Butchering our Starlink

Butchering our Starlink

Our new Starlink has been a bit of a game changer for us – internet everywhere. Pricey, but worth it. However, setting it up and putting it away each time we want to use it is a bit of a pain. So Dave researched what other overlanders had done, ordered parts whilst in the UK and, whilst stranded at the MAN garage in Santiago, modified our Starlink to be permanently flat mounted on Big Bertha’s cab roof and, at the same time, modified it to run from 24 VDC (as opposed to 240VAC from the inverter).

Flat mounting our Starlink on the cab roof comes with pluses and minuses. The advantages are:

1. No need to deploy and put it away each time we want to use it.
2. It works in motion (for now at least) – we have internet while we are driving.
3. Less chance of theft (it is not visible from ground level).

The disadvantage’s are:

1. The dish can no longer rotate/tilt to maximise signal strength (lower internet speeds).
2. The dish is susceptible to tree / overhead cable / hail damage.
3. There is a risk of breaking something during modification.

The advantage of adapting it to run on 24VDC is lower power consumption. Because Starlink runs on mains voltage, we need to run our inverter and the inverter in itself takes a chunk of power. The disadvantage is again breaking something during modification.

We used Everlanders instruction video and the 3D printed flat mount that he has designed. TucksTruck also helped us debug it to improve speed.

Results: Well, Dave managed not to blow our Starlink up! The conversion has so far worked out very well – Starlink is able to communicate with satellites, despite being flat mounted, and we have internet whilst driving – amazing. More feedback after extended trials….

Wiring up the DC power supply

Marking out where to cut into Dishy

Cutting and cable termination done

Dishy mounted on cab roof

UPDATE 1

We are getting typically 35 mbps stationary and up to 75 mbps when in motion (can’t explain that). The router Dave chose has only 100 mbps LAN/WAN ports and so speed is limited to that. We ought to be getting close to 100 mbps. Dave read that others managed to speed up the data rate by using electrolytic capacitors across the 48 VDC supply to smooth the output and he thought he would give this a go. Where to find some electrolytics on whilst we are on the road? From under a bush of course. You can always rely on the Chileans to dump their old TVs roadside. One man’s trash is another’s treasure!

Dave managed to scavenge enough capacitors to create a 700uF bank and then place it across the 48VDC supply. It improved the data rate a little, but enough to satisfy Dave. After chatting to Marcus from TucksTruck, Dave will next modify the original Starlink router (gigabit port) to run on DC instead of AC and see if the data rate improves. More later…..

UPDATE 2

After some investigation, and speaking to our friend Marcus, Dave decided we could get a better speed by adapting the Starlink Router (which we had discarded) to DC power.

We have done this and we are now achieving 100mbps and above, a three fold improvement.