I bought Starlink in early 2021, during the public beta.
I installed it on my roof and tested it against my cable Internet.
My cousin has a farm in rural Missouri and has to work a remote job with less than a
megabit of upload bandwidth.
So my plan was to give Starlink to her, but what wasn't clear early in the beta was the
dish couldn't just be moved to another covered area and still work.
We tried last year, and it didn't get a connection, so I used it at my house for a while, but
eventually took down Dishy and it's been in a box waiting for the day when I could finally
transfer it.
Every few months I'd check Starlink's website, and I even asked support a couple times, but
they've always said I can't transfer it to her address yet.
She had even preordered in March last year.
When she pre-ordered, it said it would come in mid to late 2021.
Then in late 2021, it changed to 2022.
Now it says it could be 2023 before she gets Starlink!
Chip shortage or not, at some point Starlink should just be honest and say "You--you MIGHT
Starlink, someday," instead of giving estimates.
But besides preorder hell, a LOT has changed.
There's a new user kit with a lighter pizza box-style terminal and a new router design
that I frankly hate, mostly because it dropped the Ethernet, and you have to buy an addon
if you want something more reliable than WiFi.
And apparently SpaceX can't even make enough of them, 'cause it's already being scalped on
eBay for over two hundred bucks!
And if you think that's a lot to pay, Starlink also bumped their prices in April.
I used to pay $99 a month, but it's $110 now.
And people buying a new kit will have to pay $599 instead of $499.
Even people who preordered the $499 kit have to pay fifty bucks more!
Elon said he wanted the price for the terminal to come down, not go up!
On top of that, Starlink announced a new premium plan that comes with a bigger antenna and
faster speeds—but that costs a whopping $2500, and the monthly cost jumps from $110
to $500 per month!
But there are some more positive developments, too.
SpaceX finally rolled out a coverage map, and it shows that my cousin's area has service,
but no availability.
Sadly, that's the case in most populated areas.
But the best improvement came after news of SpaceX sending thousands of terminals to Ukraine
last month.
Supposedly USAID helped facilitate the transfer to keep Ukraine online while Russia keeps
taking out crucial infrastructure.
While that was happening, a new roaming feature started rolling out to Starlink customers
around the world.
And also in early March, Elon announced new firmware with better power consumption and
mobile roaming enabled.
YouTuber MikeOnSpace tested mobile roaming with his highly modified starlink dish stuck
on top of his car.
He was able to get over 250 Mbps at 80 miles per hour!
My plan today isn't quite that extravagant, though.
I'm just gonna toss Dishy in my car, drive around St. Louis, and see if roaming is working.
And if it is, I'll see if I can finally move the dish to my cousin's farm, and upgrade
her 1 megabit DSL.
But first—Starlink uses 50 to 100 watts of power.
So to go mobile, I need that power.
And that brings me to this video's sponsor, Ecoflow.
Ecoflow sent me two of these new 220 watt bifacial solar panels.
They have a new design that gets energy from both sides, boosting output by up to 25%!
With two, I can get over 400 watts of charge into my Delta Max power station.
That should be plenty for testing Starlink today, and it looks like there might even
be a chance of some rain.
But if there is, the solar panels are also IP68 rated, so I don't have to worry about
water damage.
Check out all of Ecoflow's power solutions online at Ecoflow.com.
I needed a baseline, so I set everything up in my backyard first.
And it's a good thing I had the solar panels, because I only had a few percent of battery
when I started out in the morning.
Right after Starlink connected, the battery ran out of juice!
Once I got the battery plugged in, I checked my dish's 'roaming' status.
It should show 'false' at my house, since I'm at my service address, and it does!
From what I've read, it'll be 'true' if I use it away from my service address.
I've monitored Starlink at home for months using my Internet Pi project, and I generally
get 140 Megabits down, 18 Megabits up, and 40 millisecond ping times.
I packed up Starlink, hopped in the car, and drove to a park near my house.
There was a little rain shower that had just stopped when I got to the park, so it was
a little wet, but not too bad.
But since the sun wasn't out and the parking lot was soaked, I didn't wanna try out the
solar panel yet.
No use getting it soaking wet if it won't get much power.
But I set up the dish, opened the app, and noticed the 'roaming' setting on the dish
was still set to 'false'.
So my guess is it's still close enough to the house to be considered at the service
address.
I got about 100 megabits down, but only 5 or so up.
But the speeds were fine for a quick test, and I knew it was still working, so it was
time to move on.
Before I threw dishy back in the car, I also checked on the power consumption, and it does
seem lower than it was last year, averaging around 70 watts.
Still a bit high, but a lot better than the 90 to 100 watts it was using before.
I hopped in the car and took a short trip to Forest Park.
Forest Park is one of those places we Saint Louisans are proud of.
Probably too proud.
We're always comparing it to Central Park in New York saying it's twice as big—even
though our city has like a tenth of the population.
But hey, it is our park, and this is my video, so I took a detour to see destinations like
Art Hill and the St. Louis Art Museum, or the St. Louis Statue that sits up at the top.
There's also Government Hill with it's pretty fountains, the St. Louis History Museum that
was the welcome center for the 1904 World's Fair, the Jewel Box, the Muny, and the St.
Louis Science Center's Planetarium complete with a Blue Angels Jet in front.
While I was driving around, it was actually kinda hard to find a good spot to test Starlink,
because, well, it's FOREST park.
There's a lot of trees everywhere.
But eventually, I parked and set up the dish on the road behind my car.
And finally, the moment of truth: when I opened the app and checked the debug data, 'roaming'
was finally set to 'true', so it works!
I switched over to a speed test, and that was actually a bit disappointing.
After a few tests, the best I could get was 88 megabits down and about 5 up.
But short term results aren't anything to go by, and that's not really what I'm testing
anyways, so I tore it all down, hopped in the car, and headed further West towards my
cousin's farm.
I still wanted to do one more test in the metro area, so I chose Faust Park, home to
the Butterfly House and an old 1800s-era village.
I was setting up Starlink in the parking lot and it looked like we might get a little sunlight,
so I also pulled out the solar panel and set it up.
Even with an overcast sky, and only a slight bit of sunlight, I was able to get over a
hundred watts with this solar panel.
And the setup was easy enough for one person.
Not like last time I set up my 400 watt panels on a windy day.
Anyways, while Starlink oriented itself, I took a stroll through the historic village,
which is supposed to show what life was like back in the 1800s.
They definitely didn't have satellite Internet back then, so my dish was probably a little
bit out of place.
But anyways, I confirmed Starlink was in roaming mode again, then I did another speed test and was
getting over a hundred megabits down, and 5 or so up.
Not too bad!
So I stowed Starlink, tore down the dish and solar panel, and headed past the butterfly
house to find lunch in the County.
Now that we know that it works in a few different parks further away from my house,
we're gonna stop and grab lunch, and then we're gonna go
out to my cousin's farm and see if it works there.
Ah, St. Louis Bread Company.
Home of the bread-sliced bagel, A.K.A.
the best way to eat a Cinnamon Crunch bagel, with the perfect ratio of cream cheese to
bread surface area.
So with roaming definitely working, it was time to head an hour west to my cousin's farm.
Along the way there was a torrential downpour, along with one really close lightning strike!
But we eventually made it safely there.
And of course, when we got to the farm it started raining again, so I set up the router
inside where it was nice and dry.
I also spent some time untangling Dishy's cable, waiting for a break in the rain, but it didn't
matter much anyways since the ground was already soaked.
I popped back inside, plugged in dishy and while it was booting up, I told my cousin
I thought Starlink would finally work this time.
But she was having none of that.
So I'm getting your hopes up, but--
-No, you're not getting my hopes up, 'cause I don't believe a word you say.
I'm skeptical. Very skeptical.
-Sheesh, maybe she should join in with some of the comment from my last Starlink video!
Anyways, we went inside and tested out Starlink, and what do you know?
It worked!
Roaming was set to 'true', and when I ran a speed test, I got 130 megabits down, and
20 megabits up.
But Annie was still a little bit skeptical.
-I think I want to connect with one of my devices and make sure this one isn't staged.
I mean, this could all be a deepfake. You might not even be here right now, I don't know.
-So she pulled out her laptop and found I wasn't lying.
Well, either that or I hacked her laptop too!
Anyways, she got about 80 megabits down and 9 up.
For one last comparison, we switched to her DSL connection and it was like living in the
early 2000s, with 4 megabits down and less than 600 kilobits up!
So is she happy?
Yes.
But was she also disappointed in some ways?
Also yes.
She told me she didn't like how after pre-ordering a year ago, the date just kept slipping over
and over.
And when Starlink support says I can't transfer this dish to her, even though it works fine
at her house already, that's just weird.
I know there are probably capacity concerns that limit what Starlink can do here, but
outside of the great support reps I've interacted with, it feels like Starlink is having a LOT of
growing pains.
And while it's not perfect, there are still a lot of people in my cousin's shoes.
They're okay with the struggles.
They're glad to have ten or twenty times faster Internet access.
They can have more than one person watch YouTube at a time.
Someone can play an online game while someone else is in a meeting.
Many of us can't even imagine what it's like 'taking turns' using the Internet.
Do I want Starlink to fail?
No.
Do I think Starlink can do better?
Yes.
I'm on the fence about Starlink's long-term prospects.
But while it's here, it IS providing new opportunities for a huge number of people.
And it's also nice seeing lower power consumption, which is especially helpful to people traveling
with Starlink, like in RVs or boats.
Until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling.