Test Results: Starlink on a Sailboat Underway

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by jbinbi

This guy claims a 10-30% power reduction , high power/low power modes by bypassing the inverter. He thinks that part of that is due to nominal draw of inverter to begin with in quiescent state, so low power gets a better power reduction.

https://www.tuckstruck.net/truck-and...-on-ac-and-dc/

I would think that given the interest in marine/RV community version 2 or 3 over the next couple of years will see the design engineers figure out a way to be more power efficient. At least I hope that is the case

Tuck's a good guy, with a pretty cool rig, & he knows his stuff. He's a land-cruiser, so very similar to us water-cruisers.

Starlink uses a (somewhat bastardized) Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) system to get power from the router to Dishy. Tuck (& several others) use a PoE injector to inject their own 48v into the Ethernet cable to power Dishy, so they can then use a different router.

Inverters are generally pretty efficient, but there's a cost to turn them on. My 1,500W Heart draws 4A just to turn it on, but it's pretty efficient after that.

So running things from small, dedicated power supplies is usually more efficient, which is why we run all our laptops from dedicated 12v->19v "mobile" power supplies (~$30-50 at Amazon). I'd expect a dedicated 12->48v supply to be similarly efficient, although there will always be small parasitic losses.

One would hope that the 12v community (cruisers, RVers, off-griders & maybe truckers) would be a large enough community for Starlink to recognize us, but we're a very small community compared to the rest of their customers. I'm also expecting Tesla to embed the guts of Dishy into the rooves of Teslas in the not-so-distant future (but they've got a different electrical system entirely).

FWIW, it wouldn't take much for Starlink to build a 12->48v supply into the router (to then supply Dishy) instead of their existing AC supply, but I'm not sure we're a large enough customer base for them to bother. Also, if you turn on Dishy's heaters, they can push Dishy's normal 50W up to well over 100W, & any internal power supply would have to be able to handle that, which would drive prices up.

The question is: how do we raise our voices enough for Starlink to recognize us, especially when we're not supposed to be using the system underway at all right now?

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

Tuck's a good guy, with a pretty cool rig, & he knows his stuff. He's a land-cruiser, so very similar to us water-cruisers.



Starlink uses a (somewhat bastardized) Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) system to get power from the router to Dishy. Tuck (& several others) use a PoE injector to inject their own 48v into the Ethernet cable to power Dishy, so they can then use a different router.



Inverters are generally pretty efficient, but there's a cost to turn them on. My 1,500W Heart draws 4A just to turn it on, but it's pretty efficient after that.



So running things from small, dedicated power supplies is usually more efficient, which is why we run all our laptops from dedicated 12v->19v "mobile" power supplies (~$30-50 at Amazon). I'd expect a dedicated 12->48v supply to be similarly efficient, although there will always be small parasitic losses.



One would hope that the 12v community (cruisers, RVers, off-griders & maybe truckers) would be a large enough community for Starlink to recognize us, but we're a very small community compared to the rest of their customers. I'm also expecting Tesla to embed the guts of Dishy into the rooves of Teslas in the not-so-distant future (but they've got a different electrical system entirely).



FWIW, it wouldn't take much for Starlink to build a 12->48v supply into the router (to then supply Dishy) instead of their existing AC supply, but I'm not sure we're a large enough customer base for them to bother. Also, if you turn on Dishy's heaters, they can push Dishy's normal 50W up to well over 100W, & any internal power supply would have to be able to handle that, which would drive prices up.



The question is: how do we raise our voices enough for Starlink to recognize us, especially when we're not supposed to be using the system underway at all right now?

More likely the dishy design might be licensed by established marine in motion suppliers of comms units KVH , Ray etc.

Expect a commensurate sakes price