[HN Gopher] How to modify Starlink Mini to run without the built...
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How to modify Starlink Mini to run without the built-in WiFi router
Author : LorenDB
Score : 345 points
Date : 2025-06-15 12:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (olegkutkov.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (olegkutkov.me)
| Aspos wrote:
| I know exactly what power-constrained application you have in
| mind, Oleg, and I like it.
| 100721 wrote:
| What is the specific use case you have in mind?
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Well the author is Ukranian so I have a guess.
| michaelt wrote:
| Given that the blogger is based in Kiev, Ukraine? Good chance
| this goes on some sort of long range, Predator-style drone.
| mft_ wrote:
| Wouldn't this give Starlink the ability to track and/or
| turn off operations in real time?
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Yes but they've mostly not been doing that (they probably
| are selling a lot of dishes) and what's the alternative?
| michaelt wrote:
| Yes, you may recall some controversy a few years back
| when Musk made some threats along those lines.
|
| There are alternatives if you only need short range, or
| if you can tolerate high latency. And of course there are
| fire-and-forget cruise missiles that don't need
| communications at all.
|
| But there aren't all that many other options.
| Historically, satellite internet companies like Iridium,
| Globalstar and Teledesic have not fared well.
| lxgr wrote:
| Iridium works extremely well for what it was designed for
| - truly global, low latency communications without
| requiring a directional antenna. Unfortunately, that also
| means very low data rates.
|
| It only gained packed-switched data with the second
| generation satellite network, but data rates are still
| very low (think hundreds of kbps, and I believe even that
| needs high-gain antennas).
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| ~Iridium~ devices were bricked in the first days of the
| invasion, iirc. That's why starlink was such a big deal,
| and that's why the usmil wanted it "yesterday" after it
| proved itself in ua. They had to set up a dedicated unit
| to deal with starlink, as every branch was trying to get
| it on their own and complicated purchasing. That unit /
| project was also called starshield, confusing the matter
| with the other starshield project that uses starlink
| buses + ng sensor packages.
|
| edit: it was Viasat not Iridium, I got them mixed up.
| RF_Savage wrote:
| Viasat fixed modems got bricked at start of the war in
| Ukraine and some collateral one's in border areas.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| You are right, thanks. I mixed them up. Iridium is also
| providing service in ua now, and was unaffected at the
| start of the war.
| snickerdoodle12 wrote:
| Interesting how the US goes absolutely ballistic about
| some random dude violating the "Computer Security Act" on
| a small scale, but didn't react at all to this massive,
| incredibly impactful, attack.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| it didn't impact Americans. it impacted us Europeans but
| at the time this went down we were too dependent on
| Russia's cheap gas (and, frankly, lacked the military
| power) to raise the appropriate level of stink.
|
| Hell we let Russia freely execute dissidents (Skripal or
| the Berlin Tiergarten murder come to my mind) and
| tolerated a land-grab war by little green men in 2014.
| Either of these actions would have warranted _serious_
| consequences, the Crimea /Donbas grab would be a casus
| belli if you ask me. But again, we were too busy sucking
| Putin off for cheap gas.
| snickerdoodle12 wrote:
| so as far as the US is concerned it's fair game to attack
| US companies as long as it doesn't impact US citizens?
| hansvm wrote:
| As far as the US is concerned, it's fair game to drone-
| strike US citizens [0,1,2] from time to time.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki#Death
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-
| Awla...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Nawar_al-
| Awlaki
| mschuster91 wrote:
| As much as I hate to say it: Trump got a point in saying
| that Europe should have been responsible for its security
| / military even 10 years back.
| snickerdoodle12 wrote:
| Sure, but don't ignore the fact that Viasat is a US
| company
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The US does not want to go to full scale, open war with
| Russia.
|
| So the US will downplay or ignore some amount of
| aggression from Russia to do so.
|
| If the US wanted to go to war with Russia, we would be
| playing up some rather minor thing, like sending a
| missile system into "Europe" or something.
|
| When that Ukrainian SAM fell in Poland and killed a
| farmer, there was a late night emergency meeting between
| a lot of very important people from NATO countries to
| decide WTF to do. If the west _wanted_ to fight Russia,
| that meeting would have resulted in an Article 5
| declaration of some sort.
|
| Russia is behind the sabotage/blowing up of a Czech
| Republic arms depot. If the west wanted to go to war with
| Russia, that could have also been an instigating event.
|
| Russia will continue to get passes for "minor" acts of
| war as long as the west does not agree with sending
| citizens to die in a war.
|
| That we don't equip Ukraine with more than enough war
| material to do whatever they are capable of, however, is
| fucking stupid.
|
| Welcome to geopolitics.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| "Some" is an understatement lol. Here in Germany 3.800
| (!) wind turbines lost remote control (and thus were
| forced offline) until the terminals could be changed
| because their command uplink was via Viasat.
| maxlin wrote:
| It was only made to appear a controversy for clicks and
| Ukrainians (understandably) trying to bend the rules.
|
| The thing came with a clear limit "this thing works in
| these cells of this big hex grid". And they drove it off
| that hex grid. Plan and simple.
|
| Its like if the US-supplied HIMARS came with some built-
| in limit that it cannot be used to target known Russian
| nuclear installments, and they'd try to do that.
|
| It's not that those things are unquestionable, but they
| are limits that would need US consultation as US
| obviously doesn't want the thing to escalate from being a
| defensive war to something else.
| karp773 wrote:
| Is Crimea on "this big hex grid" or not? If not, why not?
| coryrc wrote:
| Because the US military/govt has a say in what US
| companies sell to foreign militaries and that's what the
| restrictions were at the time. Remember this was early on
| in the full invasion.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Starlink is prohibited for use in Crimea because of US
| sanctions against Russia, and not because "Musk turned
| Starlink off during a Ukrainian attack".
| karp773 wrote:
| Well, per other comments, Starlink terminals apparently
| do work in Russia.
|
| And Musk did exactly that per numerous reports. Given his
| erratic behavior since around 2018, it's not hard to
| believe. The other day he was literally threatening to
| stop Dragon launches for NASA.
| maxlin wrote:
| "per other comments" Lol.
|
| The geoblocks are quite hard. The only situation where
| Russians have managed to use them for a short while is
| when they've managed to capture a terminal, and it hasn't
| been cut off because it's been unclear who was in control
| of it, and Ukranians benefit more of them as they've
| built a lot of things and process around them as it such
| a massive battlefield advantage if used right.
|
| >Given his erratic behavior it's not hard to believe
|
| Congratulations, you've managed to slip in to a sea of
| misinformation and media spin. Place a check on this in 5
| years, these things tend to be silently put under the
| rug. It's like you're saying it wouldn't be a surprise if
| all future Falcon 9 rockets just blew up because they've
| done so at testing and because Starship does so too.
| Learn some distinction.
| maxlin wrote:
| Starlink both in technology, availability and regulation
| angle is advancing so fast that saying "is it now" and
| "was it then" are quite different.
|
| This is where the hex grid was previously on. Wayback
| machine doesn't seem to work as it's a web app
| https://www.starlink.com/map
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| I wonder how SL plans vary in Ukraine / for use in Russia.
| Assuming US-like pricing and limitations, for low speed
| drones, this would work. The gotcha is that for jet or fast
| prop drones in the 250-478 kts range requires a very
| expensive aviation plan assuming it's similar to US plans.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Could that not also be part of the support being provided
| to Ukraine in that those prices are not the same as some
| commercial account? At the end of the day, the billing
| department could just not issue the bill, or any other
| method of meaning Ukraine isn't paying for it.
| Aspos wrote:
| AFAIK US DoD pays for some of the Starlink accounts in
| Ukraine. The rest are paid for by volunteers at normal
| prices.
| kubelsmieci wrote:
| "As of May 2024, Poland continues to pay subcription fees
| for more than 20 thousand terminals it has bought for
| Ukraine"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-
| Ukrain...
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Maybe just for front-line deployment, it would suck to be
| targeted by a glide bomb because the Russians located some
| WiFi signal.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| I am not sure - afaik there is a speed limit (assumption of
| satellite visibility and specific latency?) over which
| starlink won't work, right? It can however be useful for
| getting the internet without announcing yourself to a swarm
| of drones?
| gruez wrote:
| >I am not sure - afaik there is a speed limit (assumption
| of satellite visibility and specific latency?) over which
| starlink won't work, right?
|
| The author's youtube channel also contains a video of him
| doing a speedtest on a starlink mini while driving on a
| highway.
| michaelt wrote:
| Starlink satellites orbit at 17,000 miles per hour, so I
| doubt receivers lose signal just from going at a few
| hundred miles per hour.
|
| Unless there's a software limit built in that turns them
| off, or the drone's doing some crazy high-G-force
| acrobatics.
| codedokode wrote:
| Russians also use Musk's satellites and might find the
| information useful.
|
| Also as I understand, satellites do not work over Russian
| territory so guess where this can be used.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Actually, they do work is Russia. You need account
| registered in some allowed country and also use RV plan
| (or maybe it is called 'roam' now). I know some ppl who
| use it. Was thinking to get one myself, to have a
| reliable bypass of pathetic russian firewall.
| Ray20 wrote:
| > Actually, they do work is Russia.
|
| Aren't starlink have some kind of geolock?
|
| > to have a reliable bypass of pathetic russian firewall
|
| All data shows that Russia have one of the strongest and
| best firewall in the world, in many aspects even better
| than in China. And all the Russians I spoke with say that
| VPN is not blocked and any service for a couple of bucks
| does its job.
| tguvot wrote:
| They use it at front lines for fighting Ukraine. Not for
| reading cnn
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Ppl I know use it live in Yekaterinburg, rather far from
| the front lines.
| tguvot wrote:
| Kazakhstan is near by, maybe service spills over . sure
| that yekaterinburg and not Kaliningrad ?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Living in Chelyabinsk, I believe I'm rather capable to
| recognize the difference. Yekaterinburg is at least 300km
| from the nearest part of Kazakhstan (which up to a few
| days ago wasn't even officially permitted there). So no,
| there is no indication that there is any kind of geo-
| fencing for roaming devices, be them in Russia, China,
| Iran or Afghanistan.
| tguvot wrote:
| lovely place.
|
| i know that it wasn't permitted.
|
| somewhat assumed that they will block dishes from most of
| russia
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > Aren't starlink have some kind of geolock?
|
| Perhaps. Apparently, it isn't applied in RV mode
|
| > All data shows that Russia have one of the strongest
| and best firewall in the world
|
| If you have a pile of shit in the world right in front of
| your house, it is pathetic, even if it is the biggest and
| the stinkiest pile of shit in the world.
|
| > And all the Russians I spoke with say that VPN is not
| blocked and any service for a couple of bucks does its
| job.
|
| I am Russian. This is not true. All regular vpn protocols
| (OpenVPN, Wireguard) are outright blocked. Shadowsocks is
| blocked on most ISPs, including all major mobile ones.
| VLESS works, for now, mostly, but sometimes the IP
| address of the server I run become unavailable.
| multjoy wrote:
| Kyiv
| neilv wrote:
| I hope that the engineers and scientists contributing to
| asymmetric warfare technology there aren't designated high-
| value targets by the adversary.
|
| Wouldn't publicity paint a target on one's back?
| stephen_g wrote:
| Seems likely, just a risk one has to take if you want to
| actively contribute to a war effort...
| neilv wrote:
| Is one increasing the risk by blogging and YouTubing
| about it?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Ask Gonzalo Lira.
| tenuousemphasis wrote:
| Based on recent events I would guess an explosive-laden
| drone.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Riding piggy back on a drone?
| someothherguyy wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIt3pHOMxwpTXTgIVB_N1Gg
| rozhok wrote:
| Starlink is already used for <<Nemesis>> night bombers as well
| as <<Magura>> sea drones.
| donohoe wrote:
| Archived version: https://archive.ph/UTFTK
| 15155 wrote:
| Fascinating that they chose to use modulated board-to-board
| Ethernet instead of just running RGMII from MAC to MAC.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| A lot of this is pretty POC-y. Agree digital to analog to
| analog to digital is kinda inefficient, and in the abstract MAC
| to PHY (which is probably what you mean when you say MAC to
| MAC) with RGMII is probably better. My off the cuff guess is
| that it is likely the written-up interface is easier to access
| or requires less diving into internals. Not sure where the
| RGMII lines are, and depending on the design of the Starlink
| mini itself (I am ignorant of this) the lines might have been
| buried deeper and less accessible, who knows.
| msgodel wrote:
| Ethernet seems far easier to prototype with. There's almost no
| off the shelf stuff for talking to RGMII whereas Ethernet you
| can just plug into your laptop for testing. If it's two
| different teams building things it seems like it would be a lot
| easier to just agree on Ethernet as the interface and then
| delay integration testing or release earlier.
| 15155 wrote:
| A $3 breakout PCB with an RGMII PHY and MagJack on it would
| solve this problem without resorting to analog communication.
| msgodel wrote:
| Assembly isn't free, either an engineer or the PCB
| fabricator has to put that together. Also the design isn't
| free and it's certainly not necessarily going to match the
| behavior of the device on the other side.
|
| But your laptop's Ethernet adapter comes free with your
| laptop (both in terms of money and waiting to get it since
| it's already on your desk) and possibly even more
| importantly you know the laptop manufacturer and users have
| QAed it for you so it's absolutely going to behave the way
| you expect which is important when the device you're
| designing isn't behaving.
| 15155 wrote:
| > Assembly isn't free, either an engineer or the PCB
| fabricator has to put that together
|
| > your laptop's Ethernet adapter
|
| The device as-designed likely wouldn't work with your
| laptop's ethernet adapter - hence why the author of TFA
| placed an isolation transformer and jack ...on a breakout
| board.
| msgodel wrote:
| Heh I didn't notice it didn't have the isolation
| transformer. That is odd.
| numpad0 wrote:
| RGMII is not some obscure competitor to Ethernet, but rather,
| Ethernet was designed to be a modular two-part design with
| "MAC" and "PHY" chips connected via "MII" interface. RGMII is
| simply the latest version of it.
|
| Many Ethernet-supported SoCs still use various MII style
| interfaces because it makes more sense to outsource the
| physical layer to some external chip especially if not
| everyone is going to use Ethernet.
|
| It's perhaps like the difference between using Thunderbolt vs
| raw PCIe. You technically shouldn't need Thunderbolt if
| you're just permanently connecting two things inside a same
| machine.
|
| Is it smarter to do it proper and make it silicon efficient
| than just shipping the darn thing ASAP? idk. We'll see.
| stephen_g wrote:
| RGMII requires way more work to run board-to-board (heaps
| of signals, quite precise length matching, impedance
| control, etc. on the boards, better board-to-board
| connectors etc.) and at the end of all that will likely be
| less robust than just running Ethernet. I'd much rather use
| SGMII just because it's far fewer signals to match (even if
| it runs way faster) instead of RGMII.
|
| The chips they're using might already have Ethernet PHYs
| built in anyway which might also be part of the reason
| they're using Ethernet.
| monocasa wrote:
| Eh, it's just a half dozen signals in each direction
| running at 125Mhz DDR. That's in spitting distance of
| being able to be bit banged by something like an rpi
| pico.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the entire point of the exercise.
| There's already an RJ45 jack on the Mini, so no need to hack
| the unit to get access to an Ethernet PHY. And the WiFi router
| can be turned off via the setup page.
|
| Did they remove support for the Ethernet jack on the Minis
| available in Ukraine? It looks like it's still present on the
| WiFi board, next to the power jack.
| closewith wrote:
| You might imagine some use cases where mass is a critical
| concern.
| dogben wrote:
| They may want to make absolutly sure no wifi signal emit from
| the device. Turning it off in the setup page is definitely
| not enough.
|
| The wifi chip may emit signal during boot. The device may get
| accidentally reset in the field. SpaceX may push an update
| that messes with the settings.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I mean, more power to them, certainly, but WiFi emissions
| seem like the least of your concerns when you're operating
| an antenna for satellite comms. There will be no shortage
| of side lobes at Ku band for anyone who cares to listen.
|
| Cutting down on mass would make sense, though.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| It will still draw power with wifi turned off, though
| much less. The most effective way of reducing the P in
| swap is to remove the unit entirely
| j16sdiz wrote:
| it is not just the wifi. its the router.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| What does that mean?
| jpm_sd wrote:
| RGMII isn't really designed to go board-to-board, fairly high
| data rates, and ideally all of the signals should be delay
| matched. That gets a bit trickier when there are two boards
| involved. Also I would expect EMI/EMC issues.
|
| I know people do that sort of thing for evaluation kits, but it
| doesn't seem like a good idea for production.
| 05 wrote:
| Sure, then you get to write an MDIO emulator so that it
| actually detects link and since it's a proprietary system you
| can't exactly comment out the SMI code.. fun!
| dlcarrier wrote:
| That connector is way cheaper than something that could carry
| an RGMII signal without major reflections. It's probably
| cheaper in the end to have the extra silicon than a better
| connector, and I don't think you need the magnetics if you
| don't need isolation.
| wildzzz wrote:
| It could just be that using Ethernet allows for more
| flexibility in what is connected to that board-to-board
| connector. In this instance, it's a wifi router but a customer
| may instead want a bare port to connect to their existing
| infrastructure (just the modem). It also means you don't have
| to worry about which MII standard both boards use, they can be
| upgraded independent of each other. The physical interface for
| Ethernet remains the same whereas MII has different pin counts.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| What SoC does Starlink use? Broadcom?
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| MediaTek
| bbarnett wrote:
| Hasn't Broadcom bought them yet? What an evil company.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Only evil since Hock Tan
| bbarnett wrote:
| Maybe. So? That seems like a decade ago, a lifetime in
| this industry.
|
| And it's not just vmware. They're predatory, they make
| Google or Oracle seem like good guys in comparison. They
| take acquire + squeeze customers to a new level.
|
| If you have any contact with any broadcom product, you'll
| bleed.
| leoh wrote:
| How did the author figure out the pin out for Ethernet? Wild
| stuff.
|
| Also kudos for them using GRPC. Suggests that there are some
| competent folks around not rushing things.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I'm confused by the end. He implies that the "disablement codes"
| (geoblock, speed violation, etc.) are enforced by the user
| terminal, meaning they could be circumvented?
|
| > The user terminal itself has no knowledge of service plans,
| countries, regional, or velocity restrictions - it simply follows
| commands received from the Starlink satellite
|
| Surely this would be enforced at DHCP time? Or maybe not, since
| you could get an IP address then start going too fast... is this
| blog actually a "wink wink nudge nudge" guide to bypassing
| Starlink policy restrictions?
| kortilla wrote:
| He's saying the sat sends the code to the terminal because the
| terminal doesn't even know it's blocked. This is so you as a
| user can see why your internet isn't working.
| ahoka wrote:
| Probably it works like all other ISPs and terminal is in a
| VLAN?
| sharpshadow wrote:
| If they actually figured out which disablement codes can be
| tricked or circumvented, they wouldn't share that. I guess it
| would all depend on how strict Starlink checks and enforces for
| unauthorised usage. For a US company operating on this scale I
| wouldn't be surprised if it's between very strict to just the
| basics or on demand.
|
| A commentator here mentioned that Starlink also works in
| Russia, which it shouldn't? Maybe some devices delivered to
| Ukraine can be used in Russia too.
| cyberax wrote:
| Not all of Russia, but in Crimea and the occupied parts of
| Donbas and Luhansk. Apparently, also in some border regions,
| probably because Starlink hasn't bothered to precisely
| geofence the border.
| fragmede wrote:
| Can you blame them? I think there's some sort of dispute
| going on as to where that border is, making it hard to do
| precision geofencing.
| _joel wrote:
| To be fair the 'border' hasn't moved all that much in
| over 2 years now, save a few fields and ruined hamlets.
|
| Plus they use starlink of drone boats, so some degree of
| flexibility is needed.
| borski wrote:
| Crimea is Russian-occupied Ukrainian land. There's not
| much of a dispute, in that it is exclusively Russia who
| claims it as part of Russia; Belarus doesn't count, as it
| may as well just be a puppet state at this point.
|
| The rest of the world sees it as Russian-occupied
| Ukrainian land.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| It sounds more like a result-code shared to the terminal to
| inform it that i.e. "ACCOUNT_DISABLED - The Starlink account
| has been suspended or permanently disabled" or
| "UNLICENSED_COUNTRY - The terminal is located in a country
| where Starlink lacks regulatory approval."
|
| I doubt that the decision to act upon that is left to the
| terminal instead of the Starlink network.
| some_random wrote:
| That's not my impression at all, if the terminal does not
| maintain information on service plans or restrictions then it's
| maintained higher up. We don't have enough information from
| this blog post to know if the terminal could be configured to
| ignore limitations but I would expect just ignoring
| "disablementCode"s wouldn't be sufficient.
| wildzzz wrote:
| I'm not that familiar with Starlink but it looks like the
| normal process is to use an app that can read off error and
| diagnostic codes from the terminal. If you are bypassing the
| built-in router and just using the terminal as a modem
| connected to an SBC, you won't have a smartphone connected to
| see these errors. You could write up a script to check the
| error codes and respond accordingly.
|
| Like if you have a Starlink terminal attached to a drone, it
| could automatically change its location if service is
| interrupted, like a UAV could fly higher if an obstruction is
| detected. Or if a geofence is inadvertently crossed and service
| is disrupted, it could turn off the Starlink terminal and then
| turn on a backup comms system. Essentially, you could use those
| disablement codes as a sensor.
| purpleidea wrote:
| This was great. I wish Starlink actually provided a dish+modem
| service exactly like this and real IPv4 not CGNAT nonsense. I
| think they do for business plans which are much more expensive
| though.
| kortilla wrote:
| This is the name of the game in new ISPs. You can't get v4
| block purchases approved without a good address utilization
| plan. Giving a public IP to every residential customer doesn't
| really pass muster anymore as a good use of v4 space.
| dboreham wrote:
| You can tunnel through Starlink to get a public IP. Not 100%
| efficient due to MTU reduction and the extra hop to the tunnel
| end, but it works.
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