Starlink Internet At The Off Grid Cabin

Okay, I just got this new Starlink Gen 3 Starter Kit. So, let's take a look at what comes inside the box. Okay, you get the satellite dish. You get the kickstand, which just snaps in right here. And then allows you, puts it at the right angle. You've got an assembly guide. Comes with the router. Comes with a power supply. Comes with the satellite cable. And it comes with the power cord for the power supply. Also comes with a user manual. So that's what comes in the Starlink Gen 3 Kit. Satellite kickstand, cable, power supply, and your router. So, everything that you need to set this up. Now, if you want to mount this permanently, it does not come with mounting hardware to mount it on your roof or on a pole in the ground. It doesn't come with any of that. So, if you want to do that, you're going to need to get some extra equipment. But if all you want to do is set it on the ground or on a table, any flat surface that's level, it has everything that you need. Alright, so if we take a look at this installation guide, setting up the Starlink, connecting everything together is super easy. This diagram shows it all. Just plug your power supply into a power source. Plug it into the router. Plug the router into the satellite itself. Make sure that your satellite is 20 degrees to the horizon. And the kickstand will do that if it's on a flat surface. Or if you mount it, you're going to have to make sure that your mount hardware allows for that 20 degrees. Then you simply open up the app. It tells you how to spin the satellite. And then once you get that set, then that's it. You're good to go. Now all you have to do is enable your Starlink account and you're up and running. Alright, so the cable that connects your satellite to your router is an RJ45 cable. But don't confuse this with the Cat5 or Cat6, Cat7 cable that you would use to connect your computer to the internet. This is not a Cat5 cable. It's a proprietary RJ45 cable. So you need this cable to connect your satellite disc to the router. Okay, I have a pole mount adapter which goes in the same place that your kickstand goes. So if this is already attached, you're going to want to remove it. And the way that you remove this is you need to lift up right here and push it forward and then it'll come out. And this snaps in the exact same way. But before you put this in, it's going to be a lot easier to connect your satellite cable. Okay, so you've got this tab on the cable and you're going to want that to be facing up when you plug it in. So plug that in first. And when you do that, it has these little flanges that are built in and they'll be flush with this piece right here. And that seals out the water so that's where you get your IP65 rating. Okay, now that I've got the cable plugged in, I can go ahead and install my mount kit. And that just snaps in and that's all there is to it. And you've got space right here for the cable to go through. Alright, so I have a pole that I was using to mount a cell phone booster. I'm going to use this for the Starlink. It's not perfect. I'm going to have to make some adjustments to it. But basically, it'll fit in here relatively tight. Tight enough that when I put these tightening screws, there's three locations here, here, here, that that will be fine for the top. And I have this hole here which I can take one of the screws and have it go all the way through which will keep it from coming out. Now I'm going to have to do the same thing on this end because this is my wall mount which this fits in nicely. But the tightening hole does not line up with the hole that I've got here. So what I'm going to have to do is cut this pole about three quarters of an inch so that it will line up. And then I can use this and I'll be able to tighten it like this and it'll stay in place. So it's not ideal but with a couple of mods I think it's going to work. Okay, so this pole is aluminum so luckily I'll be able to cut it with my crosscut saw. Got a whole mess of turkeys out there. Can't count them all. It looks like there's, I don't know, maybe nine or ten of them. Alright, so that worked out perfect. So now with this on, this is on there nice and tight. It's not going to pull off, you know, with the wind. It's not going to spin. That's perfect. So now I can just mount this and then this other end fits just fine right there. So that's my mount. What I like about this mount kit is that it has a hole in the bottom which allows you to feed your cable through. Okay, so the installation was easy. The only thing that you have to do is make sure that when you put your mount up that it's level both sideways and front to back. Alright, so now I need to mount my router and my power supply. And I've got this aftermarket mount that it's a dual mount so it will mount both of the devices. I'm going to go ahead and install that here and I'll leave a link in the description in case you guys are interested. Alright, I got that mounted. Power is on. Wow, it's plugged in. It's not plugged into the wall socket yet but as soon as I plug that in it should come on. And I should be in business. Alright, once you've got everything hooked up you're going to want to download and open the Starlink app. Okay, and mine is already online. And you can see that the name of my Wi-Fi network is Woodhaven. Okay, so one of the things that you're going to want to do when you're setting things up is to get your alignment. And you can see that I'm in alignment currently but as you move your satellite dish this rectangle moves. So it's really easy to get it exactly in the right space and then you just tighten it down on your pole. And let's go ahead and run a speed test. We'll see just how good my Wi-Fi is. My internet. Okay, it looks like it's still running. Okay, it looks like I've got 33 megabits per second up and 240 megabits per second down. That's excellent. I can do an awful lot with that so I mean that's as good as my home network. So yeah, I can actually get online here at the cabin and could actually get some work done if I needed to. Alright, I was on the other side of the cabin for that test. Here I'm right in front of my router. So let's run the test again and see if we can't get any better numbers. Yeah, so it looks like I've got 38 megabits per second up and 327 megabits per second down. So this is my desk. This is where I'm going to be doing all my work. So yeah, excellent internet connection right here. Really anywhere in the cabin. The only downside to the Starlink if you're off-grid is that it does consume a fair amount of amp hours. It's pulling 145 watts right now and 11 amps and that's in addition to what I'm still pulling in power from my solar panels. So on top of that I'm pulling nearly 150 watts and over 11 amps. So you don't want to leave this thing running. What I do is I'll turn my router on while I'm going to be using it. Use it for an hour or two hours or whatever it's going to be and then turn it off. And don't let it run overnight when I don't have anything coming in from my solar panels. So if it wasn't for that it would be perfect and dang near perfect anyway. Alright guys, so even if you're pretty far off the beaten path you have no other way of getting any kind of internet service. I'm telling you, Starlink, it really works. Super easy to install. If you have any experience with cell phone boosters, it's that easy. It's actually easier. It has an app that walks you through all of the steps. And besides activating it, it's almost identical as far as installing it goes hardware wise as it is doing a cell phone booster. So if you've done one of those you can definitely install a Starlink satellite dish. And then once you get everything set up, you've got fast internet. So yeah, I give this Starlink a thumbs up. Not sponsored, just a customer that needed internet access. Alright, that's going to do it for this video. So I'll talk to you guys later.