I wanted to know the power draw from a standard kit
eg. https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/starlink-standard-kit-latest-generation
my battery in the camper is 2 x 12V 100AH Lithium, in parallel
The inverter is a 275 VA, 12V Victron which draws about 0.5A @ 13V with no load.
The starlink terminal starts at about 5 W, powering the wifi then it needs about 100W
booting up the antenna and once settled down and online it needs around 55W
these power levels are taken from testing it using bench power supply set
to 56.5V DC output.
this 55W is equivalent to about 4.3 Amps at 13V
When powered by the inverter it uses 5-6 Amps at 13V
This means the cost of the inverter and starlink power supply
losses is about 2A
I thought maybe use a DC boost converter but I doubt it would be worth it
and even less efficient.
The cable connecting the antenna to the terminal/wifi is very special
and expensive. You get a 15M cable with the kit.
the 45M cable is $270 from Harvey Norman
The connectors are RJ-45 and the outer cable shield is connected to the metal
outer of the RJ-45 connectors. The cable is Cat6.
I want a much longer cable than the 15M since we stop at places where there are
plenty of trees. You need no trees obscuring about 1/2 of the sky
for it to work well enough.
I made a 50M cable, using Cat6 cable and normal cheap all plastic RJ-45 connectors.
You need to wire them as shown to get the 1Gbit functionality.
Testing this home made cable had 240 Mbit speeds from the satellites
and it was that when using the starlink's kit 15M cable.
This cable cost me nothing since I had connectors, cable and tool already
at work.
wronger than a phone book full of wrong phone numbers
