starlink for beginners

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

No, this is incorrect. The phenomena you describe isn’t the Starlink constellations.

First, there is only one Starlink constellation. Second, what you see is a fresh batch of satellites that was launched very recently. Such a batch is launched in one rocket and they are placed in a cassette and ejected from it all at once. Afterwards they slowly navigate to their positions in the constellation and you won’t see them anymore.

I much rather have Starlink satellites than government spying and military weaponized satellites.

Why won't you see them anymore? Surely they will be visible exactly the same way other satellites are.
'Despite the more than 5,500 Starlink satellites currently in orbit, SpaceX hopes to launch up to 12,000 satellites during this phase and possibly 42,000 someday.'
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-real-s...ing-earth.html

Interactive map here
https://www.starlinkmap.org

[tcpbob]

Nohal
that is interesting… so to make sure I understand… working within the APP in the phone there is a setting to allow access to the mini via my supplied router via ethernet connection. That sounds good except the mini has no ethernet connection. Not to mention any of my routers.


But the concept remains. There is a setting to allow any further editing of the account via anything, any devise? Confirmation from anyone with experience with this would be good.






Leecea
I am aware that location can be tracked. It is a downside to the system. But then I look at the alternatives and takes me pick of least offensive and most useful. Anything with a sim can also be tracked. But taking a beating in open ocean that could have been avoided with current weather information can change perspectives on the importance of that. I just finished a circumnavigation, solo on my 12 meter cat and I think I have seen the effects of climate change, or just bad luck.






Jedi
your tablet running Android by google is far from the same as my laptop running a relatively secure OS. Your tablet appears and acts much more like an Android phone than a computer. But they can be very seductive in their capabilities. To each their own.
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[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by tcpbob

your tablet running Android by google is far from the same as my laptop running a relatively secure OS. Your tablet appears and acts much more like an Android phone than a computer. But they can be very seductive in their capabilities. To each their own.

My tablet run iOS from Apple, a competitor to Google and considered to offer much better privacy and security than Android.

The big differentiation is that you can have a tablet without cellular, without a SIM, which makes it exactly the same as a laptop or computer for so far as tracking is concerned.

You may have other ideas but this is reality.

[cram]

If privacy is your concern, Android is built on Linux and is open source. You could recompile it with just the features you want. You don't even have to use the Google app store.

https://source.android.com/

I doubt that having an old smartphone, with no sim card, switched on just when needed to initialize your dish (or repoint it in the right direction every time you move) is going to be an ongoing security concern.

If you've ever used wifi or the internet, you're being tracked. Doesn't have to be from your phone. Someone else's phone, tablet, laptop, etc... can collect data on all the MAC addresses they "see", all the wifi access points they see and make that available to the mother ship. Hiding your wifi network doesn't hide the data.

[HeinSdL]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Why won't you see them anymore? Surely they will be visible exactly the same way other satellites are.
'Despite the more than 5,500 Starlink satellites currently in orbit, SpaceX hopes to launch up to 12,000 satellites during this phase and possibly 42,000 someday.'
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-real-s...ing-earth.html

Interactive map here
https://www.starlinkmap.org

I think they're trying to make them less reflective. Nevertheless, the number of satellites just for Starlink is definitely mind boggling and doesn't Jeff Bezos have the intention to compete (with another constellation of thousands of satellites, as well as the EU? This would have been a good case for making it a global, public good, and not privately owned.

Visually (naked eye) it might not be too bad, but for astronomers this is not great at all.

[tcpbob]

SV Jedi I agree that an apple system should be better than an android which is why I specified android in my remarks. Besides location issues, Google makes money by selling information. Not that apple doesn’t but I have researched the issue and the opinion of the experts is that anything google is likely to be more ravenous in it’s collection of personal data. Far more. And their products are designed to facilitate that.


Btw, a wifi chip is usually easily removed from a laptop. I doubt as easy as tampering with your tablet


Cram I am very, very aware that anything with wifi can be infiltrated, even destroyed by an expert attacker. Sim or no sim. I am very aware that a connection can be observed locally and that info forwarded to elsewhere. It is the device you receive/send from that is the weak point, not the link. And as far as “recompiling”… do you really believe you could reconfigure an android system to be safer than apple (a low bar imho)?! I would be impressed.

[nohal]

Originally Posted by tcpbob

Nohal
that is interesting… so to make sure I understand… working within the APP in the phone there is a setting to allow access to the mini via my supplied router via ethernet connection. That sounds good except the mini has no ethernet connection. Not to mention any of my routers.


But the concept remains. There is a setting to allow any further editing of the account via anything, any devise? Confirmation from anyone with experience with this would be good.

Did you actually look at your Mini? To the right of the power connector there is a a white plastic plug in the oval shaped hole. Out of curiosity pull it out and see the RJ45 Ethernet connector bellow it.



If your routers do not have Ethernet connectivity, get one that does. Which is pretty much any.

There is no setting to further edit your account via anything. It is the only way to edit your account. That is always done on starlink.com via any web browser and you never need a phone for that.

What you can not do without the application is locally configure the starlink router (which in case of the Mini is integrated inside the dish enclosure). And you need to do that only once (Until you factory reset the device).

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by tcpbob

Btw, a wifi chip is usually easily removed from a laptop. I doubt as easy as tampering with your tablet

So you want no cellular and also no wifi?! How do you propose to connect to the Internet from your boat?

If you want the wifi disabled on an iOS device you simply switch it off, you don’t need to physically remove modules.

[tcpbob]

Nohal,
thanks much for that information, that clears up some questions I had.
And apologies for crack about the ethernet. I did find it after I made that post and looked over the parts more closely. Also I got onto some photos of older models that showed the connection uncovered. To an uneducated eye the plug made it look like just part of the structure. So we are square for your crack… “I would myself probably wear a tin foil hat during the whole process to make it really secure though.”
but I am not 100% clear on this part… “What you can not do without the application is locally configure the starlink router (which in case of the Mini is integrated inside the dish enclosure). And you need to do that only once (Until you factory reset the deviice???) does this router act as the connection device? Is the external router needed when using in close proximity? Or must I get and install an ethernet connected router as one might use in a home or office?


Jedi
I stand by my remarks concerning wifi security. I will not make public how I deal with that in detail but do use air gap as part of it. Also all my traffic that is of any importance is pgp encrypted, Might consider a tin foil hat though! And finally, turning off a device does not necessarily mean it can’t be activated by a pro or your devices maker or one of the apps you have mounted or... etc. Just means you can’t use it. i will grant that apple is probably better about that than andriod but i still would not bet my life on it.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

No, this is incorrect. The phenomena you describe isn’t the Starlink constellations.

First, there is only one Starlink constellation. Second, what you see is a fresh batch of satellites that was launched very recently. Such a batch is launched in one rocket and they are placed in a cassette and ejected from it all at once. Afterwards they slowly navigate to their positions in the constellation and you won’t see them anymore.

I much rather have Starlink satellites than government spying and military weaponized satellites.

Yes I had seen that the first time lately sitting for sundowners in a bodega on Lanzarote looking for that meteor. Instead meteor we saw a huge chain of lights that a Bulgarian computer geek explained to all other sitting there as what you described also fresh batch of starlink satellites launched recently and he admitted that was the longest he ever saw….we all other non geeks believed before aliens are on their way to earth

Well pay Elon enough money and his satellites do all what you want, spy or military or both…Would never drive an Tesla or other EV just because of him spying or simply do what he wants…repair Tesla yourself after accident and you have no supercharger functionality anymore. Teslas newest method to force you using their services and make money….
But well to starlink there is no alternative other then to stay offline…

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

So you want no cellular and also no wifi?! How do you propose to connect to the Internet from your boat?

If you want the wifi disabled on an iOS device you simply switch it off, you don’t need to physically remove modules.

Partly correct if the iPad has a cellular module it’s even on when you switch the flight mode or even just power it up without entering pin. The only way to block an iPads cellular Modul and it’s location service spying on you is you insert an old sim eg prepaid without money and not enter the pin for it. Then due to security it’s blocked.

[nohal]

Originally Posted by tcpbob

Nohal,
thanks much for that information, that clears up some questions I had.
And apologies for crack about the ethernet. I did find it after I made that post and looked over the parts more closely. Also I got onto some photos of older models that showed the connection uncovered. To an uneducated eye the plug made it look like just part of the structure. So we are square for your crack… “I would myself probably wear a tin foil hat during the whole process to make it really secure though.”
but I am not 100% clear on this part… “What you can not do without the application is locally configure the starlink router (which in case of the Mini is integrated inside the dish enclosure). And you need to do that only once (Until you factory reset the deviice???)

"Starlink" is always two devices. The actual dish talking to the satellites in space, which has an ethernet port (with a private IP address 192.168.100.1 and runs a DHCP server giving an IP address to whatever you connect to it using Ethernet) to which a router is connected, also powering it using the power over ethernet (PoE) technology.

In case of the "big" dishes, that router is physically separate and can be either completely replaced with another one and a PoE injector (beware, Starlink uses a non-standard PoE setup due to it's high power consumption) or switched to bypass mode, in which case it only provides the PoE power and let's the Ethernet data pass through it to any other device the user connects to it with an ethernet cable (with non-standard connectors in case of the big dishes, so "adapters" are needed, but electrically it simply is ethernet), which usually is a router from a different manufacturer, but can also be directly a single computer.
Whether the Starlink router is acting as a real router or is in the bypass mode is set up via the "smartphone application" with a "phone" or tablet running the Starlink app connected to it's wifi network. Once done switching to the bypass mode, that wifi is not available anymore, so there is no way to revert it but resetting the router to the factory default settings (= among other provide the standard unsecured wifi again).
Now as you sure have noticed there are no buttons or switches on any starlink equipment so the way they implemented the reset operation is by repeatedly disconnecting the power (Which not only sounds dement, but gets super funny when your battery management system does funky stuff at the middle of the night and you wake up having an open wifi named Starlink providing free internet access to anybody).
The problem of unwanted reset is solvable for the "big" Starlinks by completely removing the original router and using your own, but for the Mini there is absolutely no way to do anything about it so to add to your IMHO irrational concerns about "using a smartphone", there is also a very real danger of being held responsible for other people'd ill-acting after a mere power problem of yours. Of course even that is solvable by simply hard-powering off the Starlink when not using it.
Overall to be safe, it is not enough to be paranoid, much more important is to have the necessary know-how about the technologies you intend to use and stay disciplined while using them. "Smartphones" are not worse than any other of these, just more visible if you look from far enough due to their almost !00% penetration in the population.

[s/v Jedi]

There’s ore and more misinformation in this thread.

- previously I wrote that iPads without the cellular module cannot be tracked any differently than a laptop, but now words are twisted like if I said that this is true for iPads with cellular module as well. I did not, I defined it correctly.

- Starlink isn’t two devices when you have Starlink Mini. This product has the wifi router inside the dish, so you only have one device that you can pull from a bag and connect.

[nohal]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

- Starlink isn’t two devices when you have Starlink Mini. This product has the wifi router inside the dish, so you only have one device that you can pull from a bag and connect.

Starlink Mini is exactly same as any other, two devices, a dish and a router/wi-fi access point. In the same plastic enclosure in this case, but still the same two devices networking-wise.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by nohal

Starlink Mini is exactly same as any other, two devices, a dish and a router/wi-fi access point. In the same plastic enclosure in this case, but still the same two devices networking-wise.

Again, Starlink mini has the router inside the dish. You are simply wrong, possibly confused about other products having a combination of power supply and wifi router in one and thinking this must be the case for the mini as well, while it’s just a dc power supply for the mini and can be skipped using a 12V or 24V dc cable straight to battery.