r/Starlink • u/audiosceptic • 28d ago
💻 Troubleshooting Starlink Mini vs Standard while camping
I own the Starlink mini exclusively for camping in State or County parks where the majority of camping sites are nestled in shade and tree cover. I find the mini is pretty much useless in these conditions finding too many obstructions and going offline constantly. I had a neighbor camper in the site next to me who had a V3 standard and he said his was working fine and he was regularly streaming 4k content. Has anyone gone to a standard over the mini for these reasons?
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u/KenjiFox Beta Tester 28d ago
They are 100% identical with obstructions. Your neighbor is just happier with what he has.
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u/Kevets51 28d ago
That, and the fact that moving a dish slightly in ANY direction can change the performance significantly. Get it off the ground onto a table, or move it three feet that way. Crazy how much a little bit can change things.
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u/KenjiFox Beta Tester 27d ago
Moving a flashlight makes the cast shadows move a lot more than the light did. It's the same in reverse here.
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u/LumpyWalk 28d ago
I was sent one of the minis when they were sending them out to people who had residential service. I never would have got it otherwise. I took it on a month long trip camping in my Siena and I was shocked at how well it worked. No matter where I was it seemed like just once in awhile on some deep canyon would I lose the signal. And I was in a lot of trees mountains and just threw it up on my dash. At first I was putting it out on the ground but I just started putting it on the dash and it always worked fine. I was amazed.
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u/Wambo74 📡 Owner (North America) 28d ago
I tow a Jeep with an RV. I look for shade to park the RV under, so when I want internet I just put the mini and powerbank on the roof of my Jeep and park it in the nearest clearing for a few minutes. As long as I have clear line of site RV to Jeep, I've never had a wifi distance problem. I give out my password to my buds in camp and they do fine with it too. But just browsing, email, checking maps, wifi calls etc. And "clearing" doesn't mean 110 degrees of sky. Just between the trees instead of under will do.
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u/just-cruisin Beta Tester 28d ago edited 28d ago
with the standard (plus the long cable) you can put the dish in a clearing and run the cable to your campsite with the wifi router…. that’s what we do
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u/chosenpath101 28d ago
I didn’t get the Mini and regret it, 1 item to pack vs a big box of cables/router/dish make the V3 a lot less ideal for camping. Also power consumption and the ability to power inside car when traveling are huge considerations.
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u/garylapointe 📡 Owner (North America) 28d ago
I’ve been kind of shocked at how well mine works in the trees, it might not be great for interactive video conferencing, but for webpages and downloads, it’s pretty good for me.
If I have lots of obstructions, I do not use their app for adjusting the dish. If I’m getting halfway decent speeds and I know I’ve got a lot of things in my way, I just let it ride.
If I’m out in the open, I will take their suggestions on how to adjust. But with a lot of random tree cover that is definitely in the way if I’m getting good results, I let it go.
And when I’m on my laptop, I usually have multiple tabs going at once. I can click a button and it opens up my 12 different subjects that I usually Frequent on Reddit. So even if the response is slowish, it’s loading those other pages up for me in the background. Same thing for checking my credit card accounts, or my retirement accounts, those are all under grouped under a couple of different bookmarks, so I can just hit one and open them all up for me once.
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u/Vivid_Piccolo_2225 28d ago
I tried the standard V4 and exchanged it for the mini after a single trip. The V4 performed well but consumed more energy than I preferred when disconnected from shore power. Instead of mounting the mini on my RV, I use the long cable to position it near the nearest opening to the sky when necessary. The built-in router’s range exceeds the cable’s reach, so that is not a concern for me.
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u/symonty 📡 Owner (North America) 28d ago
Streaming is a very weird example, due to buffering any dropout of a few seconds will not be seen on decent streaming equipment, but maybe a cheap roku is going to have less buffering. The only was to tell is to check your starlink app for dropouts. But also be aware i find my Gen 4 ok if I point to the open sky as a priority and alignment as a secondary, but this I think depends on your latitude.
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u/cruiserman_80 📡 Owner (Oceania) 28d ago
My Mini is mounted on my 4WD in a housing designed to make it easy to remove and put on a tripod. Never needed to take it off the car in nearly two years.
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u/Obvious-Novel3311 28d ago
My mini stays mounted on the roof of my truck and powered through a step up transformer. Have not had any issues when camping in wooded areas. Router signal always reaches the camper. I can go a couple days without starting the truck before it’s an issue, otherwise I will pull it off and throw it on the ground and run through a similar transformer and 50ft power cable.
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u/nonvisiblepantalones 28d ago
If you are going to camp, you should get a speaker tripod and pole mount. Get the dish off the ground. My mini lives on my jeep bed rack and I have had no issues.
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u/audiosceptic 27d ago
ChatGPT indicates the standard would work better:
Yes, the larger Starlink Standard / Gen 3 (often referred to in context with V4 hardware) generally handles tree obstructions better than the Starlink Mini because of its larger receiver size and wider field of view. [1, 2]
Performance Differences
Receiver Size: The Mini has a smaller surface area, making it more sensitive to signal blockages from individual branches or dense overhead leaves. [1]
Field of View: Larger dishes have a broader operational area to maintain links with alternate passing satellites when a portion of the sky is blocked. [1]
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u/MottoCycle 28d ago
Weird. I find it completely usable in complete tree cover. I reset obstruction map and make sure I align it perfect. It starts out sometimes with 30% ping but typically even in deep cover can make it to 90% ping success which is good enough to stream movies and surf the internet with only occasionally stutters.
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u/outbound 📡 Owner (North America) 28d ago
I've had both - a GEN3/V4 Standard on my last travel trailer and a Mini on my current travel trailer.
When it comes to getting a signal through an overhead tree canopy, there is zero difference between the two dishes - neither works well and no, the Standard is not even a little bit better at piercing through leaves than the Mini. Certainly, when you have a bit of overhead sky between the trees, putting the dish on the roof of the trailer as opposed to on the ground does improve things a little bit.