Testing 1, 2, 3. Welcome Wanders. This very special episode, we're going to be talking to you
about Starlink. Specifically what is Starlink, what services are available and how long does
it take the average person to set it up from unboxing all the way through to where you have
connectivity. Starlink is a satellite network created by private space flight company, SpaceX
and the goal of the company is to provide low-cost internet solutions for people in remote areas.
Eventually SpaceX is playing is to have 40,000 satellites orbiting globe in what they call a mega
constellation. Now, currently, as it stands today, there's only 2,500 in orbit, which means you're
going to have some areas with high coverage, high bandwidth and you're going to have some areas with
little to no coverage. Now, if you're interested in knowing whether Starlink
is available in your area, what you're going to do is you want to visit starlink.com/map.
And one of the really cool things is that this map is updated regularly, you can enter your
address to check the status of your physical location. Now, as it stands today, there
are three available services; there's one for residential, which has some travel capabilities,
there's two that is specifically for RV users and is available today and there is a
third option that is for business applications that tends to run on the higher price range.
It's important to note that we are using version two of the residential unit that now comes with
a rectangular dish, a router and 75 feet of cable, and is now priced at $599
versus the $499 for version one. Version one had a $99 a month fee whereas version two
comes in at $810 per month. But the good news is that they're both fully unlimited,
which means that there is absolutely no throttling involved, which if you're using cellular service,
you're quite familiar with throttling. Now, Lauren and I have been on the wait list for
roughly one and a half years before we were offered our dish for order. So one of the really
cool things about Starling RV versus Starlink residential is that so with RV, you can order
immediately since it's just recently launched and people are just starting to get their hands
on the Starling RV option. I'm sure others will be reviewing that option to see how viable the
solution it is. Now today, we're going to install the Starlink residential version, which will
add portability later when we start to hit the road. But for right now, it's a set to residential
mode and we're going to take it from just in the box I'm literally just going to cut it open,
you're going to see it exactly how I see it. And I'm going to just navigate through the
user experience with very little instructions, or actually I'm not going to use any of the
instructions and just to see how it goes. What I want to see is how intuitive
the installation process is. And if I stumble on some things, well, hopefully that
frees you up from stumbling on those exact same silly things that I do, which of course I know is
bound to happen without reading the instruction manual in advance. So without further ado,
let's get started on the installation. A few weeks ago we got our hands on Starlink and
we're so excited, we thought we'd set it up right away but of course, baby Dash decided to make an
early entrance. So you know that we initially struggled with quite a few internet issues,
we found a solution. This is one of a series of solutions I don't think there's a perfect
solution. Even Starlink has it drawbacks but rumor has it it's super easy to set up
and we're going to test that theory today. It's my own record going to keep tabs here
and go. Now I am not an internet guru but any stretch imagination, I'm just your average guy.
So if you want to know how long it takes the average person to set up Starlink,
this is the video for you. So Starlink is an offering from SpaceX company, Starlink is not
its own standalone company quite yet, meaning it's not publicly traded as its own standalone company.
But this is one of Elon's projects to offer internet to pretty much all areas of the world,
especially areas that are in rural areas where getting internet access is not a given.
Most recently, you may have heard a little bit about Starlink because Elon sent over
quite a few satellites to Ukraine to help out the Ukrainians. Well, check this out, all right. So
we've got what other people are calling dishy MC dish face. I've got the stand here, kind of cool
looking. It's not as big as I thought it was, I initially thought it's going to be much bigger so
kind of cool there. This looks like the router, this is very sleek and sexy looking, I mean,
I would expect nothing less from Starlink or from Elon. This is very like, Apple-esque really,
when I think of like clean, simple design to think of Apple. So it has that Apple-esque look to it
and set that down right here, got the dish and we have a huge amount of cable here so
I'm assuming this is for the router. This is the dish cable, put this
without doing a ton of work here, okay. There we go, okay. So we've got it on its legs.
We've got a boatload of cable and I think that's going to come in handy because you're going
to want to position like most satellites, you're going to want to position it where
has the most exposure to the sky. So if you're under some trees, for instance, you're going to
move it to an area where there's not as much tree coverage. So this clearly is going to connect to
the router you can see right here in the bottom where it connects, that's pretty cool see that?
You can tell you're putting it in the right way because it only goes in one direction
right there like that. Now for the purposes of this test,
one of the cool things about Airstream is that we do have outdoor outlets.
So before I figure out how to run all of this inside, I just want to get it set
up and see if it's working, right? So like got an outdoor outlet here now to our outlet here.
I'm going to plug the power cord in to the router, here we go and again,
it only goes in one direction, cool. Very clean design in the bottom here. Going to move this
dish away from the router, we're underneath the awning right now so I'm going to set it
a little bit further away. We've got some instructions here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
insulation, safety notices, warning, whitening protection makes sense.
But I do know there's an app, so I'm going to skip straight to the app,
it's how I feel about instructions most of the time and there is a Starlink app
right there. Very important note if you're in an area with zero cellular service, you probably
won't be able to download the Starlink app so you might want to do that first and there you go.
There is a check for obstructions and start setup so I'm going to click start setup,
plug it in, got it. We are plugged in so I'm going to hit next,
cool. I'm going to open WiFi settings, it says to look for Starlink don't see it, there it is.
Create network, enter your WiFi password, okay. I'm going to do that now so, that is
all its sync do here let's see, okay. So let's see if it is working I'm going to try for my laptop.
Attempting to connect, it is connected so, the next thing to do is I'm going to?
Test the speed. Test the speed,
right? Let's check it out, wait, no, hold on, I'm not online. It's connected but I not online, okay.
So obviously I did something wrong let me go back to my phone. If there was something left for me to
do on the app, I was skipping to the laptop but I should have just finished the process
with Starlink setup on the app. What I basically did was I logged into the
WiFi network, I just went back to WiFi, selected starter link and then logged in using the network
name and password I had just created in the app. And what it was just online now it's saying it is
offline again, no signal received, okay. It says visibility is good
so maybe check for obstructions, it actually wants you to take a photo it's interesting.
Point your camera up can you see this? This is pretty interesting.
It says point your camera up, okay.
It wants you to scan the entire sky
that it has a percentage meter as well. So I've scanned 78% of the sky can you see that?
It's like little like dots it's almost like gamified, you have to collect all the dots in the
sky. Well, that is interesting, okay. This is
what we call the star loading? I know, right? It really is like a
game it has like little dots in the sky, okay. So it says estimated obstructions it's loading.
You may want to find a better spot try new location, okay,
so that's what I'm going to do I'm going to move it.
Okay, let's give that a shot. It says to
try new locations that's what I do now that I've moved dishy MC dish face.
Collecting dots again in the sky and it says, I need to find a better spot what the... Man rough.
I mean, it looks like clear skies so this is pretty interesting but
I've got some power lines, so it's kind of hard to get around those
and I've got one single tree right here. Let's give this a shot.
I want to see it, move it so. All right, here we go,
okay. I think I've located the obstruction,
the obstruction happens to be the packing material. In my defense it's white and it matches
the surface of the dish so I did not see it on top. That's my answer and I'm sticking with it.
So I'm assuming we're going to a much better signal now that there's no obstruction.
It's a piece of cardboard I don't necessarily think that should be an obstruction but
okay. So, what- Cool.
It just moved? Okay, you getting that? What- She's doing that on its own you're not
controlling that from the app, right? Nope, it's doing that on its own, okay. So I know
which direction it's aiming so I'm going to try to see if I can give it a clear shot of the sky
now that I know where it's aiming. That looks pretty good. It is not
liking my positioning of the satellite I know a hundred percent it wasn't the cardboard now,
even though that was pretty dumb. So one of the things I've noticed when looking at this
little more closely is that it has areas in red where you can see objects in the sky. And
clearly the tree, the one single tree next to our campsite, it does not like. So I'm trying to go
pinpoint a spot where there are no trees and this looks to be a better
spot. And I was curious to see what the speeds would look like with obstructions
in the way and it is at two megabytes per second. And I know that if it's functioning and connected
obviously it would be much higher than this. I was mostly just curious to click on speed test,
that is abysmal but it also says disconnected. So in all fairness,
I don't necessarily know what the speeds would be yet. Clearly it might not be a bad idea to
have some sort of pole where I can mount it to the pole and then telescope it up 10 to 15 feet.
Beyond that, in the way the kit comes with just the small stand you're limited
to what you can do. You basically just have to move it around with the
cable that comes with it. I'm going to try a few different spots and see if I have any luck.
The truth is I spend about 15 minutes scanning the campground I found an ideal spot,
it is kind of, sort of almost in our neighbor's like campsite but they're in a cabin. It's
definitely neighbor's campsite but they're in a cabin and it's behind the cabin and there's
nothing behind there but like plumbing and stuff. So I kind of like snuck it back there for now
it had the clearest view of the sky and then I still couldn't get it to connect. And then
what I did well, because it just kept saying obstruction, like locate, relocate, find a new
spot. And I was like, that's really weird let me at least test the speeds. I went to test the speed
it wasn't working, then I realized I wasn't on the Starlink network anymore. My phone
had booted me over to the backup network, which is our AT&T Verizon, so then I went back on Starlink,
got some things going there still wasn't working. I came to the router to check it out. I unplugged
it because I had a tangle in my cord and I needed to stretch it out a little bit more.
And once I plugged it back in it rebooted and then boom, instantly connected. And
as an example and of course this is my experience, you're going to get different speeds
based on where you are. But speeds are as follows; speed tests from the phone to the internet,
92 megabytes per second, 12 megabytes per second upload with 32 millisecond latency. From the
router to the internet, I've got 108 megabytes per second with 11 megabytes per second upload
from the iPhone to the router, I have 637 megabytes per second and 285 megabytes upload.
That again, that's from the iPhone to the router, so these are our speeds after,
I would like to say it could have been a simple setup. I ran into some visibility issues but if
you're in some open skies, you're going to set this up, I honestly think you could get it done
in approximately five to 10 minutes. So there you have it folks Starlink setup.
Now of course, the next trick is that I've got the router outside of the Airstream and
it can't stay outside. This is great for now but literally if you just walk up to a campsite,
you can just like walk off with the whole Starlink setup. So we've got a couple of considerations
here, one is security, how do we secure this dish? So that doesn't just like grow legs and walk off.
And two, how do I route a cable into the Airstream cleanly so that I don't have any
leaks or holes going into it or I don't want to create. I should say I don't want to create any
holes into the Airstream that are unnecessary. So if I can find another way to port the cable
into inside the Airstream, that would be ideal and then we can have once and for all very clean
Starlink set up. So more videos to follow on that you haven't subscribed be sure to subscribe
because we're going to be doing that and a ton of other Airstream modifications along the way.
So now that Starlink has been installed,
I thought it'd be appropriate to have someone join us for this review. And this is Dash.
Dash is rocking his new Airstream onesie and well, while I would rate the Starlink install as
probably a solid three out of five from [inaudible 00:16:57]. Do you hear that? Dash would rate it
zero at five [inaudible 00:17:02]? And the reason for that, do you want to tell them Dash?
I know right, did you hear that? The reason exactly, is that during his debut where we used
Starlink to shoot a live stream, which was Dash's worldwide debut, Starlink flailed on us midstream.
So intermittently throughout our live stream, which we use Starling for,
it would just randomly go down. Dash was so upset that I had to put him down, take a nap because
he's just not a fan of Starlink. I haven't given up on it quite yet in talking to other people
that do use Starlink. One of the things that we did realize, or a few of the things that we
did realize is that, well, one, it is still in beta, so it's not going to be perfect.
Two, we are in currently the Southeast of the US, we're currently situated in Florida
where coverage is not as widespread or that you don't have as much widespread coverage as you do
in other parts of the country. Specifically, the Northern parts of the country and more
out west where you have completely full coverage. So you're going to get some intermittent downtime
here in Florida and despite my best effort to find the clearest part of the sky, I mean,
it's an RV park and you're going to have trees. So while this may be the perfect setup, maybe out
west in Sedona, Arizona, where you have absolutely no trees. Unfortunately with all our RV parks,
it's not necessarily a given. So while you may have 75 feet or a hundred feet of cable,
it may not even be enough. And the reality is, do you want your satellite dish 100,
150 feet away from your camper to begin with? You probably don't because if you're like me,
you may be a little worried about it, just growing legs and walking off.
It will improve, there's no question of that but in the interim, we're going to continue to run
Verizon and AT&T as a backup solution, as well. As we've mentioned in earlier videos, there is
no perfect solution, there's just a combination of solutions that help to maybe combine a more
perfect solution. So I still to this point agree that the best solution is a combination of maybe
two or three different service offerings. So we're going to add Starlink to the mix.
Certainly it will be more value when we're up north and especially out west, we're going to
continue to run our Verizon and AT&T services as well. So thank you for joining us today and
as always remember to Wanderlocal this week, because as you know, it's good for the soul.