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I often work from campsites. I no longer have to rely on if there is 4/5G signal, and can borrow a family members Mini (and pay for a month of service).

That means I can now head out on Wednesday after work, drive 3-5 hours to the middle of no-where, and work Thursday and Friday. But each of those days, I am able to be done working and then at a camping site with my family. Go on hikes, fish, swim, etc.

So now my whole family can enjoy being in the wild, and I don't have to burn up vacation days. And we don't have to try to jam it all into a weekend were you feel like your just travelling the whole time.

Side note.. Having no signal on the west coast can actually be extremely dangerous, with how fast some wild-fires have spread. You can have one 10 miles away and not know it with the wind blowing the other way, and if it shifts direction, you can have a very limited time and path to get away.

Being able to check tools like WatchDuty and weather reports from the middle of nowhere is a safety feature.

I go truck camping and do a lot of day trips to places where there probably will never be traditional cell phone service. I was against taking a starlink out for a while, but on a couple of weeklong trips over the last couple of years I started to dread my phone coming back online as I was driving out of the woods and all the attendant notificiations. For better or worse I would rather get online and go through all my texts and any emergency work stuff once a day than have to sift through 7 days of catching up on context. It's easy to say "just don't catch up" but it's difficult in practice.

I spend enough time in these places that I'm happy with the balance. I don't run the dish mounted all the time. I don't go out to watch movies, though that could be nice when you are north of the 45th in winter and nights feel like they are 16 hours long. Also it's nice if you forgot to check if your offline maps are still downloaded.

A lot of folks here making arguments for safety and convenience, but ultimately for me the issue is around what I might call "plausibility of unreachableness": basically whether being genuinely offline and unreachable is normal and socially expected when you're doing certain activities, the number of which has dwindled over time.

It's obviously possible to say "I'm going to be unreachable", but people don't really like that, and it becomes a push-pull unless you're doing something where you genuinely have no service or connection. For a long time, being on an airplane allowed this sort of ability to disconnect: even if there were $5/minute in-seat phones, nobody reasonably expected to be able to reach you if you said you'd be on a flight. A few hours where you could fully tune out the noise of the world, no questions asked.

Wilderness backpacking trips have maintained this sort of unreachableness fairly well–I've had a Garmin inReach for years, and used it to keep family apprised of our movements, and once to coordinate a fairly serious situation where a large wildfire kicked up near our exit, but ultimately the slow messaging and short length limits prevent any real communication. Cell phones have also started getting satellite functionality, but it doesn't work very well, yet, at least as far as I've seen.

I see this march towards internet everywhere all the time as ultimately leading to expectations of connectivity, even in the most remote places–then "will you have made camp by 6pm on Tuesday? If so can you join this quick call?" becomes a real question people feel entitled to ask, notifications start coming through when you turn it on to check the weather, "I'm going back to my tent to check a few emails before bed" might be something you hear around the campfire...

When I worked remotely, I liked going camping for weeks at a time during the summer and working from the campsite. At the time all I had available to me was shitty mobile data, which made it challenging but not impossible. Starlink would have been a godsend.

A co-worker of mine is traveling to parks all around the country and basically camping full-time. StarLink on his fifth wheel allows him to work during business hours and then walk off into a forest at 5pm.

The other day I sat on a bench at sunset at Albany Bulb and watched as San Francisco slowly turned on the lights and day gave way to night. After some photography and quiet moments with the view, I took a few minutes to test the latest rev of my mobile webapp. Then I used voice mode to give feedback to my coding agent, and it started working up fixes. I looked up from the phone and was struck with the beauty of the view once again.

Products like Apple Vision Pro promised working on productivity apps with beautiful views of Yosemite displayed behind the virtual computer screens. But now with a cell phone and voice mode (I don’t have starlink but I have enjoyed it in the past), I can work on my app while I’m taking a break in the middle of a bike ride.

I often say I love the work that I do but I don’t like being at the computer. Specifically that the best work I’ve done is sitting at a desktop in one place for hours at a day for years on end. To me, things like voice mode on mobile is a revelation. I long dreamed of doing productive work on the go, and this is a way I can do that. I’m not sure I want starlink personally, but I can certainly see the appeal of setting up at a park and getting a few hours of work done before putting it all away and doing a hike to the summit.

It's not just you. I am deeply saddened that there will no longer be any true wilderness anymore. If I stumble across someone on a work call or prompting their agents 30 miles from the trailhead in the Sierra I think I will go mad.

Technological changes are always ecological, never purely optional. They change expectations, mores, etc.

It’s the opposite for me and my family, but more so because of safety. I bought my mom a Starlink mini and portable battery because she does a lot of road trips and camping in remote places. Many times there’s no cell reception. If she needed to look anything up or communicate with anyone in those places, there are limited options.

Yes there’s satphones, but then might as well have the entire internet for the same price or less. The $10/mo Starlink standby plan seems well worth it for insurance

Working remote in the desert on a motorcycle is absolute therapy.

Starlink + 60w foldable solar + battery bank in the sidebag of an adventure bike is the meta.

But yes - leave it at home when "getting away from it all".

Starlink minis on the dashboards of pickup trucks have become very common recently in some of the more remote western states.

I think a lot of folks underestimate both how large the US is, and how bad high speed cell coverage is, in many of those areas

Me too. But Starlink definitely makes our group more confident when we go camping deep in the forest or mountain. If you are discipline enough to just treat it as a much more capable emergency satellite phone then it's a great addition to your camping kit.

Binary thinking clouds judgment. Having the ability to access the internet is not itself in opposition to adventuring in the wild.

Considering glamping is getting traction a lot over the last few years, there's probably a lot of people who want to watch movies and such while outdoors.

There are many many uses that aren't camping. People work in places with no cell or wifi doing jobs that require driving or walking or helicoptering in. Then they want access to data to look something up. Geology / oil industry for example.

Yea also, a few years ago I traveled around the entire US with a 4g hotspot and had service in nearly every place I visited, even in many remote national parks. With 5g being significantly faster than starlink, it does seem that this is an incredibly niche product.

Don't bring your starlink mini with you.

Yes, that seems very arbitrary to me, while one is not willing to also forgo most other amenities of modern live.

Travel with family, kids, and work commitments… Starlink unlocks options for those of us who have lives that don’t look like a postcard picture.

On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, it's how you take "working remote" to the extreme.

To me, it's nice to know if you had to connect and get a message out you can. There's also the drive out there and the drive back which can be boring for a passenger with no signal.

That’s great! You should keep that up.

I found disconnection to be a factor creating hesitation to spend a weekend at a campground out in the north woods. The things I do online are a big part of who I am, and being able to do those things and also go paddling / hiking in the same weekend is wonderful. I don’t think people should worry about the purity of their nature experiences. If someone wants to go full bushcraft, or if they want to blog from a canoe, I wish them the most out of whatever experience they seek. Except generators, I hope they all blow a head gasket.

I've taken an Iridium phone when I've been truly off grid (e.g., hundreds of miles from a road, hundreds of miles from cellular service), for me I just liked having a lifeline in an actual emergency.

You don't need to use it. But nice to have.

Then simply don't use it. It doesn't affect you at all then right?

If you live close to nature, but with an Internet connection, isn't that closer to the heart than living far from nature and going camping every once in a while with no connection?

I agree with you. As a homeless person who spends a lot of time in these natural places and campgrounds all I see now are people stuck in their vans and RVs with a Starlink antenna on their roof.

I’m going to say this with the knowledge that I will be attacked for it, but since Starlink came to these natural places, I’ve had a more difficult time sleeping. Plus my tinnitus is worse every time it’s around me. I know I am sensitive to electromagnetic fields. They caused me insomnia, tinnitus, and increase my anxiety and episodes of psychosis. I believe this is due to genetic changes I have in my calcium, potassium and sodium ion channels.

I’ve done all the double blind test on this I could and these KU bands really affect me. They spread out over 13 mile hexagonal shape whenever someone has a Starlink running.

When I’m in these places my phone has its data connection turned off, unless I’m doing something like posting on HN complaining about electromagnetic radiation.

Why are you focusing on camping though?

That's because you view those activities as separate from your "normal" life, and those events for you are so short that you can put your entire life on hold to do them

What would you do if you went camping 5x as much?

The heart of camping is being stranded. Knowing that if you had an emergency there'd be no way to get help. Starlink ruins that.

I’m pretty sure even this v2 is optional to own/bring/use.

Every year we go to campsites for about 3 weeks. Every year i have the dream to leave my phone at home. I am way too much into tech. Cant live without it. At least not at this point of life.

I saw a video recently about a silicon valley tech bro who goes hiking with a starlink receiver on his backpack so that he can prompt his agents while he hikes and never lose a single second of vibe coding productivity. It made me want to throw my laptop out of the window.

For me also, and for camping, it's not just for disconnection from work, etc.

There's a very different psychology when you're completely self-reliant, with no communication with civilization. It's hard to express precisely, but it's powerfully liberating and a much more immersive alternative from everyday civilization. The door is shut on other options for a few days, at least.

(Yes, there's risk - though that can be greatly overemphasized and there's risk in everything - and you need to rely on yourself (and your group) to mitigate those risks and respond effectively to them, not on others. One leading trainer I read said that, once you're out of harm's way, the first thing is think. Nothing is going to happen immediately; the ambulance isn't going to be there in 5 minutes; the doctors won't see you for days, at least.)

The risk isn't the focus. It's just you and world around you.

Not everyone can do that - they have responsibilities they can't turn off, they have health challenges, they may want a compromise, like one of those emergency pager devices. I'm saying the effect of actually being disconnected is real, powerful, and valuable.

Sometimes it's not just about having internet at all the places in just the use cases that you can think of or that I can think of.

Connectivity, when and where it's useful, it can be really extremely helpful. [BLANK_AUDIO]

While I generally agree, there is something magical/cool about being in remote wilderness without any signs of civilization, and writing code (or working on somethi technical) in that setting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glamping

I agree. I carry only two things for off-grid camping:

1. My iPhone, which has exactly the right amount of satellite communication for me: SOS and simple two-way texting, only when I actively point it at the right place in the sky, and

2. Aviation band handheld radio as a true last resort. Have one anyway as a pilot, and I figure it's unlikely I'll go more than a few hours without seeing some airliner I can talk to. Illegal to use those bands for this? Technically. Am I worried about the FCC putting me in jail if I'm down to my last fallback to get a critical message out? Nope.

Not really, if the goals is to maximise getting away, being able to be productive _wile_ on location means you can go, work a bit there, and then be on the trail immediately, you can spend much more time in the mountains than otherwise.

Plus actually working in a nice place like that is in itself a luxury worth the price.

If only this incredible technical achievement could not be linked to such a toxic individual… eh one can only dream, maybe greatness requires a bit of madness.

Wrong audience to make this argument (I do agree).

Au contraire, if you are in general aviation, the last thing you want is to be caught with no radio contact whatsoever while you are stranded. Communication keeps you alive.

Not sure if this would cover the use cases you're thinking of, but they have significantly improved management for business customers in the past year or so.

Last year, you couldn't get API access at all unless you went through one of their distributors or spent $1M+/year on Starlink, but now you can use the API [0] as a normal business customer. It's got pretty good telemetry and management features.

[0] https://starlink.readme.io/docs/getting-started

https://starlink.com/business ?

SIM? What other provider are you thinking will Starlink allow in their network?

A reasonably priced routing via satellite links is my dream. I work from NZ on various Salesforce projects (aka enterprise web apps). Ping is usually 200ms or so to the US. Laser interlinks could possibly cut that in half.

Funnily enough, that's on Amazon's LEO feature roadmap.

Also curious about this; I'm not much of a tinkerer but I did see their battery has a USB-C port. Is there some efficiency loss in using a spare battery as a power bank rather than actually replacing the battery where it lives?

I would guess that calling it "quick-swap" rather than "hot-swap" probably means no.

I consider this to be a bit of a downgrade - the Mini 1 would accept anything from 12-48 V without negotiation, which made it really easy to power from a vehicle battery or DC wall power (if you have off-grid solar). If you did want to supply it via USB you just needed a small and cheap "dummy load" to negotiate for a voltage in that range. Now, you have to use a PD supply, and those are very hard to find at 36/48 V (in fact, this is the only single one I'm aware of that will do 60 W: https://www.coolgear.com/product/chargeit-mini-82w-usb-type-... ).

Usb-c to barrel converters are tiny

15 W is the Mini 1's rated "idle" power draw [0], so it's hard to tell if they're just being very generous with the "up to" figure (assuming the dish isn't being used at all) or if efficiency is improved. You'd think they'd mention if it was.

[0] - https://starlink.com/support/article/18836c7e-2d97-6153-fe67...

It's cool but 4.5 hours feels low for what you'd want. Between sometimes not fully charged, degradation, not wanting to fully deplete the battery your average comfortable use-time is going to be more like 2.5-3 hours. A burst of work but an entire half day of work is pushing it. It also competes with your phone hotspot, and is more of an advantage where you dont have cell coverage (more remote - where you are more sensitive to lower battery life because you cant recharge as easily).

Let me reiterate. I think this is actually awesome and I'm sure 4.5hrs is a big accomplishment. Starlink is awesome. I just think for any product you need to discount the stated battery life significantly.

My mini draws about 40-50w at start then stabilizes at 25w-30w at steady state. I put mini in my backpack next to my laptop with a 86Wh power brick and go hiking.

Phone now has satellite that makes me reachable. In case of emergency I bust out the mini and the laptop and I join the bridge.

This is not in theory, I actually joined emergency calls a few times.

Probably don’t need mini2 at this time. It only removes the power brick for me.

The specs say Mini 2 works with a 60W power brick. Mini 1 requires a 100W source. So at the very least, the peak draw is better.

If you divide Watthours by hours you just get watts not more Watthours.

If it's 71Wh and it lasts 4.5h, the h cancels out and it just becomes 15.78W.

They gave me a free mini as a promotion to residential customers. It worked for them, I now have it mounted in my daily driver and pay them ~$27/month more. That's half the price of a mini-only subscription. Standby would be enough for me except that it doesn't work while in motion.

For truck camping it feels like the main upgrade to this version, the built in battery, is unnecessary because you can power it off the vehicle when you need to or have a separate little battery pack power the Mini.

I've got the OG mini on my truck camper.

I don't see anything here that would meaningfully improve it assuming your truck has a reasonable power situation when it's not running. Mine runs off house batteries in the camper. And for whatever the price difference is from $150 you can buy a much more versatile power bank for camping.

I have starlink on my campervan, it is so great for this. Being able to grab hiking maps in the middle of nowhere is awesome!

He has created something that didn't exist a few years ago, and now governments "absolutely cannot let Elon maintain a monopoly" are you saying they need to subsidize competitors or they need to ban Starlink or they need to nationalize Starlink?

Those are the three options for your mandate.

the non-government intervention option is just for Starlink to prove the market, and others can move in. SpaceX is willing to sell them the ride for a decent price, in relative terms.

We should just nationalize SpaceX at this point.

Probably half the goal here is to push those people towards the dedicated starshield offering.

Distance alone isn’t the real issue (newer Pixel phones can talk to GEO, which is 100 times farther out than Starlink in LEO!), data rate over distance is.

It's not inherently because of space, it's because phased array antennas are just very power hungry. Most of the link budget is coming from the satellites huge antenna, the mini has a comparatively tiny aperture

They have to be able to actively melt snow too, which makes the draw much higher.

When an acceptable group can afford a global satellite constellation and get launched. Modern technology is inherently a centralizing force in many ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Fut...