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Comment by brador | Hacker News Reader

For who? The use case is miniscule given cell data towers already exist. How many of us even still own a yacht post covid?

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Covid was the best time to get a yacht in living memory. IDK why small recreational sailboats are so associated with wealth, it's a very accessible middle class hobby and most of the people doing it are not particularly wealthy. If you can afford a second car you can afford a sailboat.

The problem with starlink for sailing is the power usage. Prime solar panel space is pretty limited on a sub-30 foot boat and the starlink hardware takes approximately as much power as everything else you would want to run combined (gps/plotter, ais, nav lights, radios). Unless they're releasing new hardware this won't really be usable except on large cruising boats, which are more of a rich people thing.

Starlink Mini consumes 25-40W. That's 0.3/0.5kWh a day.

So pretty much what I said? A small boat will usually have two 200w panels, at any time one is blocked by the sail and the other usually doesn't make more than 75-100w bc of bad angle.

Panels are already at 25% efficiency, so 650 and 715W (bifacial) today and 750W by the end of this year, at around 100 USD a piece. If you need more power, you can easily upgrade at almost no cost, compared to the gains of having a Starlink onboard.

Those are twice the physical size of the 200w I use now. How big is your boat because if I give up any more deck for panels I'll be at very serious risk of stepping on them when working fore. If you have like 35+ feet then sure put whatever panels you want on there. I have two square meters of space I can give up and no more. Or build a bimini to mount them but that's $$$ and extra maintenance and more cockpit clutter.

I'd also need to upgrade my batteries, deep cycle marine batteries aren't cheap. So like yeah I could get starlink on there if I really wanted it but it would not be cheap. If I was a different kind of sailor it would be worth it but it's not a trivial upgrade. But I'm on the great lakes, I rarely have to go more than a day or two without cell signal. If it was just a matter of slapping new panels on there I'd go for it though.

Fair enough. Although regarding the batteries, LiFePo4 seems cheap as well and I don’t particularly get why people insist on buying the „marine” product which is same battery in a different package. Something very typical in marine industry.

Lots of rural places with zero cell coverage. Where I live cell coverage goes to zero as soon as you leave a city. I've long wanted this for a low data rate base station for a mobile Meshtastic network out hiking and camping. Remains to be seen if this new plan would work for that, but I am interested for that and a remote sensing project in my professional life.

One could imagine similar, more serious uses for remote sensors, agriculture etc. Local mesh network to a base station, satellite uplink to the data consumer. Even in places with cellular coverage, it could be useful as an emergency fallback connection.

For people who are spending more for the same use cases.

I'd like you to endure the suffering from mobile providers of where I live.

I have 4 providers available. All bad in my area. Live near the county HQ

I actually moved onto a yacht post COVID and was able to afford a rural cabin with starlink because of that. Judging by the used boat market that seems to have been more common than you would think.

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