Ten years ago I wrote about TV as a slightly unwelcome visitor in the Log Cabin at Century Wood. We took a tuner to watch an episode of Shed of the Year when it was still on TV, but it felt like an intruder and that radio seemed much more natural. TV has not visited since and we’ve relied on radio for a connection to the world outside when we’re there. But this month I’ve taken the plunge and got a Starlink Mini dish to get a high speed internet connection.
Over the last decade the lack of phone signal became more inconvenient. Signal has always been patchy, especially when the trees are in leaf, and if anything got worse over the years as we shifted from 2G towards less penetrating, higher frequency 5G. I’ve found I can get an ok connection from one of the fences with a farmer’s field as there is a direct line of sight to a distant cell tower. I dreamed up schemes with a base station there and hundreds of meters of armoured mouse-proof ethernet cable running to the Log Cabin, but it really didn’t make sense financially (£100s) or logistically (a pain to set up and maintain).
Gradually lack of internet access became noticeable. I often want to go on the Screwfix website and check stock of some item I didn’t know I needed, and I have to drive out of the wood or wave my phone around by the fence. On an evening, I’m just used to having web access and looking things up as they come up in books or whatever. I do also often find myself watching whatever films offline that I have already downloaded, and so I’m hardly living a Thoreauvian dream of reading Homer ever night when I’m there. But the big thing is the frequency of online meetings scheduled for randomish times as part of my other work. With a network connection I can juggle those kinds of fixed point commitments more easily and even drop everything and step in to work remotely if something urgent comes up. I do some work where I basically need to monitor my emails even when I’m on holiday in case there’s a crisis, but the upside is I don’t need to be physically there when that happens. Bodging network access via a receiver near the fence wouldn’t really be good enough for that.
Then Starlink dropped the price of their Mini dish to £189 and it became an obvious choice. In the last week they’ve rejigged the subscriptions, and it’s now roam mode of £50 for 50GB in a month at 100-200 Mb/s, or £4.50 per month for unlimited 0.5-1.0 Mb/s standyby mode. You can use the Starlink app to switch between plans month by month. 0.5Mb/s is enough to order stuff from Screwfix and make calls and texts, and I can always up the allowance for the month when I’m staying for a while and need more than that.
The Starlink Mini comes with a pole connector that makes it easy to mount it on the top of a 48mm scaffolding pole. I had an old one about 4m long and fastened it to the back of the Cabin next to the battery box. I also bought Starlink’s 12V car adapter, which has a 5m cable and 12V car socket to USB-C adapter. At £52, more expensive than the knock-offs on Amazon but “guaranteed” to work. I don’t know whether I’ll ever really pull over at the side of a remote road and power up the Starlink for a few minutes, but I can if I need to. For now, I’m powering it off the 12V leisure batteries I use at the Cabin. It usually uses less than 2A and I can power it down to get more time out of the 120Ah batteries I use. Plus I have solar and now a generator to top up it up if necessary.
The glade where the Log Cabin sits has turned out to be a great move. It was originally an oval space where we camped with tents and used as our “base of operations”. Then we added the Log Cabin and Barn a few years later. Now the glade means the Starlink dish has its 110 degrees view of the sky unobstructed by trees, especially up on its pole above the ridge height of the Cabin and Barn. The Starlink dish monitors the strength of signal it gets from each satellite as they fly over for a few minutes and builds a map like this of any obstructions (in red) and clear sky (in blue). I’m solidly getting the best part of 200Mb/s, which is better than I get with broadband at home.
For the immediate future I plan to attach the pole to the back of the Cabin with a scaffolding hinge and a clamp so it’s secure and safer to raise and lower each time I put up or retrieve the dish from the end of it. Then I want to install a switch inside the Cabin so I can easily power it up and down from inside, with a 12V car socket for the Starlink USB-C adapter rather than clip a socket cable directly to the battery as now. I’m updating the electrics a bit to improve the layout of sockets, increase the current of the system, and accept input from the generator more simply.
After using the Starlink Mini for three visits, I must admit I’m very impressed. It does what I need. And I still found myself listening to the radio as I used the internet access to help plan what I’m doing next.