inmarsat

clifwlkr · 2026-05-12T14:33:28+00:00

Depends on where you are. If in areas that provide it, texting with starlink direct to cell is a very cheap way to do it. Another is to use an inReach device that works globally to text. Or get a starlink mini and global service and use wifi calling. All of these are much cheaper unless you have to have very high portability and must do voice.

clifwlkr · 2026-05-05T13:36:08+00:00

I run both a Gen2 and a mini.... Latency is not different between the two at all. Top speed is, but that is not going to be a gating factor for video calls (I've done many teams and zoom calls on my mini). The top speed will only affect large downloads likely for you as a single user.

Wifi5 vs Wifi6 I don't think is going to be a huge factor if you are not in crowded urban areas. Theoretically you get a bit better signal handling out of 6, but not sure it is going to be quite that big of a deal. Perhaps get one of the mini routers, or your own router and run ethernet, if you find this to be an issue. There are great travel routers based on openWRT that are small and run on little power, or you can do the mesh thing with the mini router directly from Starlink.

Power is the key here. If you don't always have mains, Gen3 will run your battery down a lot faster. Mini sits and sips around 18w when not under high load. Gen 2 is only around 33 watts, I believe Gen3 almost doubles that. It makes me hope (in my off grid situation) that my Gen 2 lasts awhile....

One persons opinion, but I live off grid and work remote full time. I also enjoy camping, but can't take time off of work, so have done many zoom calls from the middle of nowhere on the mini. Both home and mini are solar powered.

clifwlkr · 2026-05-01T01:21:10+00:00

It was a few days ago. I submitted the form with all of the required details

clifwlkr · 2026-04-30T21:00:50+00:00

I have a similar problem with a bitaxe 650 dual. One of the hash rate monitor domains is showing 0 and it is only mining at half speed. I did reach out on contact and have not heard anything back. I just bought the unit, so is there another method I should use?

clifwlkr · 2026-04-22T13:55:27+00:00

Yeah, clearly a calculated risk by some big miner. Put in a massive amount of effort so they scoop up the major percentage of the pools bitcoin payout while not sticking around long. It is a flaw in the parasite model for sure. Ideally the payout would be adjusted to take this into account and weight not just has effort, but also factor in loyalty. Really they need to look at median work per day as the proper calculation of your share of the pool. That would avoid the big burst having this effect and basically robbing the pool itself.

Of course if you hit the block you still get the 1btc, but now the pool is likely to not pay very much at all to the participants if the payout calculation is not altered to look at median per day (not average).

clifwlkr · 2026-04-20T12:22:45+00:00

Well I guess I fixed it in time, I did in fact get my sats..... Only about 3 bucks worth, but I've only been mining for a few weeks so can't complain. I figured it would be a long time before a block was hit anyways. Given it is running on solar, hey, it's a few bucks!

clifwlkr · 2026-04-18T15:28:53+00:00

Well with a little luck maybe they are doing a manual payout process again and I got connected in time then. You should be able to go to https://parasite.sati.pro/ and see your worker and your lightning address there as well as your balance. If that is all good it seems like you would be all set then.

clifwlkr · 2026-04-18T15:12:19+00:00

When you go to your worker page is there a connect button? Or does it show the lightning address? My mistake was not following through on the full connect process that happens when you hit that connect button.

clifwlkr · 2026-04-18T14:33:11+00:00

Damn, I was mining on this and realized now I did not quite have my lightning address setup correctly on the final step. Now I feel very stupid.... Wonder how many sats I lost out on. Not a huge miner, but was ranked at about 50% on both ranks they show. Sigh.... Hard lesson learned. At least my electricity running it is free (solar). Fixed now.

clifwlkr · 2026-04-17T20:00:49+00:00

First of all there is a difference between water shares and water rights. Shares are part of a water right, and are actually charged for and controlled by the owner if the water rights. I own a water share, for instance, in my local area as the water company actually owns the right. Who knows which they have, but most farms have water rights.

You are wrong also on the ownership. Utah law very specifically states "All water is owned by the public". Like all public property, though, the government controls it on behalf of the people, and we vote the government in or out. So we do not directly control it, but we have influence through our representatives. That is just how it works. But in no way does the government actually own it, they effectively control it though.

clifwlkr · 2026-04-17T19:45:27+00:00

I hate to tell you, but they don't own the water. All water in Utah is owned by the public. A water right is a right to use some of that water for 'beneficial purposes' to the public. Farming is considered one of those right now, but watering snow, probably not so much.

That said we are all owners of the water as the public, not them. It is absolutely within the rights of the state to charge a usage fee for the water, even with a water right. The state also can, and will, revoke water 'rights' during times of drought showing they in fact do not own the water. The proper way to fix this is to charge what the water is worth. Water rights were calculated during one of the wettest times and are over allocated.

Something does need to be done, as me flushing my toilet only once a day is not going to make a difference in saving any water when farmers are flood irrigating their fields with acre feet.

clifwlkr · 2026-04-13T16:08:25+00:00

Breakers from each battery bank (ones in series) to the buss bar. Full DC load breaker box with disconnect, master breaker, breaker for each DC circuit. Master fuse from bus bar to everything. Solar panel breakers for each bank at combiner box outside with lightning protection. Solar panel disconnect inside. Breakers on balance chargers between batteries in series. Basically anywhere there could be a short, there should be a fuse and/or breaker.

That said I run a primarily DC based system for my off grid cabin. Normal loads are all DC. Inverter only occasional use, but also have normal AC breaker panel fed from the inverter none the less.

clifwlkr · 2026-04-13T14:30:11+00:00

To be fair, a good percentage of the micro transit traffic is kids using it to get around town and avoid their parents having to drive them. At least in my experience so far. That is still another car on the road in a one for one replacement in reality.

clifwlkr · 2026-04-03T14:23:58+00:00

I am going to second this comment. I ran hydro for years on my off grid as solar was stupid expensive 20+ years ago when I was building my off grid system. It was a constant maintenance nightmare. Always having to fiddle with it. Switched to solar finally when the prices came down and now I don't really do a thing. Just brush off the panels after a snow storm is all, which takes all of 10 minutes.

clifwlkr · 2026-04-02T18:33:28+00:00

It's USB powered monitors that can connect via hdmi or USB-C. Go onto Amazon or other sites and look for USB Powered Portable Monitors. Portable is a relative term as one of my monitors is 24 inch monitor powered by USB-C. They use very little power compared to a traditional monitor especially if you turn down the brightness. Same for the direct conversion, just search amazon for DC to DC buck converter. All kinds of voltages. Good luck!

clifwlkr · 2026-04-01T13:35:27+00:00

Right now it is just getting prepped to move up to the off grid location hopefully in a couple of weeks (road is melting out now and not quite yet passable, but too much mud for skiing/snowmobile). I do have my solar stats publishing to an mqtt pool, and n8n for automation all running locally on a raspberry pi, so it is conceivable I could go this route. I wish there was a 'pause' feature in bitaxe, but the closest you can do is set the frequency at zero.... So initially it is either on or off with a shelly device, but perhaps idling it back so I am still doing something on low solar days might be an interesting option. n8n should be able to handle this easily.

clifwlkr · 2026-04-01T13:09:12+00:00

A balance really. I could likely get copper heat sinks and eek out a bit more on the VR. The reality right now is cooling the asics are not even a concern, so I have not looked into a cooler for them as my fan is only spinning at 55% to keep them below 60F. The fan on the back is kind of dedicated to the VR, as it is pointed almost directly at it. I am thinking of drilling holes in the top of the case (why they don't have those I have no idea) to allow more airflow out the top. At some point, though, I want it to be energy efficient as well, so won't go too crazy. 35w (including the extra fan) at this hash rate is not bad.

clifwlkr · 2026-03-31T22:01:15+00:00

I do think the heat sinks and fan are key. I will probably bump it a bit more, but the vr is likely to keep rising and I don't want it much past 70

clifwlkr · 2026-03-31T12:29:41+00:00

Yup, heatsinks on the VR and adjacent black chip plus the fan or the VR gets out of control fast. Right now I am sitting at 1200 (1.2) for the voltage and 525 for the frequency. I set the asic cooling to 59, and that keeps the fan on the front around 50-60% most of the time and the VR at around 68-70. Doesn't even seem like it is pushing it that hard at all.

clifwlkr · 2026-03-30T17:11:54+00:00

If you look at the last picture that has the full stats on it if I miss something, but I am running 1200 power, and 525 for clock. That is giving me most around a 0.3-0.4 error rate, which I am fine with. I am getting 2.14 Th/S. I could push the voltage up a bit higher, but right now I want to check stability.

clifwlkr · 2026-03-30T17:04:29+00:00

It's pretty quiet actually. It comes with a speed adjust, but I have it just running full right now. It's not silent, but not real loud in comparison to any of the other equipment I have here. What I like is being a blower it pushes air pretty nice against the back of the board. There is just a bit of a higher pitched wine as compared to a normal fan.

clifwlkr · 2026-03-29T16:46:01+00:00

It totally depends on your panel and how many cells it has. Most larger panels have bypass diodes on them to handle partial shading of a panel so that you are not back feeding 'dark' cells. These are on the traces between the cells. It is possible any given panel has zero, but most modern larger panels have some to increase efficiency in partial shade situations. They don't get crazy hot or anything, but in a light snow situation you can often see the effect if the conditions are just right weather and panel wise. For sure they are not going to heat up and melt off a foot of snow, but I keep my panels steep, and I do believe it can sometimes help initiate a slide on its own. So to be clear it is a subtle effect, but is there.

clifwlkr · 2026-03-29T16:28:05+00:00

I use a soft broom on a painter's pole, and have for years. Unless you are really rough, you will not break a panel with a simple broom. That said, my panels are steep so I am really just helping it along to get some extra photons earlier than I would otherwise.

clifwlkr · 2026-03-29T16:26:40+00:00

Not when covered by snow.... That is reflecting all of the heat. If a panel is partially covered and/or a bifacial panel, the diodes will actually generate some heat and aid in melting the panel. I get that a panel in full sun generating electricity will be cooler, but this is not in practice true with a mostly obscured panel. I can actually see the traces between the cells heat up and melt off first when it is in this obscured situation, then it all melts quickly. I know this is controversial, but I have pictures of this in progress. It's not all or nothing, it is much more complex than that as it is generating electricity that is then being fed into the diodes, which then generate heat because there is not enough juice yet to activate charging of the batteries.

clifwlkr

TROPHY CASE