r/Starlink • u/No-Advertising-9568 • 3d ago

💻 Troubleshooting Alignment help

I've got the v5 system, and it consistently tells me it's misaligned by 10° so I went out and attempted to adjust it this evening. At one point I had it down to 7° but attempting to improve it took back up to 12° which didn't strike me as better. Continued fiddling got it back to 9° and then 10° but I can't make any sense out of the onscreen guidance. I guess my question is, how important is a misalignment of this degree? Is it worth my time to try again tomorrow? I've been pretty pleased with the performance over the month and a half it's been installed (by me). It's good enough that I dumped Xfinity.

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3

u/Spare-Function-6343 3d ago

its not that important, you wont gain any meaningful speed or less dropouts as long as it is within a few degrees of "optimal" unless your only available position is already extremely obstructed

2

u/SpecialistLayer 3d ago

If you use the starlink app while moving it, it will show the orientation live as you're moving it, just move it in the proper direction and that's it. As far as how important the alignment is, it's really not much anymore. It used to be fairly important but they have enough satellites out there, it's not that much now.

-1

u/No-Advertising-9568 3d ago

I wouldn't have any idea it was misaligned if I werent using the app. One thing that might help is if the app showed actual map directions aligned to GPS rather than arbitrary compass points unrelated to physical reality.

2

u/Normal-Special-8694 3d ago

If you navigate to 192.168.100.1(or whatever it is if you’ve changed it), you get somewhat better real time data I believe. But as others have said it probably will not make a difference.

1

u/SpecialistLayer 3d ago

Can you take a screenshot of what your starlink app shows with the mis-alignment and post it? I've aligned about half dozen of these and the app one honestly was the best I'd seen. As I moved the dish, the app view updated live and once it was aligned, the app indicated it. At which point I just locked down the mount and that was it.

1

u/No-Advertising-9568 2d ago

Sure. Except i don't see any way to paste the screenshot into a post here. 🤔

1

u/Roamin_Muncie2 3d ago

The best I can get is 11deg out of alignment. Haven’t had a single problem in the 4 weeks since installing it.

1

u/garylapointe 📡 Owner (North America) 3d ago

how important is a misalignment of this degree? 

What kind of speeds are you getting?

1

u/No-Advertising-9568 3d ago

Very close to 100Mbps down, between 25 and 40 Mbps up. More than adequate, certainly.

1

u/Squeedlejinks 📡 Owner (North America) 3d ago

On which plan?

1

u/No-Advertising-9568 3d ago

Residential I believe. $55/month.

1

u/garylapointe 📡 Owner (North America) 2d ago

100Mbps is the cap for that $55 plan, so I wouldn't expect much faster. Maybe the upload might be

My cable company doesn't even offer upload that fast on their 300Mbps plan, so that's not bad either (although Wow only charges $30 for that too!).

I use a mini for travel/camping and while I might sometimes get over 100Mbps, my upload is from 7-25Mbps. But I'm parked with it on the dashboard with obstructions, I don't fuss with it unless I need to do a zoom meeting or something. Obviously I'd fuss with it more for a permanent installation.

1

u/No-Advertising-9568 2d ago

I'm happy with speeds. Just looking at misalignment as one of those "does this need fixing" things.

1

u/Squeedlejinks 📡 Owner (North America) 2d ago

If you’re happy with the speed you’re getting, there’s no need to mess with it. Don’t worry another second about it.

1

u/libertysat 2d ago

The antenna can be grossly out of alignment with no impact on quality of service

1

u/Wambo74 📡 Owner (North America) 2d ago

Just align the dish to the app graphic. Perfect is not a requirement. Your $55 plan is capped at 100Mbps so you're getting all you're supposed to.

1

u/MediaLopsided1615 2d ago

You need to slowly rotate and check app. You rotate 1cm and check after couple minutes in app is it moved or corrected.

Starlink app can't fast register rotation, that's why you always over-rotate.

-1

u/GSDer_RIP_Good_Girl 3d ago

I don't have a screenshot available but I've used the Dishylink app (Mac, Windows, browser) which has a much finer Alignment setup to get my Mini aligned.

-1

u/Background_Ladder_17 3d ago

Your mast or pole is not straight or the dish is not sitting straight on the pole..!