Thread: Starlink Mini Kit

Originally Posted by Pengy

He is otherwise occupied

Well, I guess you have a point...

Originally Posted by NZ32

Looks like they have started a 5GB roam plan for $15/month over in oz, hopefully that makes it over here as that would be perfect for how I plan to use mine. Would get more data if I was doing longer trips if required.

I couldn't find that offer while I was having a look around.

Apparently it was offered out to Australian addressed customers who had their Roam plan on hold. I haven't seen it here either, so it's a case of $90 a month for 50GB when you want to use it, and then on hold...

So I did the setup of the new Mini kit today. As painful as I expected...

As an existing residential customer I selected existing customer, already have the kit and then hit the 'Order' button like 900 times before it did anything. Then when it did, it showed Roam 50Gb as the plan and then loaded the plan on my account as another Residential plan. WTF? Cheaper than full Roam but not what I ordered...

Proceeded to beat my skull on everything I could find while trying everything to avoid contacting Starlink customer support. I eventually gave up, cancelled the 2nd Residential plan and lodged a ticket. Walked away and took some deep breaths while cursing everything Starlink related (I hate their website, it look very pretty but is one of the most bug contaminated sites I have used). When I went back I tried ordering the Roam 50Gb plan from inside my account but you can't do it unless you order a kit at the same time, no option to order plan only (I already have the kit). You have to from the look of it, go in from the Starlink/NZ/Roam page and that's the only way to get an option to order the service plan without having to buy a complete new kit.

Gave it a bit more destressing time, and went back in and reactivated the Residential plan which seemed to open up the ability to change service plan types and magically it all worked and was running within 30 seconds (why did it not do it the first time???). Now happily running off Starlink Mini as well as the Gen2 Dishy. As an existing customer I had no option on plan commencement dates, so I have one month pro-rata as my 'first month' (Starlink speak for the first month is a half month as I'm halfway through my existing plan). One thing I found, is once the account accepted the second Residential plan the Mini kit serial number was lodged against that plan which stopped me doing anything else with it cold.

Hopefully that helps if someone else runs into the same thing, it's very unclear from the Starlink site what you have to do as an existing customer to get a kit that you already have set up!

I have had to change the charger adapter I got to a UGreen brand 130w car charger that has a USB-C 100w outlet. The Cygnett 65w one listed earlier powered up the Mini dish twice but on the second start after a few minutes the wifi connection disappeared and the blue status LED on the dish was 'fast flashing' indicating an issue.

I don't have any way of testing the Cygnett charger to confirm but I'd guess that something in the buck-boost converter inside it has stopped cooperating.

Just so someone doesn't get one of the Cygnett ones thinking it will do the job and it dies like the one I got appears to have done - go for something with a 100w USB-C socket in it like the UGreen 130w ones.

So Ive done a trial two nights in a row, using a 27k power bank, averaging 23 watt draw over 2h 45 mins, with a spare device running 10 YouTube videos at once to simulate data usage.
Snow melt turned off.
And that is down to 30 percent battery on the power bank, the power bank seems to draw really fast after that testing on recharging torches etc and will be fine with a small solar panel for topups.

Its a pretty good system for what it is, and what I intend it for, simple and easy to use for the less tech initiated.
The hunters I hunt with all carry Epirbs anyways for emergencies, I view it as no real difference to mountain radio or inreach/ sat phone
Power it up, connect to the network and make a standard call via wifi

Another Important thing Ive been made aware of on the FB pages is that Starlink now uses 2 factor authentication and you cant turn it off.
The problem that is, if you log out of the app and go to log back in with out an external data connection (Starlink on pause only allows data for the Starlink app) like wifi or phone data, you cannot authenticate via email or txt to re-log in.


Something to be aware of.

Originally Posted by striker

Another Important thing Ive been made aware of on the FB pages is that Starlink now uses 2 factor authentication and you cant turn it off.
The problem that is, if you log out of the app and go to log back in with out an external data connection (Starlink on pause only allows data for the Starlink app) like wifi or phone data, you cannot authenticate via email or txt to re-log in.


Something to be aware of.

Yea did pick up on the two factor thing. Worth checking your logged on every few weeks.

Thanks to the person who used my referral link. Looks like I will get a month free in a few weeks

Originally Posted by striker

Another Important thing Ive been made aware of on the FB pages is that Starlink now uses 2 factor authentication and you cant turn it off.
The problem that is, if you log out of the app and go to log back in with out an external data connection (Starlink on pause only allows data for the Starlink app) like wifi or phone data, you cannot authenticate via email or txt to re-log in.


Something to be aware of.

Hmmm, that could be a pain - will have to check that out. Thx!

I checked out the two-step verification, yeah it's a bit of a pain. I lodged a support ticket with Starlink on it, raising it as an issue. They have no workaround at the moment as the two-step is a company mandated thing, but the guy I spoke to at Starlink in the US (called me back straight away so kudos for that) has noted down why I was asking about it and will raise it as a possible issue that needs a solution with his team. As far as he is aware, there is no equivalent to the Aussie $15/5Gb plan coming for NZ which sucks but there you go.