Starlink for video

[Kinkircating]

I’m currently 400 miles off shore on passage from the Chesapeake to Antigua on a 52’ catamaran sailing at 10kts & I’ve had 7 zoom calls this week with clients around the globe, zero latency, zero connectivity issues, absolutely flawless. All types of sea states, all times of the day.

It’s freaking amazing.

[donradcliffe]

Owner rented a 'mobile' starlink system for the last delivery u the west coast to Anacortes. It was a typical RV setup with a dishy.

Tried it about 40 miles off Oregon in a big swell. It woke up, the lights came on, the antenna moved, but no connection.

[shimari]

Originally Posted by Kinkircating

I’m currently 400 miles off shore on passage from the Chesapeake to Antigua on a 52’ catamaran sailing at 10kts & I’ve had 7 zoom calls this week with clients around the globe, zero latency, zero connectivity issues, absolutely flawless. All types of sea states, all times of the day.

It’s freaking amazing.

Curious which dishy you're using: square dishy, or the performance dishy?

[Marathon1150]

Originally Posted by skalashn

My wife does a lot of video calls for work and she was not impressed with Starlink. It seems to work well for anything else not as sensitive to signal drops. I suspect the mast will sometimes obstruct the view. Once when it got really bad I tested for obstructions with the phone app and it reported about 20%. I jumped in the dinghy and tried again about 100m from the boat, and it was all clear.

Also heavy rain and thick clouds = no signal.

This is similar to our experience. We have a regional account so moving around on the boat from place to place is not an issue. Time of day can have significant impact on upload/download speeds presumably because of traffic.

For most things such as email, streaming services (e.g. Netflix etc) it works really well - at least as good as a cable connection on land. My experience with Zoom meetings is mixed. There are definitely dropouts that interrupt the conversation. Facetime usually works well but for a meeting it is not the best.

Conclusion, for most things it is great and actually a reasonable price. For Zoom meetings its ok but I always warn other people in the meeting that there will be issues and there usually are.

We also have an IridiumGo. Compared to Starlink, the IGo is stoneage technology but it worked for email and weather while crossing the ocean. No experience yet with the Starlink in that kind of application.

[h20man]

Originally Posted by Sea-TechSystems

For anyone using Starlink for work purposes on a boat, I would recommend reading the following two posts.. Whether or not you end up with "Narwhal" system or some other solution, the information is relevant...

https://narwhalwifi.com/narwhal-wi-fi-onboard/

https://narwhalwifi.com/how-does-nar...rove-starlink/

@Sea-TechSystems ... The narwhalwifi system relies on a good cell signal.


I have had no issues with Starlink Connectivity with a HP Dish.


In remote areas, or more then 5 miles off shore (in theory could be 20 miles off shore if a cell antenna is on shore in a high area), there shall be no cell service.



This is where starlink works wonderfully. In fact, the more remote.. the better the connectivity.. (as no one else is sharing your space to talk to the sats)



With the current Starlink coverage, I do not think that this solution has any rational value for most people. If they are in cell covarage then just get a cell based system. If travelling further off shore.. Starlink is the way to go in my opinion. I look forward to your comments/observations/experience..

[RedneckRedcoat]

Originally Posted by shimari

Curious which dishy you're using: square dishy, or the performance dishy?

We use the regular dishy with no modifications and it’s been brilliant for working remotely. I do 3-5 teams meetings a day with little to know issues unless there are major thunderstorms.

I found Roam works to about 10- 12 miles of the coast, haven’t tried mobile priority whilst working but have whilst sailing off shore. Providing no one is streaming videos or movies the costs are reasonable and affordable. The moment someone starts streaming the data usage go though the roof.

I’m interested in the third generation dishy that’s being piloted at the moment. We will see what the reviews say when they are finally released.

Also not starlink allows vpn pass through but does not provide a vpn option if your company requires that

[glanrock]

The only time I've had issues with Starlink at anchor were not from the rain, but the wind. High winds, 25+, at anchor has me kiting around and the signal was becoming problematic for my Zoom and Teams meetings. Other than that, no issues I can think of other than as a few others mentioned on occasion the Starlink really wants to point straight at the mast to acquire a signal.

[boat driver]

Originally Posted by Kinkircating

I’m currently 400 miles off shore on passage from the Chesapeake to Antigua on a 52’ catamaran sailing at 10kts & I’ve had 7 zoom calls this week with clients around the globe, zero latency, zero connectivity issues, absolutely flawless. All types of sea states, all times of the day.

It’s freaking amazing.

just retuned from delivering south to carribean and used starlink non-stop offshore.
No problems-
Conflicts known- It must be an unobstructed view of sky- sails, rig, all can cause conflicts no diffrent than tree leaves-
offshore the competiton is minimal so broadband available. Put into a crowded region of users and the broadband begins to get tighter-leading to more issues.

Internet on the Chesapeake Bay area was asked intially-
I know from past experience the Sassafras River harbor marinas all have super fast wifi-and the coverage except Oasis is superb. I met an number of Drs using Friday and Monday office hours to do remote video appointments from their boats. That requires confidence in the system. I also met a family over the labor day weekend that had five children individually all doing gaming during cocktail hour- I believe that takes speed and broadband capacity capability.

[jonathanv]

I teach online courses from our boat and when I was testing it out stationary in a marina I found that the connection would still drop every once in a while for about 4-5 seconds. If it were a normal conference call of an hour or so, this wouldn't be much of an issue but I generally teach 4-5 hours straight and then I find it unprofessional to know that I'll drop every so often. I expect this would also increase if the boat is on a mooring/at anchor with a bit of swell.

But this was May, so maybe this will have improved given how many new sats are going up. I'll give it another shot sometime next year but we have strong 4G/5G connections where I am now and these have never missed a beat. 4G/5G can also deal with swell when at anchor. Last course I gave I had to struggle to stay sitting in front of the camera but at least the connection was rock steady.

I am curious if Priority Data makes any difference.

[SV__Grace]

Both of us work remotely and Starlink has been a blessing, enabling us to cruise much farther and more remotely than when we relied on cell carriers and hotspots.

As full time cruisers in PNW we find that-

• Starlink's Mobile Regional Plan is great as we don't plan ocean crossings.
• Mobile Regional works for us ($150.00/mo) and includes territorial waters (read the fine print). No need for a "Boat" or "Maritime" plan or more expensive dish.
• Mobile Priority includes 50GB of priority data for $50.00 more, and $2.00 per GB after 50GB. The good news is that it's blazingly fast anywhere, the bad news is that somehow Starlink eats up gigbytes faster than any cell provider hotspot and 50GB normally would last us 3 weeks but with Starlink 50BG only lasts @5 days. Insane. Paying $2.00 per GB after that is prohibitive but we get by just fine on non-priority, which is automatic unless you check the box to continue priority. With Mobile Regional it's nice to have the choice at any time to upgrade to Mobile Priority knowing we can downgrade after 30 days, which is easy to do in the app.
• Non-priority speeds in a busy, populated area during the day works fine for us, but speed slows down considerably in the evening when a lot of users (like us) are streaming video. Not a problem outside of busy, populated areas. Streaming our shows at night can be a PIA, but it does work, and saves us a lot of money (we were able to cancel 3 hotspot plans we were using to meet our needs before Starlink and were SOL in remote areas outside of cell coverage. This just motivates us to get out there more!

[ausnp84]

Currently sat in the southern Caribbean and both my partner and I are using Starlink to work remotely. I had a - I kid you not - 8.5hr video training call last week and Starlink performed flawlessly the whole tine. Standard RV / $150 per month plan.

The term game changer gets bandied around way too much but for those cruising while working, Starlink really is a game changer.

N

[TBW]

Starlink mobile, Jasper, Alberta to Warderick Wells, Bahamas - never a glitch.
Dont leave home without it.

[edventuredad]

I used Starlink last winter all down the coast and to the Bahamas using what was their "RV" plan. They changed to the current model just as I got back to Florida. So, for the last part of the trip, returning to Canada, I was on the current roaming plan.

It worked terrific, in short. My work is all Remote Desktop work and includes VOIP calls. Remote Desktop stuff is pretty network-intense in some ways... it's not big downloads, but requires a constant stream of data so that when you do something such as type or move the mouse, that gets sent over the network to the remote server, where the virtual computer's screen is updated with the keypress or mouse movement, and the change of the screen gets sent back to be displayed on your screen. All that to say, it's very apparent when there's a break in the stream or if things have much latency... it's like dealing with a REALLY slow computer. Starlink didn't show signs of that at all.

There are a couple things that I did find with it, though. One is that if you're at a dock, make sure you're docked far enough from land so you don't have trees blocking part of the sky. I was at one place where this was not possible and it had a second or two of outage every 97 seconds or something like that. If you're at a spot long enough (several hours) the Starlink app will actually show you this outage and say something like that (expected outage of 2 seconds every 98 seconds, for example). If you're anchored in a very protected and calm space, such that your vessel drifts around the anchor, this may cause the dish to need to reposition regularly. That's a real pain. Dropping a stern anchor for those times can help. Finally, weather can affect it. A very strong rain can knock the signal out. I had this two or three times the entire winter where the weather was bad enough to cause issues. But, through standard rainstorms and stuff, I didn't have that issue. That said, if it was really storming, I was not able to focus hard on a screen anyway, so work was out of the question. But, I did stream some movies while it was blowing hard out. ;-)

Good luck to ya!

[Captain Red]

Originally Posted by alc02three

What is your experience using Starlink?

My Goal: to attend work-related zoom meetings while on my sailboat.

Using Marina Wifi and personal hotspot while docked/in slip is often slow and unreliable at my location on the Chesapeake Bay. My hotspot works fine while inland.

Generally, I plan to be docked or at anchor while making calls. But I would like to make calls at different locations up and down the Chesapeake bay, and even the East coast. So I suspect this means I would need to get one of the Starlink mobile plans...

Given your goals why wouldn't a cellphone service with unlimited data/unlimited hotspotting work for you? For $25/month you could use Verizon's Visible plan, or Mint, or another MVNO, or go with a branded plan for more $. Our experience has been 4G is plenty fast enough for Zoom/Video calls, Verizon says 5G is available up north towards Annapolis and Baltimore. If signal quality is a persistent issue for you, then perhaps you do need a satellite. But sailing the Chesapeake you should be well covered. You can always get a cell signal antenna to improve reception.

[CarlF]

Zoom over Starlink is MUCH better than it was a year ago as Starlink has launched more satelites. Most of the time we have no interuptions on a Zoom call. If one happens it's maybe 2 seconds and the other people on the call usually don't notice. It works MUCH better than Zoom over a cell phone or hotspot.

There's a lot of old information floating around the internet from the early days that is no longer accurate.

The most important thing on a sailboat is to minimize obstruction from the mast. The standard V2 dish has a 110 degree field of view (the V2 is used by 95% of sailboats because the HP dish uses twice the power).

Imagine a 110 degree cone coming up from the face of the dish. If the mast or boom falls anyplace in that cone you are at a great risk of interuptions while using Zoom as a satelite passes behind it. The bests antenna location is at the stern because it's farthest from the mast.

Try it for a few months with the motors connected. Most sailboats do not disconnect their motors. But, if you are being bothered by interuptions consider disabling the motors to keep the dish from pointing towards the mast. But start out with the motors since disabling them voids the warranty on the dish and you can't return it.