WirelessMoves – My Thoughts on the Evolution of Wireless, FOSS and the Past, Present and Future of Computing

Starlink Mini – Part 4 – Being Ahead of the Cat Videos

Perhaps a bit of a strange title for this post but when I recently went to the countryside for a long weekend, I took my Starlink Mini along, just in case. And well, I’m happy I brought it along for the ride.

Starlink Mini – Part 3 – Performance and Obstruction

Continued from part 2: With the truly ‘mobile’ Starlink Mini, I set off with my bicycle and also with a car a few days later to try out satellite Internet connectivity in a number of different places. Particularly, I was interested in how obstructions impact connectivity. Like for the big dish, the connectivity equation is actually quite simple: At least half the sky must be visible and unobstructed, and trees are the natural enemy.

Starlink Mini – Part 2 – Power and Performance

Continued from part 1…

Once having made the decision to order a Starlink Mini, it only took a few days to be delivered. And indeed it is very small and portable compared to the previous hardware and can easily be carried in a small backpack. Part 1 has an image of the Mini on my bike for size comparison. So what about power and performance?

After ‘unboxing’ I went up to the roof of my house to set-up Mini-Dishy there and was rewarded with Internet connectivity around a minute and a half later. Speeds were a bit mixed that evening, but I was able to get around 100 Mbps in the downlink direction and 30 Mbps in the uplink direction in a first speed test with a round trip delay time of around 30 ms. That speed seems to be a bit slower than what I could previously get with the larger dish, but not much, if at all.

Starlink Mini – Part 1 – Intro

This summer, Starlink launched another hardware iteration of their terminals, the Starlink Mini. I have to admit that I only stumbled over it by accident, but I was immediately intrigued because it is significantly smaller than the Starlink terminal I tested in 2023.

Things That Moved Me in 2024

It’s the time of the year again to reflect on what has happened in the last 12 months and looking back, I’m happy to say that it has been an eventful year again. So let’s jump right into it.

Anker Prime Power Bank – Simultaneous Charge and Discharge

In the previous post, I’ve had a look at the Anker Prime 200W A1336 power bank and its features. One thing I wanted to do a separate post on is the simultaneous charging and discharging feature.

Review: Anker Prime Power Bank 72Wh

It’s not often I review a product on this blog other than notebooks with Linux on them, but I’ll make an exception for the 72Wh Anker Prime power bank, because it has a number of features that made it very interesting to me, and a few quirks that are not mentioned in the advertising. I bought this power bank, as the one I bought 2 years ago is limited to USB-C 60W Power Delivery (PD) and there has been a recent application for which I needed at least 100W PD. So I looked for something new and ended up with this one, which can deliver 100W on each of its 2 USB-C connectors. So here’s how it performs for me in practice.

Eduroam Configuration for Android in 2024

In addition to a notebook, I recently also configured an Android phone for Eduroam for a University of Vienna user. Fortunately, things have become a lot simpler in recent years, and no special knowledge or app is required for Android 14. The screenshot shows the parameters to be set. For added security, I set the minimum TLS version required to 1.2. There is also a version 1.3 setting, but it looks like the University is not yet using this TLS version. So back to 1.2, better than the default setting. It’s nice to see there is a field to configure the ‘domain’ which makes me hope that the device does indeed check the domain during the certificate exchanged for increased security.

One NZ Starlink – More Thoughts

After my initial post on this topic yesterday, I kept thinking about about the potential implications of eventually also providing LTE IMS voice and Internet service over One NZ Starlink in New Zealand ranging from satellite density over data rates to emergency calls. Follow me into the world of wild speculation…

‘One’ New Zealand Launches Starlink Direct-to-Device SMS Texting

Just shortly before Christmas and seemingly pretty much unnoticed by the rest of the world, RCR Wireless reports that mobile network operator One NZ in New Zealand has launched Starlink Direct-to-Device SMS text messaging with four unmodified smartphones! To date I can only find the ‘official’ description of how the service works and only the promotional video on Youtube. Too bad, I’d really be interested in some more technical details and field reports by independent people. I’m sure these will come in due time, but for now, there are at least a few interesting details in the material provided.