Starlink is in beta. The entire purpose of the beta is to find stuff like this. They found something, and I'm sure that the next iteration of this before it goes to mass market will account for it.<p>You're just seeing the system work.
Several posters on r/Starlink report that they had seen their dishes at more than 122F, when this topic came up a few days ago.<p>It's entirely possible that this story (and 122 hn comments so far) is about a dish with a loose heatsink, and not a product that always shuts down at 122F.
I've been looking at the other comments on this article, and there is a couple of points that I haven't seen address by others that I think are pertinent.<p>1) What was it that Starlink wanted to beta test with customers? It might very well be that they shipped hardware with know environmental weaknesses, so not to hold up other parts of the project. While taking a hit on the reliability in edge cases.<p>2) We know that there are some dishes out there that have heat issues, but we don't know how many dish hardware iterations they have done. The failing dishes could very well be early prototypes that have know issues. Which are fixed in later revisions.<p>Generally speaking I don't see these reports as worrying. I've just come of 10+ years of working on SW on (indoor), embedded hardware. Having alpha and beta hardware with issues are common, you need some hardware to run your test and SW development on. Even if it is fundamentally flawed and you have to throw it away because of those weakness later. For those that only have experience of building software. What you are seeing here, is a view into the sausage factory, and just because it feels messy and doesn't line up with your expectations. Don't mean that they are doing it wrong.
Hey, remember that time <i>the entire power grid in Texas</i> was crippled due to things going out of temperature range spec? Only in that case, it wasn't a beta product, it was critical infrastructure, that they were warned about and had ample opportunity to fix.<p>Getting components rated outside of "normal operating conditions" is a PITA on a good day, and impossible otherwise. You straight up don't design for every possible condition for the beta. That's bad engineering and a waste of time and money. Pick the number of 9's you want, estimate the conditions, draw a line in the sand, and build the damn thing, knowing damn well X% of customers will have an issue. Revise, fix it, refine your product and process.
I’ve worked on multiple projects where, at the early prototype stage, we limped along with off the shelf generic heatsinks, or even no heatsinks, for a phase or two because for some reason, it was long lead or high expense or low priority to fit a custom high performance heatsink. It sometimes seems like thermal work is as eschewed by electronic engineers as mechanical engineers often avoid HVAC.
Sort of funny that the solution for streaming is to literally turn on a stream of water.<p>On a separate note, even if you don’t live in Arizona, a litmus test for good engineering is whether or not you see reviews of a product melting in Arizona. Yeah, melt. Literally.<p>Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the US. If it doesn’t work here, it’s not mass market.
I’m always surprised how poor engineering gets exposed in products I purchase being an Arizona resident.<p>No, failing at 122F is not acceptable. If your hardware is exposed to outside conditions, it should operate easily below 32F, and well above 140F.<p>Considering that phones can operate below 0F and near 122F, that’s embarrassingly bad.<p>Same thing in vehicles. If you’re driving consistently at interstate speeds, you should be able to cool a cabin down below 72F while driving through 120F weather. Too many vehicles fail this, and frankly it’s repulsive for something you buy for 5-6 figures.
I wonder why such an aggressive thermal cutoff too, 50C ain't that hot even for consumer-grade electronics. Is it related to all that heat reducing SNR to unacceptable levels? If so, that frankly sounds like a pretty severe design shortcoming.
You'd think that after the fiasco of not using automotive grade parts at Tesla which forced them to run AC to keep them within operating range they would have put more thought into high temperature electronics.
The problem is not the outside temperature, but the small difference from the inside one preventing the circuitry inside the dish to cool down. Also the way it is engineered doesn't help: it draws about 100 Watts of power, but the entire circuitry is enclosed in a plastic container with no way to exchange heat with the outside, and the heating parts are kept in "contact" with the metal plate working as heatsink through thermal pads which seem just too thick to me to transfer enough heat.
The metal plate should be helped to dissipate all that heat, but that would require flowing air, which is not an option in a closed box. According to a teardown video, there's no way to remove the metal plate without destroying the device, but one can still reach it and that would make possible for example thermal-gluing a metal pipe to it, then build a liquid cooling system by pumping the liquid through a better external heatsink with real fins.<p>Teardown article with photos and video:<p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/12/teardown-of-dishy-mcflatface-the-spacex-starlink-user-terminal/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/12/teard...</a>
I've seen a teardown of one of these things, and it's sealed well to keep out the weather, but that also makes it hard to put in a cooling fan.
When my family moved to Arizona in 1987 we brought along our Pontiac Firebird. My mom loved that car. But it melted in the summer heat. Literally the glue that adhered the the interior materials could not handle the heat and stuff just started falling down. Goop flowing down the walls and windows.
I have a starlink beta, and we're
currenty experiencing a really bad hearwave here in germany ( I measured 35C in the shade ).<p>Mine works like a charm regardless.
I don't know anything about the engineering of those dishes but why do they need to put electronics in them and can't move it at the other end of the cable, inside the house?
Maybe those that are exhibiting problems were sold to people that the engineers didn’t design for. Sales people don’t tend to care who they sell to $ometimes.
It should work at an extension of military temperature ranges for global use indoors, outdoors, and in odd semi-indoor scenarios like the back of a hot truck: -75 to +125 C / -103 F to 257 F.<p>Treating it as retail consumer electronics shit isn't rugged enough for real use.
122F... lol.... I guess they forgot that we have a sun?<p><a href="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/06/16/16/44302655-9692943-image-a-6_1623856961873.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/06/16/16/44302655-9692943-...</a>
All the comments on the article are really extremist. So I looked up Zerohedge and found it 'is a far-right libertarian financial blog' and 'is bearish in its investment outlook and analysis' .. so I guess that makes sense.<p>Not sure why anyone would be bearish of a beta product that is only just scratching the surface of its potential.
So apparently one of the downsides of Starlink is that the base station is an energy pig. Doesn't surprise me all that much in retrospect but I didn't think of it when I first heard about it.