The Starlink folks have added a feature to the rectangular antenna router system.
A couple of days ago, a feature showed up in the Starlink app. You can see it above. The idea is that the customer can choose what is going on with the snow-melting feature.
Before this feature got added, I guess the behavior was the “automatic” behavior.
Now there are two other choices. One choice is “off”, namely that the antenna never heats up to melt snow or ice. And another choice is that the antenna does pre-heating, to try extra hard to melt the snow or ice.
I guess what I should do is put a power monitor on the power cable and see how much power gets used depending on which of the three settings is made.
I am curious as to whether the round-antenna router app also has this “snow melt configuration” feature. If you know the answer, please post a comment below.
My service failed with the first snow with the heater set to auto. It was a warm, wet snow that blocked the surface of the antenna leaving it “searching”, and no way to log in and change the heater settings. I hosed off the snow with hot water, it found service, and I switched on pre-heat. Time will tell….Overall not impressed with their design for cold weather sites..