Star Link – Installation
Hey all, very excited to share this story with you. We have been waiting for a chance to try out the new Star Link system, and I am happy to report that so far it really does deliver on its promise. I will post the pictures of our install below.
Star Link is still in its Beta phase; as such our package included the dish, base mount, poe injector, Wi-Fi router and connector cables. Everything you need to get started quickly
For this install, we needed to place it on top of an ‘Atco’ style office trailer. As such the roof surface is flat, and we didn’t want to penetrate existing roof system. Also, the app asks you to use your phone to test for obstructions, but in our case the sky is wide open with no obstructions in the way.
We decided to fabricate a non penetrating mount for this application. All we needed to achieve this was a small piece of plywood (to give the base extra support), a few bolts, and a small piece of galvanized post to give it a little extra height.
In our case there was a raceway on top of the trailer, and we needed to raise the dish far enough up so that it would not touch the raceway if it needed to re-calibrate itself at anytime.
Once the dish is physically installed, you need to proceed with the app for configuration. We had a PC that was connected to the AUX port of the supplied Wi-Fi router to configure the Star Link Wi-Fi network. This step basically configures the Wi-Fi so that you can connect your phone to it, prior to running the app. You will need to be connected to the Wi-Fi that Star Link is on, in order to proceed with the app configurations.
Once we got the ‘You’re Connected’ alert, we ran the speed test from the app
As you can see the download speeds look promising! The system then spends some time calibrating, and checking for obstructions. We were a little worried about the ‘This usually takes about 12 hours’ notice, but it took about 15 min to calibrate in total.
Once the app was finished, we ran a speed test on the connected PC from Speedtest.net just to see how it compared.
As you can see we did get similar download speeds, but a much smaller upload speed. But at the end of the day, this is a HUGE improvement over what was being used prior.
And that’s it! If you have any questions about any part of this installation, please let us know in the comments below.
