An M1 Macbook will draw an average of about 30W under load.
Starlink dish is about 50W.
80W * 8 hours = 640Wh
With a 100W solar panel generating 200Wh total throughout the day, you would use up 440Wh of your 1000Wh battery.
These are conservative estimates. My M1 pulls less than 20W at most times and you can get well over 200Wh from a 100W panel in a day. Tweak the numbers just a bit and you get indefinite power for a 40 hour work week.
Issue is, if you're really in the sticks (and therefore no 2g/3g/4g/5g service), you're completely disconnected unless the thing is on, idling away at 50w.
Sure you're not using data while you're sleeping, but you might want to be able to get a call from someone if they really need to get in touch with you. Or other passive tasks where you want to at least take a call/message/email if required.
Even in a residential environment, I've toyed with a timer that cuts my ISP modem and router overnight (and kills smart devices from trying to phone home...) because falling back to 3g/4g saves me ~15 watts, but it's honestly dollars/year of savings.
I do a ton of backpacking/camping/overlanding/etc and most places you can reach by car have at least some kind of reception. It's not like you will always be 100% off the grid.
If you just need a way to stay in touch, one option is to use a satellite SMS service, like the Garmin inReach.
Though, if you really want to run that setup 24/7, 600W of panels and a 2kW battery should do it. Bump that up to 800W and 3kW and you won't have any worries.
You can also add a small gas generator to the mix for emergencies.
Of course someone had to make this comment, but don't you worry, I've driven plenty of remote trails.
Obviously there are many places where there isn't cell coverage, but the vast majority (of even very remote places) has some type of coverage. I've been hours from the nearest asphalt road, in the middle of the desert and still have coverage. This is more often than not the case. Use a cell booster with an antenna on a pole, and you can extend this range even further.
My point is that you will not need 24/7 satellite connection just for taking calls, the vast majority of the time you will be near a service area. If taking calls is important to you, you can almost always find a place to camp with service (or carry a satellite phone). I also don't find many people in the truly remote areas camping out for extended periods of time. Most of the time, people want to be relatively close to services, for many other reasons.
> Obviously there are many places where there isn't cell coverage, but the vast majority (of even very remote places) has some type of coverage.
And from personal experience I can tell you that this is not true. It is not hard to find remote places with no cell coverage.
So you either aren't that adventurous, or you haven't explored very widely yet.
> I also don't find many people in the truly remote areas camping out for extended periods of time.
You don't find them, because they're in places you don't seem to go yourself or are not aware of.
> If taking calls is important to you, you can almost always find a place to camp with service (or carry a satellite phone).
Yes, there are other options and people have been making it work since before star link was available.
While I agree that most people won't need starlink on 24/7, it simply isn't true to say that you can count on some sort of cell service in the vast majority of places you can reach with a car.
> So you either aren't that adventurous, or you haven't explored very widely yet.
I've explored CA, NV, UT, and CO very thoroughly, and WA, OR, WY, and AZ but not to the same extent. I've had many rigs throughout the years (Tacos, 4Runners, ADV bikes, vans, campers, roof tents, I've tried it all), currently building out an E350 (retired ambulance). I've done week long moto-camping trips through-out CA and OR (week is my limit for moto). I've been at it for about 15 years now and have camped many hundreds of nights, mostly outside of developed campgrounds. My Google maps is filled with hundreds of markers for great boondocking spots that I've found over the years. You're not talking to someone that goes out to Moab once a year and stays in a yurt.
> While I agree that most people won't need starlink on 24/7, it simply isn't true to say that you can count on some sort of cell service in the vast majority of places you can reach with a car.
It is factually correct since just Verizon's cell coverage is something like 70% of the US land area. But of course, I can get in my 4Runner right now and find a place within a 30-mile radius that doesn't have cell coverage.
> It is factually correct since just Verizon's cell coverage is something like 70% of the US land area.
2/3rds isn't what I would call a vast majority and the coverage for the western states is much lower than that. If you only include places where boondocking is legal, I think the coverage drops significantly below 50%.
It is certainly feasible and can be satifying to only boondock in areas where you can get cell coverage, which I think was the point you were trying to make.
I'm not talking about hiking paths. National Forests publish MVUM maps that tell you where you are allowed to take a vehicle and drive/camp. These forest roads can be in rough shape, but many of them are easily possible with competent driving and a bit of clearance. Large swathes of these areas have no cell coverage at all.
Then add in all the amazing places you can camp in northern BC, the Yukon Territory and Alaska and the list of coverage-less camping destimations grows even longer, though many of those areas are outside the latitudes where Starlink works right now.
There are also quite a few established , non-dispersed campgrounds in the weat that I've been to that had no cell service. The other Crater Lake (the one in northern California) is one example I can remember off the top of my head.
I think you're missing the context of this discussion. Of course there are many places without coverage, but the idea that you will be in these places for extended periods of time, working and taking calls, is nowhere close to reality for even the most adventurous (and that's not because you can't get cell coverage).
But yes, if you're talking about Alaska/Canada, that's a whole other story. I am mainly referring to the US, especially the Western part of the US.
> I think you're missing the context of this discussion.
I live in my vehicle full time and work remotely while driving around the West Coast and prefer unpopulated areas. I understand the context completely. You are simply wrong and unwilling to admit it.
> the idea that you will be in these places for extended periods of time, working and taking calls, is nowhere close to reality for even the most adventurous
I can say from personal experience that you are wrong here. I would not even class myself as the "most adventurous" and my rig doesn't have 4wd.
There are absolutely places that I have chosen not to stay because I couldn't get reliable service to make work calls. I have also stayed places with really dodgy cell service and had to do work calls over the phone rather than via slack.
So yes, there are absolutely many places where I and many other Boondockers want to go and stay that have no cell coverage. Boondockers that need to be reachable around the clock in those areas will need to have enough solar and batteries to leave their Starlink array running overnight. Personally, I am fine with dropping off the grid overnight, though I suspect that I would occasionally fall asleep without remembering to turn off the internet and then spend days getting my batteries back to full.
My limited solar capacity currently is why I am still hesitating on buying Starlink. While I have a 4kwh battery, I only have 200w of solar and running a Starlink for me would require some more careful power management unless I also significantly upgrade my solar capacity.
> Alaska/Canada, that's a whole other story. I am mainly referring to the US, especially the Western part of the US.
Alaska is part of the western US, but not relevant to the point I am making since it is (mostly) outside the current starlink supported latitudes.
> There are absolutely places that I have chosen not to stay because I couldn't get reliable service to make work calls. I have also stayed places with really dodgy cell service and had to do work calls over the phone rather than via slack.
That's not what we are talking about.
We are talking about running Starlink 24/7 vs just during working hours. I'm saying that you can get away with just running it during work hours. You don't need 24/7 cell access when you're boondocking. That's the discussion here. Not whether you can always get cell service at all times when you need it. You can just plan around when you will be working. Sometimes you camp in a place with cell service, great. Other times you don't, no big deal, use other solutions (Starlink, satellite phones, etc).
Yes, if you're living out of your car in remote places and need to be reachable 24/7 you are a unique case and should plan accordingly. But for the vast majority of people working on the road, that's just not the case.
> the idea that you will be in these places for extended periods of time, working and taking calls, is nowhere close to reality for even the most adventurous
Go back and re-read the thread. You gave the availability of cell coverage everywhere you can drive as an explicit reason why those who need to be reachable don't need to run Starlink 24/7. Then, when I pointed out that was factually inaccurate, you shifted to saying that those places exist, but nobody would want to stay there for extended periods. That I was also able to contradict through personal experience. I've only addressed topics you directly brought up yourself.
> Yes, if you're living out of your car in remote places and need to be reachable 24/7 you are a unique case and should plan accordingly. But for the vast majority of people working on the road, that's just not the case.
This I agree mostly agree with (except the hyperbolic "unique case"). Pager duty isn't that uncommon for software developers so it is not an unrealistic use-case and is worth discussing on a platform like HN and doesn't deserve to be dismissed out of hand.
I think you have a tendency to make hyperbolic claims, (e.g. "nowhere close to reality for even the most adventurous") when you would have been better served by just relating your extensive experience with how easy it is to find good places to boondock that do have enough cell service to not require starlink for 24/7 contactability.
Edit: I would also have been more effective if I had left out the first sentence of my original reply and instead provided examples of the areas I was talking about in the initial comment rather than in a follow up.
I don't think this is what he's referring to — there are vast areas in NM, AZ, NV that do not have cell coverage. Even when you apply all service levels (even 3G) across all cell providers, using carrier provided data (which tend to be overly optimistic), even then you can see giant no-cell-service zones on the map.
