As a backpacker and avid hiker, no thank you. I go outside to intentionally avoid screens and the internet/connected world. Fortunately I can just not buy this and it won’t have an impact on my life.
Another interesting thing I’m curious about is if this would provide any benefits to SAR crews over traditional sat phones. I could potentially see some benefits there, maybe, but I guess time will tell.
For their communications, I doubt it, unless they happen to need low-latency video (e.g. for telemedicine for complicated cases). Existing solutions are pretty robust, and for anything you use on the move you probably want an omnidirectional antenna you don't have to rest on some surface in operation.
I could imagine this being interesting for drone-based/agumented missing person search, though!
> Fortunately I can just not buy this and it won’t have an impact on my life.
Thank you for saying this. So many people have a knee-jerk reaction of "this will ruin the outdoors" or "this means I can never disconnect anymore", which both kind of imply a concerning lack of agency. The outdoors are large enough for everybody, and nobody can force you to buy and bring one of these things!
- FlexSolar 40W panel: 1.35kg
- Nitecore NB20000 ~75Wh battery: 300g
- Starlink Mini: 1.1kg
- Smartphone: 250g
For 3kg you have something that should give 2-3 hours of Internet usage on an average EU/USA good weather day (assuming 20% solar panel for 10 hours = 80Wh/day, 25-35W power usage of Starlink Mini + smartphone).
For each extra 1.65kg you get an additional 2-3 hours, resulting in 7.95kg for 8-12 hours, 11.25kg for 12-16 hours.
Not bad, but not good either.
If you can live without Internet when backpacking, enjoy the outdoors! If you need it for whatever reason, this just cut the cost per megabyte by about 95% and the cost for the terminal by 99%. You'll probably also not hate LEO latencies compared to GEO.
It'll probably get used on boats, where people actually do kinda want to watch netflix at night and don't have to personally carry every gram every day. The current options are very expensive and power hungry.
And probably a bunch of other outwardly similar but culturally distinct groups that could use it. Remote wilderness hunters, ice fishers, who work out of a seasonal camp but otherwise are pretty cut off.
Don't get me wrong, this is cool and emerging tech, and I support it (I pray it doesn't ruin the wilderness). Just saying there IS a comparison
The 630g Anker 737 PowerCore 24K might be a good option, and also the 765g HyperJuice 245W.
So this adds 0.3-0.45kg to the estimate.
But yeah, options like the Anker 737 24K should work great (which supports 20V/5A and 28V/5A). I happened to pick up a few of the 737s recently, so I'll be curious to try them out with the Mini soon. Just waiting for Starlink to actually add the usb-c to DC barrel adapter to the online shop.
It is insanely good. Out of this world.
A few years ago I spent 3 years driving around Africa and looked into satellite internet options from all the existing providers. Any plan that offered anything remotely close to 1GB per month was 5x the cost of the entire 3 year expedition.
This WILL change the world.
I realize that some people don't have that luxury due to work or family obligations, but for these, doesn't affordably connectivity actually open up the possibility of spending extended time outdoors that they just didn't have before?
(right now you only get a Starlink Mini if you are an early Starlink customer and it requires an existing residential subscription)
I wonder how much more bandwidth this uses compared to their stationary terminals. There's almost certainly a power/size vs. data rate trade-off here, which can explain why they don't offer it standalone in the US yet (the reasoning probably being that people will use their more efficient larger antenna at home most of the time), but do have standalone plans in areas where they probably have less users overall.
It's not unusual for us customers to pay a higher premium for the same service that is sold at a lesser costs around the world. This is for a great many things. This can be due to companies actively using their us customers to subsidize their market share and other places but I don't imagine that's what's at play here. It could be that the government in the Netherlands is offering some sort of subsidy that is allowing the price to be less. Also could be that local competition is necessitating a lower price as well in that area.
If Starlink achieves reasonable service, for many customers in the US it can get away with charging a lot.
Starlink has indeed tested a video call to one phone, but you can probably do about 10-30 of these per cell until you max out the capacity (single-digit Mbit/s for everybody in a 15 mile or so radius).
For more, you need active steering and more powerful antenna arrays, which are also larger. Fitting that in a phone will probably take some time, and it might end up being awkward anyway (and slowly cook your hand/ear).
> That means you can power the Mini dish for two to three hours from something like an Anker Prime 27,650mAh (99.54Wh) power bank, or a little over an hour with smaller 10,000mAh (40Wh) portable batteries you probably already have laying about. It requires a USB-C PD power source with a minimum rating of 100W (20V/5A).
Literally we all use eSIMs and just have downtime occasionally, which is partially the point of it.
If you need high speed data in the middle on nowhere then Starlink is great
It's a toy and another damn thing to carry around and a load of marketing around it to sell it as a suitable replacement for proper kit.
Ty Gagne wrote a book about the death of Kate Matrosova in the White Mountains of New Hampshire[0]. The search and rescue effort took place in absolutely harrowing conditions. That was enabled by the fact that she had a Spot/InReach/equivalent.
People backstopping their safety on extremely limited SAR resources and an assumption of being able to get them deployed in the first place is not an overall improvement in the safety of hikers or the people who stick their necks out getting them out of trouble.
[0]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36019816-where-you-ll-fi...
On the other hand, while this is less common (in my experience) in e.g. the alps, and people will probably reprimand you if you attempt it, I've heard some mind-boggingly loud, annoying conversations between hikers shouting across switchbacks in a large group so that everybody can hear as well. That doesn't even require a battery!
It's a social problem if anything, not a technological one. But realistically, the outdoors are pretty large – you can almost always just wait a few minutes and let people that bother you pass by.
I didn't even have 4G there. I was just wifi hopping as and when I needed it.
considering that this is an add-on, not standalone, and the fact that it would mean like 2-3kg of extra weight to carry, backpackers who hike in places with good cell reception are not the target market.
doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people who would use this.
eg: my mother and her husband live in a small town and use starlink since none of the local or national ISPs service that town. they also own a camper trailer and travels quite a bit now that they're retired.
the mini would be perfect for them. they could power it off the camper trailer's 12V, which would be a lot more efficient than going DC->AC->DC even if you ignore the power difference, and it would take up less space when not in use. they could also pause the mini service or use it as part of their home mesh for better bandwidth.
