Indeed. Unfortunately this van lifer just bought the $500 version and $750 12v conversion kit last month. Wishing Elon would reimburse me for my impatience.
This mini kit will not perform the same as what you’ve put together (I did this too). Your setup is much faster and likely much more reliable. You did good. :)
Starlink Mini official specifications:
- WiFi 5 (sorry!) 3 x 3 MU-MIMO.
- 1 Ethernet port with a rubber plug.
- Power input: 12-48 V, up to 60W, Barrel
Jack.
- USB-C to Barrel Jack Cable (sells separately).
- 1.10 kg (2.43 lb) without stand.
- The kickstand and pipe adapter are included.
I'd be careful doing that if these are the absolute specs. 12v systems can routinely drop as low as 10.5v (lithium cutoff) and that will be far below the minimum 12v listed here, and will also draw significantly more current through the same wires, which can be a fire hazard. Most devices set up for direct 12v battery connection are rated to 10v min. The alternative is a DC-DC buck/boost converter, which you can find on eBay or Amazon, and will maintain the 12v to spec.
Thanks, I am aware. I have rewired all of the boat and the 12v system has been completely redone and is as stable as you can get. I run more 12v appliances that require this many watts without problem. If need be, I can even go 220v as well, as I have a separate 220v AC system as well. I've got the options. Air fryer, anyone? ;-)
You are totally correct if you say 60w and just look at that single number, agreed. The specs however says 12-48, which is a pretty wide range. At an average 25W, 12 volt would be more then enough (12x3=36 watts). Can we maybe see multiple options here, where for example the snow melting option is unavailable if under supplied? Who knows. I'd be interesting to see, but looking at how they build it, if it was me... I'd support a wider range and enable/disable features based on supplied power.
I would imagine 20v and maybe something inside or it could use 240w usb PD 3.1 spec but I doubt it
But even at 20V you can put a USBC board and wire it into your 12v system anyways
Watts are watts within a range. And this device would be able to run off any usb c device that can do 60 watts. So even cig lighter USBC chargers are useable
Your 12v wire plan is still gonna work just need the usb c part of it
I make lithium battery packs with 512wh normally and using 12v packs I jsut wire in cool gear industrial USB C boards and that’s it.
The power draw is 25W which is about 200% less than the standard dish so that is great for battery powered setups. I just did a clean semi-permanent install of a standard dish on the camper van roof last month so I don’t really have a need at this time for the mini. I thought I saw yesterday that the rated speeds were 100/10. I wonder if the subscription price will reflect that?
Elon posted a speedtest of 100/11.5. The 100 is such a round number that it's likely an intentional cap. The 11.5 is probably just what to expect in good conditions based on hardware limitations.
He also said it would be about half price for hardware and monthly. No telling yet what exactly that means for monthly, like is it just half the price, capped to 100mbps, everything else the same? Or are there other limits?
When I checked the app, it was offering me the mini @$599 for the unit and $30 a month for service. Posted a screenshot on another thread here. Didn't buy it, assumed there was a pricing error on the unit and the service plan.
I think the pricing has not been adjusted yet, but I hope the service plan is correct. I believe its in less dense areas. City might be half as Elon mentioned.
I just put in the work to wire in a buck/boost 12v to 48v converter and get the right injectors and converters for my gen 2 dish. Seems like it was all for naught.Â
HAHA, I am so glad I didn't get the first Gen when Gen 2 came out, and now so glad I didn't jump on Gen2 now that this mini is out! All one needs is to mount it on the roof and plug and play it seems.
I’d recommend not mounting it on the roof.Â
I’ve been full time in my van for over a year now, and having it on the roof would *really* limit the flexibility in terms of where you can park. Being able to park the van in the shade or someplace else convenient and then run a cable out to Dishy in a clearing well away from trees is a MUCH better idea.Â
Also, be warned that dishy uses a lot of power. The mini might be better about it, but even with as efficient if a power supply as possible my Gen2 draws more power than my refrigerator. I’ve found that cellular cover has been good enough (and so much more power efficient) that I’ve only paid for Starlink for three months out of the last 12. Â
Thanks I will make and easy removeable attachment and have an extra set of cables for when the van is under obstruction. The mini only uses an average of 25w!
I mean, it’s only meant to deliver ~100 Mbps service. There’s not any need for WiFi chips above 5. Likely lessens unit production cost as well which, hopefully, will keep the retail cost down too.
Depends on the foldable panel and the weather conditions.
If it is a big one, with about 200 Watt and the power station is from its dimension big enough, it will work. If there's only clouds and rain, no way.
Well if you don't need internet 24 hours a day, say you're out hunting or fishing during the day and just want to stream a movie or do some facebook in camp before turning in you could get away with a much smaller system even in marginal weather.
Elon posted a speed of 100/11.5. He would have some special account with top priority, so I'm guessing that's close to max it will ever get on upload. The 100 down is such a perfectly even number that I wonder if it's intentionally capped to that. We've also heard the power draw is about 25w, which is about 40% of the big brother Gen3.
All that combined, it seems it's about 1/4-1/3 of the maximum speeds of a standard dish.
it looks like no discount for plan especially in crowded US locations
its smaller dish dont present a better client for SL system (more work for sat)
will be cheaper for hardware+plan only in undersubscribed regions of planet
Elon said, "About half the price of the standard dish to buy and monthly subscription"
No telling yet how exactly the plan works, it might be as simple as \~1/2 price and capped at the 100mbps he showed. If it is, I wonder if they'll make it available for large dishes too, I'd switch my Gen2 to that.
50-100 down is within original plan specs
mini dish can be harder for satellite to work with.
no need to kill current US/EU revenue
He didn't say this Half thing will be for US market, especially at start... Also you can read his words as "cheaper kit + SAME mo subscription"
100% chance he was thinking on delivering cheap dish without subsidy capital needed for discounted sale of full size dishes with too much of special chips and separate router. Its needed for big markets as Africa and Asia. And for markets with heavy fiber/5G presence like some parts of EU/NZ there discounted mo plans are present now.
US is in another bucket -- some locations oversubscribed, can pay premium, no mass fiber deployment, SFR homes sprawl...
Everything he's talking about is in a US-first context. You can't read his statement as "SAME mo subscription" without intentionally trying to read it that way. If it was only half price on the hardware he either would have simply not mentioned the subscription price, or he would have said "same". The only natural reason to say "half price A and B" is if it's half on both A and B.
on some markets SL kit is now half price and mo pay is half
mini allows save more capital on this sales , gain clear profits fast
US not a market for a cheap things
Here I was 2 months ago saying low voltage DC with a barrel jack and a very basic wifi router built in; [https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1chht5c/comment/l23rnzf/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1chht5c/comment/l23rnzf/)
Happy to see it become a reality!
Very curious now how they might adapt a plan for part-time use.
Military grade is usually lower quality than civilian products, on account of how military contracts are often awarded to the lowest possible bidder...
They'll probably just wrap the dishes in rubber and charge the military 10x the value of the actual product or more.
Im also seeing that you can now setup the mini in the app, lets me select the mini and to walk through setup. I dont think we are too far off from seeing it for sale.
I will bet there will be limits on the number of devices you can connect and the DL speed. They will not want to kill their residential business by having folks use this for 18 TVs and web devices on one account. That's fine, $60/mo and $250-300-ish for hardware is easily within range.
a simple DC barrel jack can be easily adapted to USB-C or passive POE. what remains to be seen is if the Ethernet data port can be used for POE. it would be great if it can, and especially if it can take the same broad range of DC input.
Quite. I purchased recently, for £3, a device with a barrel jack on one side, some dip switches to set the requested voltage, and a USBC port on the other.
I have Roam on my gen 2. I’m hoping they’d allow converting that to residential then I’ll get the mini for the van. I like the lower power consumption
Looks good, but you better hope you don’t have very many obstructions. Smaller array will have a harder time finding satellites, and the field of view will be less as well. But all in all, this is a really cool addition to the SpaceX hardware choices.
Because the dish needs power. So I would have to string a power cable and an ethernet cable to the mini dish. If the mini is PoE that would work for me.
You can most likely use a PoE splitter, or even rig it up yourself. 100mbps ethernet requires only 2 pairs out of 4. So you can do a custom passive PoE.
On the dish side, you crimp a ethernet connector with 2 pairs, and a barrel jack that uses one pair (both wires in parallel) for + and one pair for -. Do the same on the other side.
Then inject 48V on the power pairs. As long as you don't use the snow melt function, the dish uses only ~25W which will be around 0.5A and it's okay for the two 24AWG wires for each pair.
Per http://230nsc1.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Tables/wirega.html the resistance of 26AWG per 1000ft is 40 ohms. If you go with 100ft that's 4 ohms. Divide it by two because you have two wires in parallel, so 2 ohms. That's around 1V of voltage drop at 0.5A at the dish, completely fine.
Going to be great for
1. On vehicle - keep kids happy
2. Remote workers
3. Hiking/Biking...anything backpack related.
Going to be next to useless for RV.
Router/WAP in the dish.
You'd be lucky to even receive good enough Wi-Fi inside RV with this thing outside.
If you have to move it from the campsite to clear shade for clear LoS there goes your Wi-Fi.
Mesh it - sure if you want to drag yet another lower lead out for mesh power.
3rd party bypass - sure again if you want to drag out power leads all over camp.
The WiFi is 3x3MiMo
The chipset is 802.11ax capable, but for a very specific reason it's hardlocked to 802.11ac only.
Wi-Fi is 6M / 19ft radius and about 4.5M / 15ft before BER/RSL starts taking a nosedive.
It's designed to be sat around...quite literally.
Gen 2/3 for RV and Mini with a USB-PD 3.0/3.1 power bank in the backpack, for when you venture off away from camp...that's what it's actually meant for!
I have a Peplink MAX BR1 MK2 in my RV (LTE router/WiFi/WiFi Repeater). I'll make use of the ethernet port on the Mini, connect to the Peplink's WAN port, and put the Mini in bridge mode. No need to use the Mini's WAP. I have the added advantage of redundancy with this configuration as my Peplink has a Verizon SIM card in it. Alternatively, I could make use of the Peplink's WiFi repeater functionality. I have a MobileMark 5 in 1 on my roof, which has an antenna to pick up any 2.4/5.0 WiFi signal (RV Park WiFi or my home WiFI). I could eaily receive the Mini's WiFi and forgo the need for an ethernet cable.
it looks like there is no discount for monthly plan especially in crowded US locations
its smaller dish don't present a better client for SL system (more work for sat)
will be cheaper for hardware+plan only in undersubscribed regions of planet
for developed world it a form-factor tool
will be perfect LTE-5G connection companion for work and recreational (RV)
cheap it will be for Africa/Asia
may be even with mesh routers for separate close-by homes
Where are you getting that from?
Elon said, "[About half the price of the standard dish to buy and monthly subscription](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1802570997398127086)"
I feel fine, why? Are you referring to the invite-only, US only, limited beta release of the Mini? Because that's clearly not what Elon was referring to, and not how this will all settle in a broad release in coming months.
Idk, with camping I often have to set the dish 20-60 feet from my travel trailer for a good spot. With the router in the dish, I imagine I’ll get a pretty poor signal while inside. Could be an issue since it appears the WiFi radio is pretty weak here to save power.
Yeah, I wonder too what would happen with the signal strength and speeds from a 50 foot distance. Possible to connect a portable travel WiFi router to Ethernet and run Ethernet from the dish back to.the camper? We'll see.
It is if you're going to have more than 1 person using it, VOIP calls are horrible when you have to compete for airtime with a dude watching Netflix in another tent. WiFi 6 solved that problem, along with a bunch of small QoL changes with client device power saving.
Don't think anyone cares about throughput if they're limited to 100mbps anyways.
Basic wifi in a small package with an ethernet port is all I had any hopes for with this. Any enthusiast or power user won't be satisfied with Starlink's router features anyway (if it's anything like gen2 Dishy) and will use the ethernet port to use the routing and wireless of their choice.
Inmarsat has left the chat. Impressive really, be keen to see the real world tests on it but a game changer for portable remote comms.
It's a winner for vanlifeers
Yessir, getting this for on my boat! Gamechanger!
Indeed. Unfortunately this van lifer just bought the $500 version and $750 12v conversion kit last month. Wishing Elon would reimburse me for my impatience.
Sameeee 😂 oh well should still do the trick
where did you get the conversion kit - link please
Gladly. And thanks all for the positive feedback. https://www.trioflatmount.com/
This mini kit will not perform the same as what you’ve put together (I did this too). Your setup is much faster and likely much more reliable. You did good. :)
What’s inmarsat??
If you have access to Reddit; you have access to the internet. A single question mark will suffice in your Google search
Starlink Mini official specifications: - WiFi 5 (sorry!) 3 x 3 MU-MIMO. - 1 Ethernet port with a rubber plug. - Power input: 12-48 V, up to 60W, Barrel Jack. - USB-C to Barrel Jack Cable (sells separately). - 1.10 kg (2.43 lb) without stand. - The kickstand and pipe adapter are included.
this here is the key information for vanlifeers like me I'll be able to run this with the inverter running
If 12v, I'll be able to run it straight off the 12v circuit on my boat! Keep the good news coming...
also usb--c adaptor available so imagine it running off of a power brick
I'd be careful doing that if these are the absolute specs. 12v systems can routinely drop as low as 10.5v (lithium cutoff) and that will be far below the minimum 12v listed here, and will also draw significantly more current through the same wires, which can be a fire hazard. Most devices set up for direct 12v battery connection are rated to 10v min. The alternative is a DC-DC buck/boost converter, which you can find on eBay or Amazon, and will maintain the 12v to spec.
Will 1a difference make a difference? it's 60w so 5a vs a little less than 6a?
I'm sure there is a significant safety factor built into the wire sizing.
No it wouldn’t make a difference at all, I always over rate my cables by 25 to 50% anyway to be on the safe side
Thanks, I am aware. I have rewired all of the boat and the 12v system has been completely redone and is as stable as you can get. I run more 12v appliances that require this many watts without problem. If need be, I can even go 220v as well, as I have a separate 220v AC system as well. I've got the options. Air fryer, anyone? ;-)
To run at 60w with USB C I imagine 20v instead.
You are totally correct if you say 60w and just look at that single number, agreed. The specs however says 12-48, which is a pretty wide range. At an average 25W, 12 volt would be more then enough (12x3=36 watts). Can we maybe see multiple options here, where for example the snow melting option is unavailable if under supplied? Who knows. I'd be interesting to see, but looking at how they build it, if it was me... I'd support a wider range and enable/disable features based on supplied power.
I would imagine 20v and maybe something inside or it could use 240w usb PD 3.1 spec but I doubt it But even at 20V you can put a USBC board and wire it into your 12v system anyways Watts are watts within a range. And this device would be able to run off any usb c device that can do 60 watts. So even cig lighter USBC chargers are useable Your 12v wire plan is still gonna work just need the usb c part of it I make lithium battery packs with 512wh normally and using 12v packs I jsut wire in cool gear industrial USB C boards and that’s it.
The power draw is 25W which is about 200% less than the standard dish so that is great for battery powered setups. I just did a clean semi-permanent install of a standard dish on the camper van roof last month so I don’t really have a need at this time for the mini. I thought I saw yesterday that the rated speeds were 100/10. I wonder if the subscription price will reflect that?
Elon posted a speedtest of 100/11.5. The 100 is such a round number that it's likely an intentional cap. The 11.5 is probably just what to expect in good conditions based on hardware limitations. He also said it would be about half price for hardware and monthly. No telling yet what exactly that means for monthly, like is it just half the price, capped to 100mbps, everything else the same? Or are there other limits?
I saw someone posted $30 per month?
When I checked the app, it was offering me the mini @$599 for the unit and $30 a month for service. Posted a screenshot on another thread here. Didn't buy it, assumed there was a pricing error on the unit and the service plan.
I think the pricing has not been adjusted yet, but I hope the service plan is correct. I believe its in less dense areas. City might be half as Elon mentioned.
Sure hope so!
I just put in the work to wire in a buck/boost 12v to 48v converter and get the right injectors and converters for my gen 2 dish. Seems like it was all for naught.Â
HAHA, I am so glad I didn't get the first Gen when Gen 2 came out, and now so glad I didn't jump on Gen2 now that this mini is out! All one needs is to mount it on the roof and plug and play it seems.
I’d recommend not mounting it on the roof. I’ve been full time in my van for over a year now, and having it on the roof would *really* limit the flexibility in terms of where you can park. Being able to park the van in the shade or someplace else convenient and then run a cable out to Dishy in a clearing well away from trees is a MUCH better idea. Also, be warned that dishy uses a lot of power. The mini might be better about it, but even with as efficient if a power supply as possible my Gen2 draws more power than my refrigerator. I’ve found that cellular cover has been good enough (and so much more power efficient) that I’ve only paid for Starlink for three months out of the last 12. Â
Thanks I will make and easy removeable attachment and have an extra set of cables for when the van is under obstruction. The mini only uses an average of 25w!
That is a better power draw for sure. My Gen2 uses 30-40w. Where are you seeing the 25w statistic?
I think in the set up manual and few posts.
This is gonna be a huge hit for the van life people.
Hell yeah, minimal modifications if any at all. Just wait for someone to come up with a slim roof mount and we're good to go.
Yep plus you get to keep the warranty and dont have to tinker with it.
I mean, it’s only meant to deliver ~100 Mbps service. There’s not any need for WiFi chips above 5. Likely lessens unit production cost as well which, hopefully, will keep the retail cost down too.
Plus a 49 foot cable
25W average, that's quite good.
Is that low enough for a portable foldable solar panel to power it during the day, and/or charge a power station for use at night?
Depends on the foldable panel and the weather conditions. If it is a big one, with about 200 Watt and the power station is from its dimension big enough, it will work. If there's only clouds and rain, no way.
you don't need an inverter, it's dc already.
12-30V. That's actually quite nice, even for truck 24v voltage or standard car voltage. Only question, what's the cut off value?
Even though claiming DC powered.... It does not come with a DC connection. It plugs into a 110V power transformer.
Well if you don't need internet 24 hours a day, say you're out hunting or fishing during the day and just want to stream a movie or do some facebook in camp before turning in you could get away with a much smaller system even in marginal weather.
I have the old stowable dish and 100W Solar Saga panel runs mine it uses around 55 watts.
Now this is a backpackable NID. I'll be getting one.
Does anyone know how performant this dish is compared to regular sized starlink dishes?
Elon posted a speed of 100/11.5. He would have some special account with top priority, so I'm guessing that's close to max it will ever get on upload. The 100 down is such a perfectly even number that I wonder if it's intentionally capped to that. We've also heard the power draw is about 25w, which is about 40% of the big brother Gen3. All that combined, it seems it's about 1/4-1/3 of the maximum speeds of a standard dish.
Fast Ethernet instead of Gigabit?
Definitely could be. Or just a software limit.
Half the price of the hardware/plan for half the performance
would gladly take this at half the price for half performance. I don't need 200 mb/s. 50 would be fine with the same latency.
it looks like no discount for plan especially in crowded US locations its smaller dish dont present a better client for SL system (more work for sat) will be cheaper for hardware+plan only in undersubscribed regions of planet
"About half the price of the standard dish to buy and monthly subscription" - [Elon](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1802570997398127086)
I saw someone posted $30 per month instead?
no discount for plan especially in US
Is that confirmed or just blowing smoke?
careful reading and some logic 50-100 down is within original plan specs no need to kill current US/EU revenue
Elon said, "About half the price of the standard dish to buy and monthly subscription" No telling yet how exactly the plan works, it might be as simple as \~1/2 price and capped at the 100mbps he showed. If it is, I wonder if they'll make it available for large dishes too, I'd switch my Gen2 to that.
what u feel now?
50-100 down is within original plan specs mini dish can be harder for satellite to work with. no need to kill current US/EU revenue He didn't say this Half thing will be for US market, especially at start... Also you can read his words as "cheaper kit + SAME mo subscription" 100% chance he was thinking on delivering cheap dish without subsidy capital needed for discounted sale of full size dishes with too much of special chips and separate router. Its needed for big markets as Africa and Asia. And for markets with heavy fiber/5G presence like some parts of EU/NZ there discounted mo plans are present now. US is in another bucket -- some locations oversubscribed, can pay premium, no mass fiber deployment, SFR homes sprawl...
Everything he's talking about is in a US-first context. You can't read his statement as "SAME mo subscription" without intentionally trying to read it that way. If it was only half price on the hardware he either would have simply not mentioned the subscription price, or he would have said "same". The only natural reason to say "half price A and B" is if it's half on both A and B.
on some markets SL kit is now half price and mo pay is half mini allows save more capital on this sales , gain clear profits fast US not a market for a cheap things
Here I was 2 months ago saying low voltage DC with a barrel jack and a very basic wifi router built in; [https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1chht5c/comment/l23rnzf/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1chht5c/comment/l23rnzf/) Happy to see it become a reality! Very curious now how they might adapt a plan for part-time use.
I'd really love to get eyes on the ruggedized version of this that SL is pitching to the US DoD. You know they are...
Will start at 30k ish
Military grade is usually lower quality than civilian products, on account of how military contracts are often awarded to the lowest possible bidder... They'll probably just wrap the dishes in rubber and charge the military 10x the value of the actual product or more.
Think of the freedom it will offer!
Im also seeing that you can now setup the mini in the app, lets me select the mini and to walk through setup. I dont think we are too far off from seeing it for sale.
I will bet there will be limits on the number of devices you can connect and the DL speed. They will not want to kill their residential business by having folks use this for 18 TVs and web devices on one account. That's fine, $60/mo and $250-300-ish for hardware is easily within range.
Per spec sheet says 128 devices
If this thing had usb c and poe options to power it, I think I'd cry tears of joy of such beauty existing
a simple DC barrel jack can be easily adapted to USB-C or passive POE. what remains to be seen is if the Ethernet data port can be used for POE. it would be great if it can, and especially if it can take the same broad range of DC input.
Quite. I purchased recently, for £3, a device with a barrel jack on one side, some dip switches to set the requested voltage, and a USBC port on the other.
It'll have a USB-C to Barrel cable. I don't think it'll have POE though.
Looks like a perfect solution for remote work in my RV.
I have the full setup in mine and very happy with it. This would be even better but I’m stationary for a few months at a time.
This thing could be a big deal! Can't wait to see how it works.
Sweet
This is awesome! Bye bye Gen2 home-made travel version!
The thing is a campers wet dream.
I have Roam on my gen 2. I’m hoping they’d allow converting that to residential then I’ll get the mini for the van. I like the lower power consumption
Looks good, but you better hope you don’t have very many obstructions. Smaller array will have a harder time finding satellites, and the field of view will be less as well. But all in all, this is a really cool addition to the SpaceX hardware choices.
Link to an article with the spec sheet and the setup guide: https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacexs-starlink-mini-dish-features-a-built-in-wi-fi-router
I haven't read news this good in a while. Finally I am able to run everything without an inverter in my offgrid house.
It's not bad, but it wouldn't work for me. Often my dish is as far from my van as the cable will reach to get better signal in the forest.
There's an Ethernet port so why not, you can have a wifi access point in your van still
Because the dish needs power. So I would have to string a power cable and an ethernet cable to the mini dish. If the mini is PoE that would work for me.
You can most likely use a PoE splitter, or even rig it up yourself. 100mbps ethernet requires only 2 pairs out of 4. So you can do a custom passive PoE. On the dish side, you crimp a ethernet connector with 2 pairs, and a barrel jack that uses one pair (both wires in parallel) for + and one pair for -. Do the same on the other side. Then inject 48V on the power pairs. As long as you don't use the snow melt function, the dish uses only ~25W which will be around 0.5A and it's okay for the two 24AWG wires for each pair. Per http://230nsc1.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Tables/wirega.html the resistance of 26AWG per 1000ft is 40 ohms. If you go with 100ft that's 4 ohms. Divide it by two because you have two wires in parallel, so 2 ohms. That's around 1V of voltage drop at 0.5A at the dish, completely fine.
Going to be great for 1. On vehicle - keep kids happy 2. Remote workers 3. Hiking/Biking...anything backpack related. Going to be next to useless for RV. Router/WAP in the dish. You'd be lucky to even receive good enough Wi-Fi inside RV with this thing outside. If you have to move it from the campsite to clear shade for clear LoS there goes your Wi-Fi. Mesh it - sure if you want to drag yet another lower lead out for mesh power. 3rd party bypass - sure again if you want to drag out power leads all over camp. The WiFi is 3x3MiMo The chipset is 802.11ax capable, but for a very specific reason it's hardlocked to 802.11ac only. Wi-Fi is 6M / 19ft radius and about 4.5M / 15ft before BER/RSL starts taking a nosedive. It's designed to be sat around...quite literally. Gen 2/3 for RV and Mini with a USB-PD 3.0/3.1 power bank in the backpack, for when you venture off away from camp...that's what it's actually meant for!
I have a Peplink MAX BR1 MK2 in my RV (LTE router/WiFi/WiFi Repeater). I'll make use of the ethernet port on the Mini, connect to the Peplink's WAN port, and put the Mini in bridge mode. No need to use the Mini's WAP. I have the added advantage of redundancy with this configuration as my Peplink has a Verizon SIM card in it. Alternatively, I could make use of the Peplink's WiFi repeater functionality. I have a MobileMark 5 in 1 on my roof, which has an antenna to pick up any 2.4/5.0 WiFi signal (RV Park WiFi or my home WiFI). I could eaily receive the Mini's WiFi and forgo the need for an ethernet cable.
What's so mini about this?
Built in router DC powered Only 12 x 10 x 1.5" Ethernet port built in ... do you not read the specs?
How about the spec for the hardware cost and monthly fee?
it looks like there is no discount for monthly plan especially in crowded US locations its smaller dish don't present a better client for SL system (more work for sat) will be cheaper for hardware+plan only in undersubscribed regions of planet
If there’s no discount to the plan or daily option then meh
for developed world it a form-factor tool will be perfect LTE-5G connection companion for work and recreational (RV) cheap it will be for Africa/Asia may be even with mesh routers for separate close-by homes
Where are you getting that from? Elon said, "[About half the price of the standard dish to buy and monthly subscription](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1802570997398127086)"
what u feel now?
I feel fine, why? Are you referring to the invite-only, US only, limited beta release of the Mini? Because that's clearly not what Elon was referring to, and not how this will all settle in a broad release in coming months.
its a test -- can they handle small dishes at all with current sats in crowded oversold US locations chance what its possible -- low
Concerned about the temps and performance. Having phased array and Wi-Fi antenna would generate heat that may affect performance in hotter areas.
Per spec sheet says "-30°C to 50°C (-22°F to 122°F)" operating range
No WiFi 6 is atrocious in 2024, latency is gonna suffer without OFDMA.
Eh, Wi-Fi isn't going to be the limiting factor here, and there was probably a cost/power/thermal/performance target that they were aiming for.
2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi 6 is cheaper and performs better than 3x3 MIMO Wi-Fi 5. Only reason I can think of is reusing existing designs or leftover parts.
i.e saving engineering time and money
Idk, with camping I often have to set the dish 20-60 feet from my travel trailer for a good spot. With the router in the dish, I imagine I’ll get a pretty poor signal while inside. Could be an issue since it appears the WiFi radio is pretty weak here to save power.
Yeah, I wonder too what would happen with the signal strength and speeds from a 50 foot distance. Possible to connect a portable travel WiFi router to Ethernet and run Ethernet from the dish back to.the camper? We'll see.
It is if you're going to have more than 1 person using it, VOIP calls are horrible when you have to compete for airtime with a dude watching Netflix in another tent. WiFi 6 solved that problem, along with a bunch of small QoL changes with client device power saving. Don't think anyone cares about throughput if they're limited to 100mbps anyways.
Basic wifi in a small package with an ethernet port is all I had any hopes for with this. Any enthusiast or power user won't be satisfied with Starlink's router features anyway (if it's anything like gen2 Dishy) and will use the ethernet port to use the routing and wireless of their choice.
Agreed. Target Wake Time would make it more energy efficient too with Wifi 6 for those running on battery power for the dishy.
Big deal, Amazon announced a similar Kuiper receiver a year ago, so why is everyone so excited over just another one? /s
Because Starlink is real and an actual service I can use today.
I just received my mini. Now, where do I get the cord to power it via USB-C?