlier they did that with the gen two actually that was ear with the gen two 25 to 50 and I think it's still 50 it's like 49 and some inches so yeah it's still so cool let's see what's next here now the other big concern that we had with uh gen 3 when it first was announced is the specs it was a step backwards we you know already consider Starling to be a power hog particularly compared to Cellular you know cell cellular a cellular router is using like 10 to 15 watts of power starling Gen 2 was a power hog and gen 3 on paper was significantly higher spec power usage than Gen 2 so we were really concerned about that regression but you've been using it and have been doing a lot of long-term measuring and it is not as bad as we feared it still uses more power than Gen 2 but not nearly as much you want to talk about your observations AB yeah Starling claims about 25 watts on average and I'm thinking that was probably taking into effect the snow melt being on auto or turning on occasionally obviously in RV we're trying to cut as much power as possible I'm off grid 99% of the time so my snow melt is off and I the gen two I've lots of recordings I'm right at one kilowatt hour a day over 24 hours the Gen 3 raised that up to 1.25 kilowatt hourss so about 250 wat hours more over the course of 24 hours that's 10 to 11 Watts higher so it really isn't that much higher and if you're someone that turns your starlink off at night which sometimes during the winter time I do because that's a tough time of year being off grid you're saving another you know eight hours not being on so I'm can get down to like 75.8 kilowatt hours um when turning my gen 3 off at nighttime so overall I've been very happy this was one of the points I thought might be the deal killer and it's turned out to be not bad at all and you can see I've got some graphs there I've got a whole month of the Gen 3 running it's been 1.25 1.26 it's just pure steady now if you're a heavy heavy streamer in someone you might be a little little higher on that but I don't see you know jumping up a lot from that unless you had the snowmelt feature on so yeah so that is actually was was really good news and and starlink has added a feature where you can set a timer in the app where the starlink will basically go into sleep mode so you can set it to Auto go to sleep if you know you don't need much of starlinks usage overnight so that can save a lot of power for people um and our starlink on our boat and actually in our van we use a a a Siri connect Siri controlled um smart switch so we can just verbally say turn on and turn off and I don't want to do it now but you know you just don't want to have your starlink uh turning on and off just by voice to save power because it does use a lot more than cellular so it is something we only turn on when we really need it and um it's not very nice to have though now the big thing is so is Gen 3 a major jump up in performance and um you know there's the questions people are saying is does it have higher top speeds does it handle obstructions better um is it better for uploads you know what sort of observations have you had on how it actually performs and and also have what have you read from all the forums you're reading about how other people have seen so I got to do some testing head-to-head when I first got it I did find the Gen 3 generally had um higher Peak Performance but overall both of them are were performing very well now my the um the plans do come into play I do have my gen 3 on a residential plan which is standard priority I have my Gen 2 on I still grandfather in the portability so at my service address I should have the same priority as the the residential um overall I found them pretty close on just you know normal downloads um uploads I was kind of hoping the gen3 was going to be much better in uploads and it's about the same really no significant difference um the plans definitely do play into this though if you're on a mobile Regional plan or mobile Global and you're you're deprioritized and during congestion you can see a hit on that and I've observed that myself in my Gen 2 when I'm away from my service address um if you are grandfather in a portability and you're not moving your service address you're not really doing yourselves any favor because that definitely helps um by moving your service address to your location if you're still paying for that so yeah and and for for us we we keep we we've kept our starlink on the starlink standard residential plan because we don't find it to be too much of a hassle to manually change our address and avoid being on that lower tier so in some ways the the typical $150 auto mobile plan does run into a lot of frustrations that a lot of Starling people report of starlink users report of you're running into starlinks congestion issues not necessarily the the capabilities of the device so have paying extra or paying less you know either getting a residential plan or a mobile priority plan to get out of that congested Lane can uh um um sometimes be very worthwhile but it does give up some flexibility you got to do that manual address change which isn't really that big of a deal um so something to keep in mind now and then onru I was going to say I haven't um I haven't got a chance to test obstructions a whole lot but reports on social media people are finding the Gen 3 handles obstructions a lot better um so that's promising wider field of view the intended design internally changed a little bit so there's been speculation that that also makes it better and of course we have more satellites in the sky so it can talk to you know there's more up at a time so that's helping so I'll be in the Pacific I'll be in areas in the trees this summer um I'll probably update our testing and progress dread when I get to really put this to some uses and see um and we plan on traveling um with both starlings this summer so I'm going to be able to do some more head-to-head testing when they're both active and uh give some feedback on that so that'll be interesting some head-to-head testing under identical tree cover would be useful because in in our Journeys last summer as we've reported on the actually the last Merc live was um starlink in areas with trees was often not even worth bothering with um our Starling Gen 2 anyway just because the dropouts were so frequent and so frustrating um and you know often cellular would just run circles around starlink in those sort of situations but uh if if Gen 3 is improving on that um even just a little bit that does help get rid of some of the the the pain of starlink um we've also been um tracking a new firmware update that SpaceX has been pushing out that makes starlink let lets starlink keep its obstruction map that you know it Maps the sky so when it's after it's been plugged in for about 12 hours it has a sense for where the obstructions are and it could do a better job of avoiding them if you're parked in one place um starlink has a firmware update that keeps that even when powered down so when you first power up you don't have that 12 hours of extra pain while you're waiting for starlink to remap the sky so we're eager to get some more Hands-On or more reports of how well that firm where update is working because at least that makes the the starlinks learning process better so that is um brand new development that we're we're eagerly paying attention to what's next oh Easter eggs yeah you found a few uh uh little treats hidden on the Gen 3 router um so you want to point out the the little things you found by shining a flashlight into holes yeah absolutely yeah these are really tiny um these are the ethernet and Wan ports Lan ports and um so leave up to Elon and this company so the one says tomorrows and Beyond that's the ethernet wport on the ethernet land there's one that says made by human made by made on Earth by humans and then off to the right it's kind of hard to tell but that's Starship taking off from a launch and that's supposed to be the smoke in the background so these are and the Gen 3 routers so yeah so so we we double check the spacex's coverage map they still do not have coverage on mars or the moon yet so that is aspirational but they the last Starship launch they did demonstrate star starlink coverage in orbit and in all the way through uh the 70 miles of above the 70 kmers above the Earth during re-entry with plasma streaming past the Starship they still had a starlink connection so that's pretty impressive you know coverage is a I don't think they had sell coverage there so hey that's a point for starlink so we are we're about to move into the Q&A portion of our time so particularly starlink Focus questions we've got uh Dan here to share his wealth of experience so cue them up in the chat room and we'll bring them up um before we dive into the questions I just wanted to thank all of our mobile internet ficado members those are the members of our site over at RV mobile internet.com that that you know basically pay for all the work we do that uh um let us dive in and not have to worry about being advertising supported or sponsored or dealing with any of that stuff we're members supported so we can you know basically be responsible and uh um um live up unbiased and you know live up to our members so um that as you know please join us if you're interested in going deeper in Mobile internet content we got a lot of great stuff we've got member forums we've got member private webinars um all sorts of other stuff we're starting to Branch out into doing this public YouTube live but it's just kind of a taste of some of the stuff we do in Our member areas and if you are interested in joining us if as a thanks for watching our our YouTube lives here and our Facebook lives like this if you use the discount code Merk live um you will get a nice discount on joining so check it out and let's go um dive into uh questions and see if there's other but before we do any other last things you wanted to bring up about Starling before we take questions danan um just that I've been enjoying it it's a great compliment to Cellular I keep you know T-Mobile at Verizon and while starlink is greatly expanded the places we can go and Boondock um cellular is still very nice to have and it's nice to be able even for this live broadcast I've got several things going bonded on pepling to the signal you know a little more reliable so yes okay so let's make this Q&A time let's go pop over in the forums here and see that's a few already queued up few already queued up here so how far back do I need to go Abdul is the first one asking about Iraq okay ah I don't know if you guys will be able to answer that so um I'm do wants to know I want to ask about which is better um let's turn that off uh better gen two or gen 3 for territory that is not officially available for service right now uh he's in Iraq and so that is actually has nothing to do with the the generations that is um to do with licensing so um if SpaceX doesn't have a license to broadcast from the satellites down into a country even though the satellites are passing overhead they turn off their transmitters over areas that they are unlicensed so um there's no starlink signal to be had in Russia or China or Iraq or uh North Korea or places where SpaceX doesn't have a license yet and they're probably never will be they're not going to um you know do something hostile like that that would uh you know risk having their giving somebody an excuse to shoot their satellites down so um yeah it's not a gen two or gen 3 issue in that regard let's see um Andrew edstrom here we are so I live in Alaska and travel through Canada further Northern attitudes any thought if a Gen 2 actuator is better than gen 3 to get a good signal any thoughts Dan I got a few I do um I think this is double so the gen two obviously can probably tilt a little more than the uh than the Gen 3 would just on the you know on the kickstand so but the Gen 3 does have a wider field of view so maybe it doesn't need to obviously when you get further north like that there's less satellites in the sky you're probably looking further on the horizon um I guess it's a toss up I'm obviously I think the Gen 3 is going to have to be probably aimed properly to get a good signal yeah I I'm curious I'm Chris let's hear your thoughts I I I I would actually think that the Gen 3 would have a nice advantage that extra 10 degrees field of view will matter a lot because um you know down you know in in the you know uh continental US starlink dishes Point North but when you're up in Alaska they're actually they have a much wider field of view because a lot of the coverages to the South but there's actually satellites in polar orbit that are to the north so the satellite the starlink its ideal view would be an even larger view of the sky and that becomes extra important because SpaceX basically has fully fleshed out their constellation for you know basically mid Canada South um they have been kind of you know just because there's less customers and less demand they have not fully fleshed out their polar constellation so they actually still do have gaps and dropouts in the um the further north to go because it's just been less of a priority for them to finish filling out their shells up there their orbital shells there they're mostly focusing on bringing more capacity where there is more demand and congestion so I'm pretty certain that the field of view is going to be the most important thing although you know between 100 and 110 is not that big of a difference so I really wouldn't stress too much but I think gen 3 has got better odds in Alaska um I got another question RV with Tito hey Tito it's good to see you here um T asks yes yes um to not get dinged for in motion use do you get to Stow the Gen 3 and take it offline before moving your RV or he still has a gen two so this is the the story of starlink In Motion do you want to explain what's up with that so first off starlink doesn't really ding you for in motion they just if you're being and also been very LAX about enforcing this um my gen two has been flat I've had portability I've had unofficial in motion now for most of the time except for a 3-we period where they were first testing this but it just works or it doesn't it's kind of one of those two things if you're one of the people unfortunately that they're enforcing you're going to get the notification that you're over 10 miles per hour it's not going to work while you're in motion but as soon as you drop under 10 miles per hour within 30 seconds to aend it it's going to pick up again um the Gen 3 does not have a stone mode because there's nothing to Stow so if you were to Flat mount it on your roof there no harm in leaving it on and up and running even if you you know don't actually have the proper mobile priority um most people are finding they're still having in motion and again this is starling's lack of enforcement um if you truly want in motion you just have to opt into the mobile priority for $2 a gigabyte which if you're you know as long as you're not doing a lot of stuff online while you're doing that you're not going to rack up a huge bill and that would give you you know in motion officially above 10 miles hour if if you truly wanted it so and and and to be truly officially in motion it's the flat high performance is the only one that is officially certified and licensed for in motion so um if if if you want in motion and you want to be completely legit the flat high performance at $2500 and paying $2 a gigabyte is the way to do it I don't recommend anybody do that unless you are have a rockstar tour bus or something like that in the the budget to match that seems like the Gen 2 or the Gen 3 um even with without paying the $2 a gigabyte mobile priority most people are having really good success with that SpaceX seems to have backed off on their speed limit they certainly technically have the ability to turn that back on we have seen them test the 10 m per hour enforcement we've definitely seen that testing happen but then they back away and it's still in the but it's in the terms of service so just know that if you're going faster than 10 miles an hour it's it's it's it's on on you they might turn you off um okay and I just want to um thank you Katie for the thank you for that recommendation we much appreciate it um so Anita wants to ask is it possible to get a plan that you only use and pay for for one week every month I can jump in here so technically no um starlink is you you uh turn on your services for a month however if you time your start date right you could possibly make this work so the way it works is when you renew your subscription when you unpa sorry when you unpause your mobile subscription towards the end of your billing period you are only you're pro-rated basically um that one week or whatever let's say it's a week left if you if it was consistent like one week every month like the end of the month and you had your subscription set up that way that it renewed at the first of the month you can make it work but it's not something that you can't literally turn it on for a week turn it off and only pay for a week if you turn it on yeah but that and then that that is you're kind of subject to Starling schedule not the week that you want to use it so it's you're just kind of through a a loophole in their Billing System there so it's in in Practical terms yeah they they really want to get at least a month usage out of you which is kind of unfortunate but that's the the way they've priced it and designed it yeah so we got a question from Howard about the Gen 3 what are the options available if you need a much longer cord so I believe there is the 50 foot cord that comes with it and then I think there's 150 foot cord that is as an option in the store I would have to verify that but I believe that made that available of course it is a standard RJ45 cord it won't be waterproof but you could you know um make your own cord up to the limits of what you know Ethernet or Cat 5 cat 6 can support if you truly I think you you can generally go about 300 feet before you have to get into kind of uh um active repeaters and stuff but yeah the the having it be a standard standard cable and standard ends you know the the waterproof ends on the side on the the end you'll you would give up that waterproofness but um it's more flexible in that regards and I would be not be surprised to see third parties coming out with cords now too because there's you know less proprietariness to deal with in that weird L-shaped special end um abely so uh James Christo asks is there an improved pole mount I've heard there were some problems with the original pole mount so the original poon from starlink they actually stopped selling the first one they came out with and supposedly came out with a redesign it's still not it's not very deep that's the problem is um it doesn't have a lot to grab on the pole there are some third-party options um flag pole budy who we've had on our website for like gen one and gen two they've come up with a much improved gen 3 pole mount um Trio is a small company that that 3D prints a amount and I just came across today I think it was dbll designs um they come out with an adapter to fit better into the starlink um actual pole mount adapter that fills that space and it makes a lot more rigid so if you want the official starlink part um pole mount and then this adapter it looks like it would be a much better um solution and we're actually we're actually preparing a accessories guide right now that's going to cover these options so yeah yeah so so yeah over at the mobile internet Resource Center the starlink accessories guide will be live um you very soon which has we'll have kind of links to all of these options so well so so not a guide it'll be not a guide it'll be in our gear Center we're our gear Center for starlink is being fleshed out with a lot of accessories so um I think Shere will throw the the link to our top of the level of the starlink Year Center there and uh yeah we've been working on that let's go to um Bruce has got a question I as a rural person have a first gen star link is there any chance I can use this equipment with a mobile plan should be absolutely so Bruce I'm assuming you probably have a residential plan um you can actually move your service address meaning it's you can use it in a portable fashion um if you're asking about mobile as an in motion um that would be you know again it was never a proof for in motion but we know some people ear on Marcus tuck had a first gen star link and he put it in a spare tire um that one's actually very easy to disable the motors because you just um take that back cover off unplug the motors and you can you would just be on your own coming up with some sort of Mount to hold it if that's what you mean but if you want to just RV with it or travel with it you can subscribe to the mobile plan and it'll work anywhere or you can change your address um and save some money and be higher in the priority as we talked about earlier on the on the broadcast so awesome there Larry points out that the starlink Gen 3s have been selling like hot cakes it is Best Buy uh for a lot of rvers and yeah it is it is a really handy tool to have in your RV Tech Arsenal um it I certainly for a lot of people it doesn't replace cellular particularly if you need a really reliable connection but it is a great compliment and it lets you go places that you couldn't go before and that was the kind of the topic of our last uh um um Merc live where we shared about our last Summer's V tripping around of where things worked and where things didn't and even places that starlink would not get online so um but yeah it is definitely a wonderful tool to have for rvers and cruisers um and let's see so roller Angels moving to a forest with house has clear view the sky with some trees around um what would you recommend um yeah main thing is just getting as much clear view of the sky as you can can manage um you know whether it's a pole or roof mounted or whatnot um that's the the basics there I think I'm just questions well roller asked about yeah Power twoo um but we covered that earlier about one kilowatt hour one kilowatt hour per day for the Gen 2 and about 1.25 for the Gen 3 so if you're off grid certainly a substantial amount of power to you know adjust to yeah so I think we are caught up on questions for the moment uh if there's any last minute ones that come in we can take them otherwise I think we're getting close to uh wrapping up here um so yay uh yeah Dan I want to thank you for joining us for for this I hope you had fun coming in live from uh your your bits flying through space to get down here yeah Florida yeah I'm the live so um oh oh no that's finish up with Abdul is um is he pointed out yes that the Ser servic is working in Iraq if you have I guess Iraq is you know that that must have a license there Iran is where there's definitely not going to be a license but Iraq is more I guess neutral territory so um but yeah the starlink if you set it to continent level or you buy the international plan the global plan it will work in any country starlink has the license to transmit and it's not really a gen two or gen 3 so um if you are if there is sign coming down to you where you're at go with either one of them you have yeah the all the other comparisons we just went through app yep and all the all the comparisons about Gen 2 gen 3 apply anywhere you're getting signals so yeah if you get an an Asian plan and a um the global Rome Plan and there's signal there that will work it doesn't matter whether you which which star link you have I think the part might be getting the Gen 3 now I think it's us and Australia maybe I don't know any other continents that been made available yet so [Music] yep well cool so I think um we are yeah that's oh yeah okay that is a good point is the Gen 3 is not out in most of the rest of the world yet so yeah yeah that is a challenge if you want to wait for it but yeah it I'm sure it will be filling in soon because it's a lot cheaper for SpaceX to manufacture it they want to get rid of the Gen 2s they've built and switched to gen 3 as soon as they get their local licenses to sell things in all the various places so we are caught up I'm going to to wrap this up with one more a little tease about our uh membership and say hey we are member funded over at the mobile internet Resource Center we really love it when our when people come and join us and as a thank you for watching and joining us on the live today if you use the code Merc live to join us over at the mobile internet Resource Center um you will get a a nice uh discount on your membership so come check us out and you can go a lot deeper with us and even if not you know just thanks for watching spread the word give us a thumbs up um let us know know what you think of these videos and what you think um future topics for a live if you enjoyed this live format it's kind of a new thing for us so if you want us to keep doing these lives give us the encouragement Say Hey I love that that's an an enjoyable thing we're set up to do remote interviews now so we can probably have some really fun interesting guests perhaps so uh let us know if that's of interest to you and well again thank you and thank you Sheree for uh Manning the the chat room there I um Heard lots of typing going on behind me so hopefully the the chat room was well behaved and uh we'll see you all next time and uh well may the bandwidth be with [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Mobile Internet Resource Center

Views: 9,139

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Id: taqReNj9jbw

Length: 46min 49sec (2809 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2024