BlueBoat and the Starlink Mini!

Blue Robotics Vehicles BlueBoat
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Hello all your BlueBoater’s out there!

I’ve got an exciting update for you today…
I received a Starlink Mini early last week, and was so impressed with the size and performance that I just had to get it on the BlueBoat to evaluate ASAP!

The How
I repurposed the angled bar mount from the T500 flipper, in order to position the antenna to not be underneath the solar panel I’m evaluating on one of my BlueBoats. This also helped make balancing the weight of that extra T500 easier! The batteries can now sit in the center, if not slightly toward the bow of the hulls (using 2x here.)
For those that don’t have a solar panel to contend with, the official standard roof-rack mount for the Starlink Mini clamps to the crossbar just fine!

You can find full CAD of the mount here. Besides the crossbar mount, a second piece fits on the 3/4" AL square tubing that fits onto the Starlink mini pole mount. This mount holds the antenna at a slight angle - I may update this in the future to have a version that keeps the antenna horizontal, parallel to the deck of the BlueBoat. I printed both of these with ASA, but they should work well from PETG or even PLA - just print with 5-6 perimeters or more!

Installation
Integration couldn’t be simpler - I cut the Starlink cable to have about 2.5 meters between the end and the antenna. I carefully stripped ~1 foot of this, finding the ground wires are bare and surround an internal, red-jacketed ~18awg positive wire. I twisted the ground conductors together and passed them and the red wire through a WetLink 4.5mm HC penetrator, and installed this on the port hull top-hatch. Since the Starlink mini runs on 12-48V DC, it can be connected directly to the Fuse Board - I used a 10A fuse but a 6 or 7 amp fuse is likely all that is necessary. I did add heatshrink to the ground cable after passing it through the penetrator, to keep the bare ground wire from causing any accidental shorts inside the vehicle.

The Starlink mini creates a 2.4/5Ghz Hotspot, which I simply connected BlueOS too. With ZeroTier installed, the vehicle was accessible and seemed to lose connection less than when using a cellular modem! I adjusted the network priority so that ZeroTier was second only to ethernet, to keep traffic prioritized across the best possible internet link as determined by the ZeroTier extension.

Performance
With the vehicle station keeping in an ideal orientation, I saw downlink speeds of 100Mbit, and upload of ~15 Mbit when performing a Speed Test to the internet within BlueOS. When underway, mowing the lawn, speed test results ranged from 50-80Mbit down, 3-12Mbit up. Most surprisingly, the connection very rarely dropped!

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I operated the system for about 6.5 hours, collecting multibeam data and station keeping in loiter mode, and the solar panel generated over 300 watt-hours! The batteries remained well over 3/4 capacity at the end of the day. You can find the full log file here, view it with this beta version of the ardupilot log viewer to see the named value floats that correspond to solar power and cell signal strength.

The Starlink Mini costs almost $700, and the roaming plan is $50/month for 50 Gb. It’s possible to upgrade your plan to mobile regional and enable priority data, this will get you nearly global coverage, for $150/month + $2 per GB. It seems to consume about 25-30 watts , which is impressive considering past generations used 5x this!

Happy motoring- please share if you try the same upgrade!

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Awesome update. By chance do you have some still shots of the total boat? What size wattage panels are on the boat? Possible to mount a servo swing arm w a hydrophone attached? When not using the hydrophone can be swung out of the water.

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Very cool!

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Hi Mike -
That is a 130 watt solar panel. Sorry I don’t have any better images at the moment!

As for your hydrophone, anything is possible! This unit actually has the ACbotics hydrophone onboard, but not yet placed in the water / inactive for the moment. It seems much simpler to just tow it by it’s cable in the center of the boat, rather than the complication of a deployment mechanism. I’m not sure what you gain by keeping it out of the water as it is small enough to impart minimal drag, on the order of what the Ping2 sonar mount does I would think.

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My reason for not dragging it is to avoid various nets floating on the surface. I only listen and record when the boat is loitering, so needed a way to retract the hydrophone. Maybe a reel setup w servo motor?

Can the larger 500 thrusters be used?

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This is SWEET. I am about to get starlink cause I live in the boonies, and this is such a great application for it. Figured I could do the 50Gb plan because my last BlueBoat cell mission only used 150Mb or so.

I’ve been wanting to pass video stream back with an IP camera, and my current cell setup was dropping too often. Haven’t set the camera up yet but with starlink this might be the best route.

Thanks for the guide Tony!

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Toni…If we have the Starlink setup is there a need to have the WiFi module and base station?

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Hi @bajaMike -
I prefer to keep the Mikrotik default radios, to use as a back-up communications link for short range. As the Mini makes it’s own 2.4/5ghz hotspot, this hardware isn’t required if you’re ok only being able to reach the vehicle via it’s Starlink connection.

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Great work as always Tony! Do you notice any difference in speeds, or loose connection if the StarLink dish is not pointed to the preferred direction north while you have the boat in different orientations during a mission?

Also in the video you posted at the end when you are pulling the BB out of the water, are those standard thrusters, or do you have something special there? They look a bit bigger and outside the normal install location…

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Hi @FairweatherIT -
While the Starlink App does indicate that the antenna is not in the ideal orientation, the obstruction map is clear and the unit gets comparable speeds to when it is static and oriented correctly. I did find that rapid yaw motion, like turning a corner with a pivot turn, results in loss of connection for a minute or two. Zerotier seems to be able to switch between Starlink and 4G cellular fairly quicckly!

Good eye - those are T500 thrusters modified to be “M500s” with large 3D printed weedless props and mounted to the BlueBoat- for a low-speed, solar vehicle this can reduce the speed to cruise at 1 m/s by roughly 3X !! The drawback is the propellers are not protected by the keel, so when beaching the unit they can strike the bottom and break…

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This (or your earlier swing arm idea) should be doable as long as your times are reasonably consistent. Missions support specifying MAVLink commands to send at waypoints, so you can send servo commands to release and retract as relevant.

You could either send individual set commands with a delay between them, or a repeat command with a single iteration for the desired duration :slight_smile:

If your hydrophone recording can be started with an electrical signal then you could use one of the relay pins to do that, but otherwise it might be more involved (e.g. using a Lua script, or some custom functionality running in a BlueOS Extension or on external hardware).

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Just an update for everyone!
We now have a Starlink GPS extension available in the BlueOS Extension Manager!

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To use it, you must enable location sharing on the StarLink Network:
Click on advanced in the bottom right of the StarLink app, while connected to the device. Scroll to the bottom, then click debug, then scroll to the bottom again.

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Once you’ve installed the extension, ArduRover will be configured to use the GPS position from the unit as the secondary GPS, and this GPS location will be captured under GPS1 in the .BIN log file. It seems to be a better performing GPS than the stock unit, although with a slower update rate. It’s also possible to get your position using only the StarLink constellation!
I’ll update after performing some field testing, and provide a log file so we can compare performance!

Thanks to @patrickelectric for creating this so fast!

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I will likely just keep the WiFi setup in place. What devices and cost would be needed to add cell service hardware onto the BB?

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Hi @bajaMike -
This thread is about Starlink!
You can find discussions of 4G here and here.

The cost will depend on what data plan SIM car you’re able to get. For TMobile, this is about $25/month on existing plans (for another data only line) - other options are available depending on your region!

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My humble apologies for the non-intentional thread hijack. The discussions you link to are very helpful that I did not find before.

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Can you and/or @patrickelectric elaborate on the comment above about Starlink Mini “It’s also possible to get your position using only the StarLink constellation”
Does this mean you can get position information without using GNSS signals?

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Hi @David_Moschella, on the configuration page you can select starlink position only.

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Super cool! And useful