My sister and brother in law live in a rural area, where there no hard-line internet, and a WISP is impossible to setup, too many trees and hills.
For Christmas, I decided to purchase a starlink and do all the setup, and encapsulate wifi across all 10 acres for game cameras, as well as security cameras.
Cost:
At best buy, $384 (after tax for the latest version)
At time of activation, you get a “Congestion” fee of $100, and first month of $120, so nearly $600 to buy locally, but it turns out to be the same if you buy it online from starlink.
Setup:
Not easy. This device does not have the motor to move it into alignment, you must do this manually, with the app on your phone. The dish has a 110° angle, making it very difficult to align the dish to have a steady rate of bandwidth. The dish needs to be sitting in an area that does not have any trees in front and also to the rear of the dish. Today I spent the day to remove trees for it to work properly. If the trees do not get removed, the app will always say the dish has obstructions, and will constantly disconnect for seconds at a time. Also the kit only has a 50ft cable, this makes it even harder to align the dish properly. We ended up ordering another 150ft cable, and a connector with a “better than starlink” pole adapter from Amazon. It’s taken 6 days and over $800 plus the hours of labor to clean the yard and move the 120ft trees, and dig a trench for the conduit for the wire(s) (I ran cat 5 with the starlink wire).
Speed:
Not steady, no matter what. It’s never constant, and it drops off drastically.
Advanced speed test (dish to satellite in the sky test only)
220+Mbps but will drop down to 111, or lower. The speed will cap around 220 but will not hold close to 200 before the test is finished. Normally around 111mbps, sometimes 80. Also I noticed that it depends on the time of day as to when it works best, I believe this has something to do with the satellite that is overhead at the time. I also turned off the heater, we don’t have snow and ice here.
Conclusion:
Because of where it’s located, it’s great. They can stream @4k, browse with devices and computers, security and game cams are all online with the ability to see live feeds from the game cams. My sister can hunt in real time, and watch videos in her stand. It’s an major upgrade for them.
Wifi Equipment to cover 10 acres:
Mikrotik Netmetal SH (International version) x2
I can’t remember the brand, but 12dbm Omni directional antennas, I think they are also Mikrotik
1 ubiquiti nano switch passive poe.
Cameras:
Reolink eco+sp I think (solar powered, wifi)x6
I don’t know the brand of game cameras, but they’re wifi capable.
It was a fun setup, just a lot of work for the starlink itself to work.