From Someone that has been doing the internet for many years you have been doing a great job on your video presentation. When I sailed the oceans of the world in the early 2000s this technology was no available of course.I use starlink on a regular basis and I upload videos on TH-cam on a regular basis it changed my way of working and now I am able to work from any location using the starlink system. Keep up the informative information and also the videos that you produce I will highly recommend you❤
Great vid. I have had Starlink on my boat, a 65’ Fleming trawler, for a year now. Love it. I went through all of the mountings you discussed. I finally mounted the Dishy in a dome on the arch above my hardtop and the radar. Great performance and no worries about wind and rain. My boat has two domes. One was for the KVH/DirecTV Sat receiver and the second was empty and seemed to be just a radar reflector. The biggest performance boost was when I added the POE splitter to the Starlink router. I ran it into a high performance Netgear mesh router and the data rates to my devices just about doubled! For my money the Starlink router is a weak link on a boat of my size. My boat is currently in Florida. 200 mb/s upload and download on the roaming plan.
Excellent overview of what's currently available. I'm flattered that you used an image of my dish on its stand, temporarily mounted on my foredeck, when I did my first "proof of concept" over the Easter period 2022. You retrospectively have my permission to use it! 😊 (BTW the boat is a Hallberg Rassy 36.)
Mounted on a vehicle, I’d do the HP. More flexibility for high priority in motion, or select low priority in remote areas that end up with great performance. The mounting is more purpose built. If it breaks, they’ll give you a refurbished or new one… In the end I did the Starmount because the HP wasn’t available yet and I had to start the season, much like you. I’ve also had issues with the cord on the standard dish. The HP cost more but, it is much more hassle free. You have other things to spend your time on than messing with a modified standard dish with a Starmount.
Excellent summary and recommendations. The one concern I have about going with the non-motion RV version on a boat is whether SL may at some point decide that ANY motion, rather than movement over 8.5knots, will be regarded as a violations of the TOS for non-motion units and suspend the account for such violation. There lots of folks putting the RV units on boats with the assumption that SL will continue to tolerate “slow motion” on the non-motion units. If that assumption proves incorrect, there are going to be alot of disappointed boaters out there. I would prefer to see the SL TOS for these units revised to clarify that “non-motion” is defined as movement at or below 8.5 knots.
@@ElliYacht1 I will likely go with the motion HP version …for our use in the PNW where we live aboard 4 months of the year and spend most of that time north of Nanaimo, the performance of HP SL connected to our existing PEPWAVE Max Transit with fail over to TMO will be worth the extra $$$$ and freedom from the angst of SL deciding to more rigorously enforce its TOS. Looking forward to your posts regarding installations. Keep up the great content.
That's already happened to us to some degree. We have residential w portability, and in motion worked fine - we cruise at about 8 knots. A month or so ago in motion stopped working. Curiously the dish went from pretty much horizontal to 60 degree angle. SL customer service was less than pleasant to deal w and offered no solutions other than to say in motion is not supported on the standard dish. We're in Canada so they're not offering the in motion plan here, yet... I notice in the ToS in motion states only land based use... Anyone have any suggestions? Great vid - thanks!
I'm not sure that they're exactly tracking motion currently, or even GPS position. I think it's more of a function of how quickly the dish is switch satellites. A few knots of relative motion probably doesn't impact the speed at which you're switching dishes since they zoom by so fast as it is. I suspect they're using some sort of statistic to sense motion. IE if you're switching dishes more than some percentage faster than expected. Dish switching rate will change based on location and the number of satellites over head. On land, this number changes based on obstructions, so you might have less sky and so between two locations on land, you might be switching satellites faster than another. Also, the primary demographic the "non-motion" clause is targeted at is people trying to strap residential dishes to the roofs of their RVs. Boaters are probably the smallest demographic right now.
Great video, very clear and certainly going full maritime. Hopefully by the time my Sunreef Power 60 all satellites are up and running. I will leave it to Sunreef to figure out how to mount them lol ⚓⚓⚓⚓⚓
As you said- none of this was available until recently. I’m looking ahead to next Spring (4-5 months from now). What changes will occur by then? I’ve heard from some that the original antenna works well till about ten miles off-shore and some report coverage in the Bahamas. The U S Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are covered. What I don’t know is what priority coverage further off-shore and the Bahamas have for satellites. Since things have changed so much in the last few months, I’m hesitant to buy equipment until I need it. Iridium Go, GlobalStar, and SSB are still out there but they are slow and for short messages and weather Gribs. I’ll use my phone hotspot or marina WiFi until I’m ready to do offshore trips.
You are right. Starlink is very thin on providing info about future plans. For what we do, it’s the only game in town. To your point that can all change quickly.
Thank you for the complete review of the current options. Will deploy the same solution that you use and ClearOS Server multi-wan load balancing. Once deployed will let you know how it goes. Thank you again! :)
Thank you very much for the time you spent producing this video. I had already read up on Starlink and decided that the new mobile set up was going to be my choice. We live in Seattle and I was concerned about congestion speeds. After watching ths video I am certain we would not be happy with just Starlink in the metropolitan area. We have used a local wireless service in Seattle that provides around 20Mbps service and been pretty happy with rare dropouts. I have also used a cell service that works well when service is available. I was trying to decide on which service to use or how to switch between them. Now I have a new plan. Combine the cell service, local wireless service and Starlink into one seamless product. This should cover our needs. Thanks for the idea. Did you build out the system yourself? What speeds are you seeing in the metro areas vs out in the Salish seas?
Thank you for the encouragement! We tend to see the throttling around 6-10pm, in a congested area. If we didn’t get to areas without any cell coverage, I probably wouldn’t have Starlink. However, our 2-4 months in Desolation Sound make it a must have.
Thanks for an excellent overveie of the current Starlink plans and options. For the hard core yacht er/live aboard the option is likely to be the high perf antenna for in-motion use. The BIG unknown is what offering Starlink is going to make in terms of plans when the offshore coverage is achieved (inter-satellite comes). I imagine they may consider introducing a plan that will be non-prioritized offshore at hopefully no more than a few hundred dollars per month and hopefully with no commitments, so that you can change between the offshore and mobility plan or alternatively pause the subscription. This would be a vast improvement over current sat comm subscription options.
there is still the problem that you're not allowed to switch continents! and that's the biggest problem. In terms of offshore : there are already words like "transcontinental additional costs PER gig" in their terms of service.... it's not clear by now how they will do that, but it will come I guess. so for my understanding you will pay your service fee monthly, and if going offshore or switch continent you pay per gig. that will not make sense for me, cause after switching continent I could buy a local sim card and pay them per gig.... I guess it will be cheaper too. (even if you put your service fee on hold)
Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you. Right now I've LTE+WiFi connection using the QuRouter X11S antenna with Teltonika RUTX11 router which is awesome up to 10-15Nm offshore as long as there's a cellular tower in range. I will be expanding it with Starlink and Peplink or something similar for even better coverage.
Great summary. Can you tell me a bit more about modifying the RV dish to lay flat. I can’t find a suitable spot to mount the dish but have space to lay it flat. Is there someone who can convert it or must it be done DIY?
There are a couple folks out there that make a kit and provide the conversion service. We used this one... star-mountsystems.com/products/low-profile-flat-mount-for-rectangle-starlink-dishy
I would recommend a fresh water wash down for maintenance and corrosion reduction. Also, I recommend Tefgel on the stainless bolts that contact the aluminum wedge mount. Dissimilar metals (even with powder coating) will eventually corrode. Tefgel will insulate the metals and eliminate/reduce the risk of corrosion.
13:45 Yeah, the $5,000/Month Service is 5 Terabyte of Data Per Month. From What I Understand, You Can Have a Dishy V2 $500 Dish, and Just Join the Mobile Priority Service. Starlink Says You'll Need the High Performance $2,500 Dish....but I Dunno.
I am looking to install Starlink before a far shore trip in the Spring. I have a 50 watt fantom x radar mounted about 12-14 21:05 feet above the bridge deck. I could place the Starlink $2500 antenna above the pilot house (about 15 feet forward of the radar but I worry about radar interference. The other option is to remove the Direct TV antenna mounted about 10 feet above the radar. Would that location also be interfered by the radar? Which is the best choice. The second installation would be more expensive. Of corse the radar transmission can be turned of when using Starlink. The other complicating factor is that Starlink is now testing about 200 prototype gen 3 antennas for use with gen 2 satellites which may make the current choice’s obsolete. Who knows when the new antennas will be released.
Thanks for the thoughtful and comprehensive overview. I just wanted to make sure I understood one point. Did I understand you to say that the RV version would not be suitable for trans-Atlantic crossings? Using this version on a boat will only function in a near-shore situation?
At this point, there’s lots of reports of people doing trans Atlantic, and Pacific crossings without interruption on the standard RV. However, Starlink has in the terms of service that this is not supported, so there is a risk in the future it would not be. The Facebook page ‘Starlink on Boats’ has almost daily first hand updates from people and is a great resource.
Great informative video, thanks. I have one question (maybe I missed it). If you have two antennas for redundancy, do you need to have two active starlink subscriptions? Or can you use one subscription, and it fails over to the antenna with the best connection?
23:14 Jesus. That's hella redundancy. I'd keep an extra switch for redundancy. lol I wonder how you tie together the different cellulars (ATT/TMOBILE/VERIZON/STARLINKRVHIGH/RV) into 2 wan ports. Do you just switch them out manually?
The two cellular WAN ports are combined with Pepwave’s WAN smoothing software SpeedFusion. The SIM ports also have physical backup ports that hot swap if the primary SIM fails a health check. Oh, and you are correct you can swap the primary chip via the software UI also. Cool stuff!
Jumped on the bandwagon about the same time you did. Now I am thinking of upgrading to the larger flat panel. Any idea if you're allowed to resell the older one and how would you clear the billing/data on the old one?
Good question. Starlink Support will be able to provide definitive answer. That said I did transfer a residential dish service to another person. SL Support asked for their address and email. SL Support then contacted them and my service transferred upon their acceptance. We made a private transaction for the price of the equipment…
How is your star mount doing after so many months of use? I'm trying to decide between a star mount setup or the hp dish for my van.. (I know a ton of unrelatable factors), just curious about the longevity of the star mount enclosure as well as how much someone with the star mount would predict it to be affected by obstructions compared to the hp dish. Thanks!
Hi Rachel! Starlink is coming out with a V3 Standard dish that will be flat, so there no need for a Starmount anymore. Note, this dish won’t be warranted for in motion use, that will be reserved for the High Performance dish.
@@ElliYacht1 yes I saw that!! So now I am extra torn between the 3 options. I am wishing I knew when the v3 will come out, hoping to do a cross country van trip in Feb. Saw something about the router being available in beginning of 2024, but unsure about dish. If you personally had to choose whether to flat mount a v2 ($1100 after install) or do an hp dish, which would you choose?
@@rachel7550 sorry to leave that part out. The new version three standard dish will be wider have a greater field of view and be able to track more satellites. My expectation is it will probably be as good if not better than the HP for performance.
We are in Australia and plan to sail through Indonesia/Malaysia in about 6 months time. Currently website says no service in that area, we think we could bounce of Australian service. Do you think that's possible? or maybe you can tell us where to find this information? Thanking you in advance for any assistance you can give.
Very helpful video! Thank you for sharing your experience. I just ordered the flat high performance in motion dish, but want to bind it with a 4G solution for redundancy… is there a more affordable option than what you have that you’d still suggest? You’re using a $1K pepwave and $800 mobile hotspot? Hoping I can keep my costs down while still having a stable connection for a livestream upload
I’d recommend going with a dual LTE modem/router and adding the HP Starlink. When you’re in cell coverage you can pause the SL and Bond the two cell connections. Speeds are much higher and 99.999 of dependability. Something like this mobilemusthave.com/pages/ultimate-road-warrior-vr2 When the cell coverage gets sketch or drops SL is going to give you connectivity and can bond with the cell modems give you a connection when everyone else is SOL.
Can starlink work with cargo vessel? That vessel will move across seas and oceans, as we know starlink uses low orbit satelite making 1 satelite only cover small area, we shouldn't be worry if this was a geo satelite, 1 satelite can cover almost 1 or more continents. Lets say vessel A now on sea 1, then 5 hours laters they arrived on sea 2? Will the internet connection stable?
The Maritime option seems to have come down in price. The website now says "Starting at $1000 per month." Still staggering compared to $135 per month, but also much more reasonable than $5000 per month. It seems like it might depend on your use case. On the Maritime page, it has a photo of a recreational boat with just one dish along with a photo of a commercial/scientific boat with two dishes. So *maybe?* that's the difference? It's not as clear because you have to schedule a consultation to get more information..
Great video. Really appreciate you sharing your experience and expertise. (Instead of the all too common "this is the first time I'm trying this...') I watched this on Starlink on my boat (basic model temporarily on the top of my bimini. I can unfurl my sails or have Starlink.... Need to find a better place for it) It works great. In Oxnard I gat 50 to 100MPS (good enough for HD video) but got much higher speeds 15 nMiles off the coast by the Channel Islands. And first time I motored out and a around the islands a couple weeks ago I had a full connection all the way out and back. When I tried the same exact trip again a couple days ago, it didn't work. I never went about 7.5 knots, but I cruised at 7 knots. I have the $135 RV subscription. I suspect that my underway connection was more about Starlink policy than the connection. I hope they can sort this out so we can trust Starlink to work everywhere and in an emergency. (How about a $100 Emergency fee? If the situation is seriious enough and you're willing to pay $100 for say 24 hours? I can see clicking that box helping another sailor out, or to keep the kids quiet.) Boats up and down my dock have Starlink. The wireless cellular internet is much faster, but... doesn't work very far off shore. I plan to bring my dishy back to Los Angeles, see how well it works at my house, and maybe sell it to my neighbor. I'll then buy the $2500 dish for my boat. That wasn't an option when I first got Starlink.
The word on the street is, there is a ‘Commercial’ plan (defined as a vessel for crew of 10 or less) coming out that is a single flat HP dish for $5k and $1k for service (unthrottled, which is important if this is your only internet connection in a busy port). This leads me to believe, Starlink considers recreational boats as RVs. But, I don’t hang out with Elon so take my comments as best guess
Are there any “legal” issues with Starlink’s terms of service if you use the RV version on a boat-not a RV? Will they cut you off, saying you violated the intent and/or spirit of the agreement by not going with the Maritime version?
Starlink describes RV Service as, “Immediately access unlimited high-speed, low-latency internet on an as-needed basis at any destination where Starlink provides active coverage.“ I can’t find anything that defines an RV. However, in the TOS under “In Motion Use”there is language that describes a “Services in-motion on a vehicle or vessel (e.g. cars, vans, RVs, boats)”, specifically: “In-Motion Use: In-motion use is prohibited for undesignated kits and countries. You are prohibited from installing or using a kit on a moving vehicle or vessel unless Starlink has designated your specific kit model and/or mount for in-motion use and has obtained all required in-motion approvals in the country of use. Services in-motion on a vehicle or vessel (e.g. cars, vans, RVs, boats) via an unauthorized kit or in an unapproved country will void the limited warranty of your kit.” All that said, who knows what Starlink decides tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m using it today!
If anybody's paying attention the maritime plan that cost $5,000 a month is nothing for a large cruise ship they're charging anywhere from $15 to $30 per day per device so if they have 5,000 people all paying $15 a day they're bringing in literally hundreds of thousands of dollars for like a 7 or a 10-day Cruise or whatever and they're paying $5,000 a month literally pennies to them
There’s no such thing as an RV dish. There is RV *service* that can use the Residential dish or the Flat High Performance Starlink. You should have said that there are two types of hardware and three service plans.
Hardware and software in combination make the two dishes distinct. The RV dish is locked to the RV ‘best effort’ plan and cannot be converted to a residential priority service. The residential dish is not locked to the best effort service but can be both priority service while located in the registered home address cell and ‘best effort’ with the portability add on service. That being said RV and Residential are two different dishes, IMHO.
@@ElliYacht1 the hardware is exactly the same for RV and Residential. I bought SL in Mexico. The only option is Residential but after you set it up you use the app to switch to RV mode. They say you're not allowed to switch back to Residential but this is clearly a policy, not technological, decision. Thanks for putting out a great video but you're adding to the confusion by conflating plan differences to hardware differences that don't exist.
There are a lot of sad people in the US that bought the RV dish expecting to switch it to residential later. Unfortunately, it can’t be done. I stated there is a difference to create clarity. I respect if you have a different opinion. Peace!
how can starlink not able to function in motion when i can watch streaming and can stream myself using my smartphone while in a roller coaster? starlink reeks with bs coz they know it's a life threatening situation out in the middle of an ocean!
Very informative, thanks!
From Someone that has been doing the internet for many years you have been doing a great job on your video presentation. When I sailed the oceans of the world in the early 2000s this technology was no available of course.I use starlink on a regular basis and I upload videos on TH-cam on a regular basis it changed my way of working and now I am able to work from any location using the starlink system. Keep up the informative information and also the videos that you produce I will highly recommend you❤
Thank you for the encouragement! We agree Starlink is a game changer, even if they keep changing the game on us a bit 😂
Great vid. I have had Starlink on my boat, a 65’ Fleming trawler, for a year now. Love it. I went through all of the mountings you discussed. I finally mounted the Dishy in a dome on the arch above my hardtop and the radar. Great performance and no worries about wind and rain. My boat has two domes. One was for the KVH/DirecTV Sat receiver and the second was empty and seemed to be just a radar reflector. The biggest performance boost was when I added the POE splitter to the Starlink router. I ran it into a high performance Netgear mesh router and the data rates to my devices just about doubled! For my money the Starlink router is a weak link on a boat of my size. My boat is currently in Florida. 200 mb/s upload and download on the roaming plan.
Great info. Thank you for sharing!
Excellent overview of what's currently available. I'm flattered that you used an image of my dish on its stand, temporarily mounted on my foredeck, when I did my first "proof of concept" over the Easter period 2022. You retrospectively have my permission to use it! 😊 (BTW the boat is a Hallberg Rassy 36.)
Informative video, presently cruising the Bahamas.
Thank you for putting this tougher. It was exactly what I needed to make my choice.
What did you choose ?
Mounted on a vehicle, I’d do the HP. More flexibility for high priority in motion, or select low priority in remote areas that end up with great performance. The mounting is more purpose built. If it breaks, they’ll give you a refurbished or new one… In the end I did the Starmount because the HP wasn’t available yet and I had to start the season, much like you. I’ve also had issues with the cord on the standard dish. The HP cost more but, it is much more hassle free. You have other things to spend your time on than messing with a modified standard dish with a Starmount.
Great video! Thank you so much for the info.
very good information!
Excellent summary and recommendations. The one concern I have about going with the non-motion RV version on a boat is whether SL may at some point decide that ANY motion, rather than movement over 8.5knots, will be regarded as a violations of the TOS for non-motion units and suspend the account for such violation. There lots of folks putting the RV units on boats with the assumption that SL will continue to tolerate “slow motion” on the non-motion units. If that assumption proves incorrect, there are going to be alot of disappointed boaters out there.
I would prefer to see the SL TOS for these units revised to clarify that “non-motion” is defined as movement at or below 8.5 knots.
I agree 100%. I won’t permanently mount our standard RV for the reasons you point out.
@@ElliYacht1 I will likely go with the motion HP version …for our use in the PNW where we live aboard 4 months of the year and spend most of that time north of Nanaimo, the performance of HP SL connected to our existing PEPWAVE Max Transit with fail over to TMO will be worth the extra $$$$ and freedom from the angst of SL deciding to more rigorously enforce its TOS.
Looking forward to your posts regarding installations.
Keep up the great content.
That's already happened to us to some degree. We have residential w portability, and in motion worked fine - we cruise at about 8 knots.
A month or so ago in motion stopped working. Curiously the dish went from pretty much horizontal to 60 degree angle.
SL customer service was less than pleasant to deal w and offered no solutions other than to say in motion is not supported on the standard dish.
We're in Canada so they're not offering the in motion plan here, yet... I notice in the ToS in motion states only land based use... Anyone have any suggestions?
Great vid - thanks!
I'm not sure that they're exactly tracking motion currently, or even GPS position. I think it's more of a function of how quickly the dish is switch satellites. A few knots of relative motion probably doesn't impact the speed at which you're switching dishes since they zoom by so fast as it is. I suspect they're using some sort of statistic to sense motion. IE if you're switching dishes more than some percentage faster than expected. Dish switching rate will change based on location and the number of satellites over head. On land, this number changes based on obstructions, so you might have less sky and so between two locations on land, you might be switching satellites faster than another.
Also, the primary demographic the "non-motion" clause is targeted at is people trying to strap residential dishes to the roofs of their RVs. Boaters are probably the smallest demographic right now.
I'm going to order the high performance option for rv roof.
Yeomanlike job. Nice work.
Thank you!
Great information! Thanks for taking your time to make this video.
Great content! In the 2 standard RV dish configuration, does this mean you have to pay two subscription fees?
Great video, very clear and certainly going full maritime. Hopefully by the time my Sunreef Power 60 all satellites are up and running. I will leave it to Sunreef to figure out how to mount them lol
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Thanks for the information
As you said- none of this was available until recently. I’m looking ahead to next Spring (4-5 months from now). What changes will occur by then? I’ve heard from some that the original antenna works well till about ten miles off-shore and some report coverage in the Bahamas. The U S Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are covered. What I don’t know is what priority coverage further off-shore and the Bahamas have for satellites. Since things have changed so much in the last few months, I’m hesitant to buy equipment until I need it. Iridium Go, GlobalStar, and SSB are still out there but they are slow and for short messages and weather Gribs. I’ll use my phone hotspot or marina WiFi until I’m ready to do offshore trips.
You are right. Starlink is very thin on providing info about future plans. For what we do, it’s the only game in town. To your point that can all change quickly.
Really helpful. I am cruising Japan and I just ordered the rv version. They are offering half price at the moment
Thank you for the complete review of the current options. Will deploy the same solution that you use and ClearOS Server multi-wan load balancing. Once deployed will let you know how it goes. Thank you again! :)
I’m excited to hear about the implementation!
Thank you very much for the time you spent producing this video. I had already read up on Starlink and decided that the new mobile set up was going to be my choice. We live in Seattle and I was concerned about congestion speeds. After watching ths video I am certain we would not be happy with just Starlink in the metropolitan area. We have used a local wireless service in Seattle that provides around 20Mbps service and been pretty happy with rare dropouts. I have also used a cell service that works well when service is available. I was trying to decide on which service to use or how to switch between them.
Now I have a new plan. Combine the cell service, local wireless service and Starlink into one seamless product. This should cover our needs. Thanks for the idea. Did you build out the system yourself? What speeds are you seeing in the metro areas vs out in the Salish seas?
Thank you for the encouragement! We tend to see the throttling around 6-10pm, in a congested area. If we didn’t get to areas without any cell coverage, I probably wouldn’t have Starlink. However, our 2-4 months in Desolation Sound make it a must have.
Today Starlink RV works at 20knots and you should put it into your dome. Phenomenal tech. I can now live on my boat and be connected.
Great summary, thanks a lot!
Thanks for an excellent overveie of the current Starlink plans and options. For the hard core yacht er/live aboard the option is likely to be the high perf antenna for in-motion use. The BIG unknown is what offering Starlink is going to make in terms of plans when the offshore coverage is achieved (inter-satellite comes). I imagine they may consider introducing a plan that will be non-prioritized offshore at hopefully no more than a few hundred dollars per month and hopefully with no commitments, so that you can change between the offshore and mobility plan or alternatively pause the subscription. This would be a vast improvement over current sat comm subscription options.
there is still the problem that you're not allowed to switch continents! and that's the biggest problem. In terms of offshore : there are already words like "transcontinental additional costs PER gig" in their terms of service....
it's not clear by now how they will do that, but it will come I guess. so for my understanding you will pay your service fee monthly, and if going offshore or switch continent you pay per gig. that will not make sense for me, cause after switching continent I could buy a local sim card and pay them per gig.... I guess it will be cheaper too. (even if you put your service fee on hold)
Great overview and explanation
Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.
Right now I've LTE+WiFi connection using the QuRouter X11S antenna with Teltonika RUTX11 router which is awesome up to 10-15Nm offshore as long as there's a cellular tower in range. I will be expanding it with Starlink and Peplink or something similar for even better coverage.
Great Job, thank you
Hi, any suggestions for offshore fishing on a 42´ Boston Whaler?
Great summary. Can you tell me a bit more about modifying the RV dish to lay flat. I can’t find a suitable spot to mount the dish but have space to lay it flat. Is there someone who can convert it or must it be done DIY?
There are a couple folks out there that make a kit and provide the conversion service. We used this one... star-mountsystems.com/products/low-profile-flat-mount-for-rectangle-starlink-dishy
Thanks for This video! Can you tell me If necesary wash the antena with fresh water to avoid any efect for the salt water?
I would recommend a fresh water wash down for maintenance and corrosion reduction. Also, I recommend Tefgel on the stainless bolts that contact the aluminum wedge mount. Dissimilar metals (even with powder coating) will eventually corrode. Tefgel will insulate the metals and eliminate/reduce the risk of corrosion.
13:45 Yeah, the $5,000/Month Service is 5 Terabyte of Data Per Month.
From What I Understand, You Can Have a Dishy V2 $500 Dish, and Just Join the Mobile Priority Service. Starlink Says You'll Need the High Performance $2,500 Dish....but I Dunno.
I am looking to install Starlink before a far shore trip in the Spring. I have a 50 watt fantom x radar mounted about 12-14 21:05 feet above the bridge deck. I could place the Starlink $2500 antenna above the pilot house (about 15 feet forward of the radar but I worry about radar interference. The other option is to remove the Direct TV antenna mounted about 10 feet above the radar. Would that location also be interfered by the radar? Which is the best choice. The second installation would be more expensive. Of corse the radar transmission can be turned of when using Starlink. The other complicating factor is that Starlink is now testing about 200 prototype gen 3 antennas for use with gen 2 satellites which may make the current choice’s obsolete. Who knows when the new antennas will be released.
Thanks for the thoughtful and comprehensive overview. I just wanted to make sure I understood one point. Did I understand you to say that the RV version would not be suitable for trans-Atlantic crossings? Using this version on a boat will only function in a near-shore situation?
At this point, there’s lots of reports of people doing trans Atlantic, and Pacific crossings without interruption on the standard RV. However, Starlink has in the terms of service that this is not supported, so there is a risk in the future it would not be. The Facebook page ‘Starlink on Boats’ has almost daily first hand updates from people and is a great resource.
Thank you for this video, it was very informative. Just one question; How far offshore you can go using your RV HP dish? Thank you.
Great informative video, thanks. I have one question (maybe I missed it). If you have two antennas for redundancy, do you need to have two active starlink subscriptions? Or can you use one subscription, and it fails over to the antenna with the best connection?
23:14 Jesus. That's hella redundancy. I'd keep an extra switch for redundancy. lol I wonder how you tie together the different cellulars (ATT/TMOBILE/VERIZON/STARLINKRVHIGH/RV) into 2 wan ports. Do you just switch them out manually?
The two cellular WAN ports are combined with Pepwave’s WAN smoothing software SpeedFusion.
The SIM ports also have physical backup ports that hot swap if the primary SIM fails a health check. Oh, and you are correct you can swap the primary chip via the software UI also. Cool stuff!
Jumped on the bandwagon about the same time you did. Now I am thinking of upgrading to the larger flat panel. Any idea if you're allowed to resell the older one and how would you clear the billing/data on the old one?
Good question. Starlink Support will be able to provide definitive answer.
That said I did transfer a residential dish service to another person. SL Support asked for their address and email. SL Support then contacted them and my service transferred upon their acceptance. We made a private transaction for the price of the equipment…
Wil mini work offshore with roam plan
How is your star mount doing after so many months of use? I'm trying to decide between a star mount setup or the hp dish for my van.. (I know a ton of unrelatable factors), just curious about the longevity of the star mount enclosure as well as how much someone with the star mount would predict it to be affected by obstructions compared to the hp dish. Thanks!
we will try to do a video on it. thx
@@ElliYacht1 I had watched your other video comparing performance but was curious on your thoughts on that too. Thanks nbd! Lol
Hi Rachel! Starlink is coming out with a V3 Standard dish that will be flat, so there no need for a Starmount anymore. Note, this dish won’t be warranted for in motion use, that will be reserved for the High Performance dish.
@@ElliYacht1 yes I saw that!! So now I am extra torn between the 3 options. I am wishing I knew when the v3 will come out, hoping to do a cross country van trip in Feb. Saw something about the router being available in beginning of 2024, but unsure about dish. If you personally had to choose whether to flat mount a v2 ($1100 after install) or do an hp dish, which would you choose?
@@rachel7550 sorry to leave that part out. The new version three standard dish will be wider have a greater field of view and be able to track more satellites. My expectation is it will probably be as good if not better than the HP for performance.
For the 2 dish setup do you need 2 monthly plans when using the peplink?
Unfortunately, yes. However, we generally pause the Standard RV one and start the service for it when we get in an area with no cell coverage.
We are in Australia and plan to sail through Indonesia/Malaysia in about 6 months time. Currently website says no service in that area, we think we could bounce of Australian service. Do you think that's possible? or maybe you can tell us where to find this information? Thanking you in advance for any assistance you can give.
Very helpful video! Thank you for sharing your experience. I just ordered the flat high performance in motion dish, but want to bind it with a 4G solution for redundancy… is there a more affordable option than what you have that you’d still suggest? You’re using a $1K pepwave and $800 mobile hotspot? Hoping I can keep my costs down while still having a stable connection for a livestream upload
I’d recommend going with a dual LTE modem/router and adding the HP Starlink. When you’re in cell coverage you can pause the SL and Bond the two cell connections. Speeds are much higher and 99.999 of dependability. Something like this mobilemusthave.com/pages/ultimate-road-warrior-vr2
When the cell coverage gets sketch or drops SL is going to give you connectivity and can bond with the cell modems give you a connection when everyone else is SOL.
Can starlink work with cargo vessel? That vessel will move across seas and oceans, as we know starlink uses low orbit satelite making 1 satelite only cover small area, we shouldn't be worry if this was a geo satelite, 1 satelite can cover almost 1 or more continents.
Lets say vessel A now on sea 1, then 5 hours laters they arrived on sea 2? Will the internet connection stable?
The Maritime option seems to have come down in price. The website now says "Starting at $1000 per month." Still staggering compared to $135 per month, but also much more reasonable than $5000 per month. It seems like it might depend on your use case. On the Maritime page, it has a photo of a recreational boat with just one dish along with a photo of a commercial/scientific boat with two dishes. So *maybe?* that's the difference? It's not as clear because you have to schedule a consultation to get more information..
Its now $250 for 50 gb cap for ocean usage.
Great video. Really appreciate you sharing your experience and expertise. (Instead of the all too common "this is the first time I'm trying this...') I watched this on Starlink on my boat (basic model temporarily on the top of my bimini. I can unfurl my sails or have Starlink.... Need to find a better place for it) It works great. In Oxnard I gat 50 to 100MPS (good enough for HD video) but got much higher speeds 15 nMiles off the coast by the Channel Islands. And first time I motored out and a around the islands a couple weeks ago I had a full connection all the way out and back. When I tried the same exact trip again a couple days ago, it didn't work. I never went about 7.5 knots, but I cruised at 7 knots. I have the $135 RV subscription. I suspect that my underway connection was more about Starlink policy than the connection. I hope they can sort this out so we can trust Starlink to work everywhere and in an emergency. (How about a $100 Emergency fee? If the situation is seriious enough and you're willing to pay $100 for say 24 hours? I can see clicking that box helping another sailor out, or to keep the kids quiet.)
Boats up and down my dock have Starlink. The wireless cellular internet is much faster, but... doesn't work very far off shore.
I plan to bring my dishy back to Los Angeles, see how well it works at my house, and maybe sell it to my neighbor. I'll then buy the $2500 dish for my boat. That wasn't an option when I first got Starlink.
Do you think starlink will have a lower cost personal maritime offering at some point?
The word on the street is, there is a ‘Commercial’ plan (defined as a vessel for crew of 10 or less) coming out that is a single flat HP dish for $5k and $1k for service (unthrottled, which is important if this is your only internet connection in a busy port).
This leads me to believe, Starlink considers recreational boats as RVs.
But, I don’t hang out with Elon so take my comments as best guess
for the 2 dish option on your boat. do they charge $130 for each monthly?
It’s $5,000 monthly for the 2 dish service. 😱
reports of starlink enforcing with their geo fencing...stopping service to boaters. Anyone experiencing this yet??
Are there any “legal” issues with Starlink’s terms of service if you use the RV version on a boat-not a RV? Will they cut you off, saying you violated the intent and/or spirit of the agreement by not going with the Maritime version?
Starlink describes RV Service as, “Immediately access unlimited high-speed, low-latency internet on an as-needed basis at any destination where Starlink provides active coverage.“ I can’t find anything that defines an RV.
However, in the TOS under “In Motion Use”there is language that describes a “Services in-motion on a vehicle or vessel (e.g. cars, vans, RVs, boats)”, specifically:
“In-Motion Use: In-motion use is prohibited for undesignated kits and countries. You are prohibited from installing or using a kit on a moving vehicle or vessel unless Starlink has designated your specific kit model and/or mount for in-motion use and has obtained all required in-motion approvals in the country of use. Services in-motion on a vehicle or vessel (e.g. cars, vans, RVs, boats) via an unauthorized kit or in an unapproved country will void the limited warranty of your kit.”
All that said, who knows what Starlink decides tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m using it today!
Great explanation but don't know if adding a picture of the cruiseship with actually smashed windows that took someones life is a good idea...
Sorry, that was an unintentional correlation. That part of the video is being removed an will update in a couple hours. Thank you for the catch.
Putting it out on the bow with the quad pod not tri-pod (quad and tri refers to the amount of legs)
You are correct. Bad habit on my part b
If anybody's paying attention the maritime plan that cost $5,000 a month is nothing for a large cruise ship they're charging anywhere from $15 to $30 per day per device so if they have 5,000 people all paying $15 a day they're bringing in literally hundreds of thousands of dollars for like a 7 or a 10-day Cruise or whatever and they're paying $5,000 a month literally pennies to them
There’s no such thing as an RV dish. There is RV *service* that can use the Residential dish or the Flat High Performance Starlink. You should have said that there are two types of hardware and three service plans.
Hardware and software in combination make the two dishes distinct. The RV dish is locked to the RV ‘best effort’ plan and cannot be converted to a residential priority service.
The residential dish is not locked to the best effort service but can be both priority service while located in the registered home address cell and ‘best effort’ with the portability add on service.
That being said RV and Residential are two different dishes, IMHO.
@@ElliYacht1 the hardware is exactly the same for RV and Residential. I bought SL in Mexico. The only option is Residential but after you set it up you use the app to switch to RV mode. They say you're not allowed to switch back to Residential but this is clearly a policy, not technological, decision. Thanks for putting out a great video but you're adding to the confusion by conflating plan differences to hardware differences that don't exist.
There are a lot of sad people in the US that bought the RV dish expecting to switch it to residential later. Unfortunately, it can’t be done. I stated there is a difference to create clarity. I respect if you have a different opinion. Peace!
You say north but some places you mean south lol
Good point
I’m in Alaska. Mine has to point south. Great video though. It being critical. Exactly what I was looking for for my boat dilemma
how can starlink not able to function in motion when i can watch streaming and can stream myself using my smartphone while in a roller coaster? starlink reeks with bs coz they know it's a life threatening situation out in the middle of an ocean!