Starlink v2 with Modified Wave inverter? (Trace 3012)

[Ivan K]

Is anyone successfully running their Starlink v2 from a Trace MSW inverter? I am reading conflicting reports but nothing specific to the older Trace and mostly with the previous "dishy" version that I guess had a separate power insertion. Would prefer to know ahead of time what to expect before I take it down from the roof and pack it with us. I suppose I could run a 100' extension from the bus just for test but maybe someone here already knows?

Thanks.

[Jim McGarvie]

5 minutes ago, Ivan K said:

Is anyone successfully running their Starlink v2 from a Trace MSW inverter? I am reading conflicting reports but nothing specific to the older Trace and mostly with the previous "dishy" version that I guess had a separate power insertion. Would prefer to know ahead of time what to expect before I take it down from the roof and pack it with us. I suppose I could run a 100' extension from the bus just for test but maybe someone here already knows?

Thanks.

Have you checked with Starlink? I think you are wise to make sure before taking the chance....

 

[JDCrow]

If you are worried, looks like for $70 these guys have Starlink inverter covered 

 

https://www.savageutv.com/products/on-the-go-300-watt-inverter

 

lots of cool gear for tech roadies 

[Ivan K]

2 minutes ago, Jim McGarvie said:

Have you checked with Starlink? I think you are wise to make sure before taking the chance....

 

Well, no, I have not. I know they aren't quick to respond and only way to communicate is through online ticket. But mainly, I have no reason to believe that they have tested it with a specific 22 year old inverter. As far as I read, it works with some, not with others. And when it did not, there was no damage, just plain did not work. I know I could get a small inverter just for it but maybe I don't have to. 

1 minute ago, JDCrow said:

If you are worried, looks like for $70 these guys have Starlink inverter covered 

 

https://www.savageutv.com/products/on-the-go-300-watt-inverter

 

lots of cool gear for tech roadies 

Yep, that one is on my list of possibilities, if needs to be. Thanks JD.

[timaz996]

I am in Quartzsite now and a friend of mine next to me has star link which he ran last year off of a modified sign Wave inverter but since has replaced it with a pure sign because he saw so many warnings not to do it.

Edited December 28, 2022 by Tim-AZ

[Tom Whitlow]

I ran our home Starlink from the 12V plug on my Tesla using an inverter similar to what JD Crow suggested above.  I had to use a 50' extension cord from the inverter (the Tesla was in the garage) to the Starlink router in the house.  We used it hooked up to the Tesla for 9 days while we had no electricity after hurricane Ian.  While we were surrounded and trapped by high water, we had Internet when no one else in our neighborhood did.  Also note that the Starlink antenna survived while just clamped to our standing seam metal roof.  It had already started raining when I thought to take it down and our roof was too slick for me to get up there in the rain.   

[Ivan K]

14 minutes ago, Tim-AZ said:

I am in Quartzsite now and a friend of mine next to me has star link which he ran last year off of a modified sign Wave inverter but since has replaced it with a pier sign because he saw so many warnings not to do it.

Thanks Tim, I saw the warnings too but I think what I saw was for the round dish setup. Maybe, if it warms up here tomorrow,  I'll do the extension cord test to see for myself. Maybe they made the PoE supply less sensitive to wave form in v2. I'll report back.

 

4 minutes ago, Tom Whitlow said:

I ran our home Starlink from the 12V plug on my Tesla using an inverter similar to what JD Crow suggested above.  I had to use a 50' extension cord from the inverter (the Tesla was in the garage) to the Starlink router in the house.  We used it hooked up to the Tesla for 9 days while we had no electricity after hurricane Ian.  While we were surrounded and trapped by high water, we had Internet when no one else in our neighborhood did.  Also note that the Starlink antenna survived while just clamped to our standing seam metal roof.  It had already started raining when I thought to take it down and our roof was too slick for me to get up there in the rain.   

Thanks Tom, good stuff.

[Ivan K]

To close this topic, I hooked the residential Starlink (same HW as for RV account) to an extension cord from our Trace MSW inverter for couple of hours and it worked just fine. A tiny bit of AC buzzing sound at few inches distance from the little transformer inside power supply portion of the router but there appears to be enough filtering of the harmonics, judging by the coils and capacitors, in a picture of its guts that I have seen, to not concern me much. Absolutely no temperature increase either with an IR gun. Looking forward to staying longer in some places where my wife could feel as being too much off grid after few days of potentially having no one else but me to talk to 🙂

[timaz996]

Ivan are you guys planning on coming to Quartzsite?

[Ivan K]

1 hour ago, Tim-AZ said:

Ivan are you guys planning on coming to Quartzsite?

Tim, it is a very likely as most of the previous few years but we never made it there until after the show. We have a couple of family b-days to attend in January but I will ping you just in case! We always stayed back at Hi Joly, usually until the snakes, scorpions and flies started to bother us...

[timaz996]

I'm at Laposa South LTVA and should be here until early March.

[Grampy OG]

I have been running V2 Starlink for a year now powered with an '03 Trace Inverter. 100% fine. That being said I am very disappointed at the throttling hit that the RV users take even though we pay MORE for the service. 

 

[Jim McGarvie]

13 minutes ago, Grampy OG said:

That being said I am very disappointed at the throttling hit that the RV users take even though we pay MORE for the service.

I know where you are coming from, Grampy. But I realize when I am traveling away from home with my Starlink I am competing for a finite number of bits and bytes with folks who live full time in my temporary location. So far I haven't encountered what I consider to be an unreasonable reduction in bandwidth. I am very grateful for the availability. But as always, YMMV.

 

[Ivan K]

I have a residential account but when I take it on the road, I'll have to activate roaming feature and pay the extra $25 like in the RV service and have the same 'best effort' speeds like you. But the way I see it, if in urban areas, I should not need the starlink. When alone in boonies away from cities, I expect to have less users in that cell and hopefully better speeds but still better than nothing at all.

Ken, good to know about your Trace doing good job.

[Grampy OG]

I have not seen where you can jump in and out of the RV service. I'm not even sure how necessary that is. This summer I met several people on the road that simply took their home unit on the road with them and they appeared to be working fine with no added cost. I only subscribed to the RV feature because you can get the setup in a week or so. A new fixed Phoenix customer is looking at a 12-18 month wait for activation. 

I do admit that right now my RV is stationary in Phoenix and that is where the evening speeds are abysmal. I get on average 80mbs download during the day but only 4-5mbs from about 6pm-11pm. That speed would be fine for normal internet usage but makes streaming TV nearly impossible. I attribute the lousy speed to the Starlink RV contract that states you will be throttled during prime periods. 

I will be leaving the RV world soon and I was checking into selling my system. It appears that it is a very hard proposition again because of the long wait periods for new customers to be accepted. I think my only hope will be to find an RV customer that could qualify quickly. 

[birdshill123]

The new RV system comes with a mount and the dish is different. I think it runs on 12 volts. The rules from Musk keep changing. Supposedly if you have a residential system it will only work out of your area for 60 days. It will reset if you connect at your home area. Too many rules. Too bad as at first it seemed  this was the answer for rv'rs. I also do not know if one can put the system on hold while not travelling.

[Ivan K]

10 minutes ago, birdshill123 said:

The new RV system comes with a mount and the dish is different. I think it runs on 12 volts. The rules from Musk keep changing. Supposedly if you have a residential system it will only work out of your area for 60 days. It will reset if you connect at your home area. Too many rules. Too bad as at first it seemed  this was the answer for rv'rs. I also do not know if one can put the system on hold while not travelling.

RV service can be put on hold and reactivated at will since there is no throughput guarantee, residential could also be suspended but someone else would get the spot in a busy area so there is no guarantee of getting the full service again. I have not even considered the new in-motion RV service with $2500 HW cost. There are ways to make it run on 12V but our inverter is always on anyway so it doesn't matter.

Quote: 

PAY AS YOU GO

Starlink for RVs provides the ability to pause and un-pause service at any time and is billed in one-month increments, allowing users to customize their service to their individual travel needs

[birdshill123]

Thanks fir that info. I am at Q and there is no wifi in our park. I can use my cell phone but no streaming. I would gladly buy that rv system but am concerned that it would often be deprioritized. Lately I see too many dissatisfied users. Maybe in a few years when Amazon has this service.

[Jim McGarvie]

Unless something has changed in the past month or so, the RV "system" is identical to the residential equipment. It is a different service with different rules, not a different system. Our son and his wife are full-time RV'ers, so bought the RV service because they didn't want to wait and don't have a land base residence. I bought the residential service, since we have a home base and didn't want our service to be deprecated when we are at home (which is probably 80% of the time). When we will be traveling in our RV we activate the portability option for one month at a time, and pay the extra $25 for each whole month. When we will be home for a full month we deactivate portability and save the $25 fee. Our equipment is identical to that of our son. And it is NOT 12 volts. There is hope that will become available in the near future. When one is boondocking, the requirement to run the inverter to power the Starlink from the coach batteries is not very efficient. The inverter has to convert the 12 VDC from the batteries to 120 VAC to power the Starlink, which then converts it back to 12 VDC for its operation. A pure 12 VDC system should use significantly less power.

[birdshill123]

Sorry, I confused the rv service plan with the rv designed system. The latter uses a different dish and has a roof mount. It also costs $2500. I did not confirm but it may be a 12 volt  system. Have you traveled lately with your Starlink and encountered unusable low speeds. The net is full of complaints. 

[Jim McGarvie]

6 minutes ago, birdshill123 said:

Sorry, I confused the rv service plan with the rv designed system. The latter uses a different dish and has a roof mount. It also costs $2500. I did not confirm but it may be a 12 volt  system. Have you traveled lately with your Starlink and encountered unusable low speeds. The net is full of complaints. 

Oh, right. I think they call it "in-motion." It probably is a 12 volt system, but a bit rich for my blood.

We have only had our system since September, but we have traveled with it a few times and have always had acceptable speeds. Well, except for that weekend buried in a dense forest with no open sky....

I am very happy with it so far, both at home and when traveling in the coach.

[Ivan K]

The v2 router's power supply actually downconverts the 120V to ~50V to power the dish through PoE and 12V for the router so it is a bit more involved to make it run on DC but it has been done if someone wanted to.

[Jim McGarvie]

1 minute ago, Ivan K said:

The v2 router's power supply actually downconverts the 120V to ~50V to power the dish through PoE and 12V for the router so it is a bit more involved to make it run on DC but it has been done if someone wanted to.

Thanks for that clarification.