Starlink for video

[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.

Starlink has a mobile regional plan, and a mobile global plan. Has anyone used the global plan for attending zoom meetings while in the open ocean?

What about data and usage? I would likely be attending 20 hours of meetings/week maximum, and wonder what kind of plan I would need. Is being docked at a marina generally "inland" enough to qualify for mobile inland? What about being anchored a half mile to a mile away?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Thanks.

[shimari]

A fair amount to unpack here:

1. You want Mobile Regional while in the Chesapeake and along the East Coast (presuming you don't go too far offshore). I'm pretty sure you can add priority data (ocean) on the regional plan.

2. I've seen a videos of a couple of people doing zoom calls from the ocean.

3. Unlimited data while inland or near shore...you only need to worry about data costs when using priority data far offshore.

Depending on your antenna location, you may have obstructions while at the dock. If your meetings are important enough, you'll want to think about augmenting the Starlink by creating a bonded channel with cellular. This will allow you to avoid drops caused by obstructions or other interference with Starlink. Using a Peplink router is the easiest way to do that with SpeedFusion.

Starlink is awesome, but if you want reliability for work you need to augment the Starlink.

[bcboomer]

If you check previous threads you'll find someone cruising full time while he and his wife both do that type of work simultaneously.

[wholybee]

For most typical usages Starlink is indistinguishable from having cable Internet from Cox, Comast, or whatever is available in MD. It works for video calls, streaming HD movies, and gaming. If you dig into the numbers, it falls short, but not by an amount that most people would ever notice in daily use.

On a boat, obstructions can be an issue at times. For example, if based on the orientation of your slip the dish aims itself right at your mast. Some people modify the dish by cutting it open and disconnecting the motors. It will work if it faces straight up, or even if it faces the "wrong" way. So this prevents the obstructions.

There are areas in the middle of the Chesapeake that are considered "ocean" and require "priority" data. If your plans are to use it in a slip or an anchorage, this won't matter.

[alc02three]

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies and expert advice! This is exactly the kind of pro-level consultatation I'd hoped to get here. Wanted to send out this general message of gratitude and then hash out some specific comments in a followup post.

[leecea]

Is the Starlink connection degraded by bad weather?

[dannc]

Originally Posted by leecea

Is the Starlink connection degraded by bad weather?

Heavy rain, and I do mean heavy, can cause the Starlink connection to be lost. I suppose the data rate could be affected but we have never noticed. We have lost the connection a couple of times due to heavy rain.

Ironically, when we lived in the city and had cable, heavy rain would drop Internet. Best I could figure is they had a microwave link somewhere.

The cell internet was the same. Heavy rain degraded the data rate and we would loose the connection even though we are really close to the cell tower.

When we had DSL, we would loose the connection when lightning was on certain bearing from the house. I THINK the connection would drop with ground strikes since the connection did not always stop. In some storms, it would drop quite a bit and others not at all. So my guess it was lightning ground strikes.

We have had far less service disruptions with StarLink than any Internet technology due to weather or other issues. DSL, cable, and cell cost us a bunch of down time due to wiring, plans, equipment, and the network.

We maintain a cell based backup StarLink just in case, but have not used it, other than to make sure it works.

Later,
Dan

[SailingHarmonie]

I'll double up on comments already made. There is no issue using starlink for "normal" internet services. The only people who have regular problems are those using the link for video conferencing and other applications where a drop of a few seconds is a problem. (Talk about the ultimate "First world problem"!)

How good a connection you get will depend a lot on your install and the amount of traffic where ever you are. If you have a mast or other superstructure that blocks part of the sky, you will see drops typically a few seconds at a time, but again, not noticeable in most applications. The only way I know they happen is looking at the monitoring app. If you are in a marina, you can be blocked by boats in the neighboring slips.

If you are in area where there are a lot of users, you can see a slowdown as the Roaming plans are the lowest network priority. We were in Sint Martin and most of the cruiser fleet lost connection entirely for hours at a time because half a dozen of the largest cruiseships came into port at the same time, and you suddenly had 30,000 users with expensive priority data pushing roaming data off the bottom of the pipeline. As the satellite constellation continues to grow, this will probably become less of a problem.

If data priority is an issue, and you NEED to make a connection, you can always toggle on mobile priority data and join the big boys at the top of the heap for $2/GB. If you are working, you should be able to afford that

Starlink does say that heavy rain can affect the signal, but we haven't had that happen yet. In normal weather it pushes through just fine. A dense tropical downpour might still be an issue.

In short for recreational sailors, it is close to an ideal solution. For remote work underway by video conference, or are high end gamers, it will have a few glitches, but we know people who work around them.

[dannc]

Originally Posted by SailingHarmonie

I'll double up on comments already made. There is no issue using starlink for "normal" internet services. The only people who have regular problems are those using the link for video conferencing and other applications where a drop of a few seconds is a problem...

The wife and I work from home most days, and when we first got StarLink we were working at home full time. I can't say we ever had a problem with video conferencing, even when we had two meetings going at the same time. We did have issues with DSL but the DSL service provider is a big can of worms.

The video conferencing issues we have seen have not been StarLink's problem. The fact that video conferencing works at all is just magic, using StarLink or not. Talking to people around the world without too many problems is just Science Fiction turned into reality.

Now, the house ain't moving, so someone using StarLink in motion could have an issue if the signal was blocked, but other than that, StarLink just works 99.9999% of the time for us.

Later,
Dan

[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.

[dannc]

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.

I think the key to the problem is the mast obstruction. The wife and I have had multiple meeting today, , at the same time, with no problems at all. It is not unusual for us to have meetings, and have them at the same time, without a problem. But we have a clear, unobstructed view to they sky and I think that is key.

We have had heavy rain block the connection but it has not happened often. Thick clouds have not be an issue either, even when we have had larger thunderstorm clouds, which I would have thought would be a problem. Maybe we got lucky and the satellites where in a line of sight above the clouds, no lower on the horizon?

Later,
Dan

[skalashn]

Well the dish is designed and approved for fixed installation. I am sure glad we can still use it on the move. The mast obstruction does not occur very often...maybe it depends on the direction the boat is pointed, time of day, or Musk's mood. Or maybe it is worse at our latitutude.

[Gone Gypsy]

We had limited internet at home due to our (very) rural location in Florida. No fiber. No cable. No land phone. Limited cell phone reception. Last year we could not get a home Starlink subscription due to capacity restrictions, so we installed an RV Starlink at home. Same equipment with lower priority for data. We were concerned about slow data but that has not happened.

We are running the entire house on a Starlink RV subscription. I work from home and the Starlink access has been better than any other satellite we previously tried (Viasat, HughesNet) especially during bad weather and heavy rain. We stream TV, use TeamsMeet everyday for business and have been very satisfied.

Our plan is to move this equipment to the boat as we start cruising more and get a residential Starlink subscription with a Gen 3 Modem now that capacity has been opened up. Most folks have can move the dish to a better location onboard should there be mast interference. A back up for critical access onboard is a good idea but i think most folks would be more than happy with Starlink RV as long as you are no at 'ocean'.

[dannc]

Originally Posted by skalashn

Well the dish is designed and approved for fixed installation. I am sure glad we can still use it on the move. The mast obstruction does not occur very often...maybe it depends on the direction the boat is pointed, time of day, or Musk's mood. Or maybe it is worse at our latitutude.

Sure the dish will work when moving, but if an obstruction pops up between the dish and the satellite(s) because the boat moved, one can't blame Starlink. That would be like me taking my dish off the roof and walking through the woods wondering why we lost connectivity.

This is one of the sites that shows the Starlink satellites, https://satellitemap.space/. Really don't know how they create the map... It is amazing.

I have not looked at one of those sites in six months or so and there are certainly more satellites up there now.

Later,
Dan

[svmobert]

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/