MOTORHOME MODIFICATION - STARLINK DC TO DC POWER SOURCE IN 2016 WINNEBAGO VIEW

Well, I started putting this post together on Sunday and was going to finish it up by Monday. But instead, something changed. 

Things can change in an instant.

I guess we have to live our lives in the moment because you never know when things change. 

What happened Sunday, is that I suffered a small stroke, Steve got me to the ER and from there I've gone through a myriad of tests and medications, got transferred by an ambulance to a larger hospital. From there they discovered two small aneurysms that will be monitored. A compression of space around the base of the neck will be further explored.

Things can change in a moment. As for now, I've been cleared for needing any additional physical, occupational or speech therapy. Follow up appointments tomorrow and next week with specialists. 

I didn't post this to garner sympathy, why I posted it is to remind us that we need to live each day to our fullest and enjoy what we have.

Now on to my original post....

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As you know from reading my blog, we have the Starlink system that we transfer back and forth between our home and the RV when we travel. We do not want a permanent dish mounted in the motorhome or up on the roof. We need it portable. Not only that, we don't like to park out in the bright sun if we have the opportunity to be parked in the shade. So if our Starlink dish were mounted permanently to the roof, that kind of counteracts that, doesn't it? 

Sometimes, we like to be able to set the Starlink out somewhere in the open, and run a cord back to the motorhome to power it up.

Other times we would want the Starlink securely enclosed within our rig, like if we are overnighting in a Walmart or Cracker Barrel lot. If it's up in the skylight, then nobody can run over it or walk away with it.

The newest exciting development with Starlink is that if you have a Generation 3 dish, it is recently announced that it will work IN MOTION if you are on the "roam" plan (which we are).

What does that mean for us? Well mainly, it means if the Starlink were up on our roof, we would have a connection while we run down the road! 

Also, it means that if we are out in the boonies traveling in areas where we lose cell phone signal, we would also lose our phone's GPS ability unless we had pre-downloaded the maps. Of course, we never do that, who really does? Unless you're going to a specific known location you might download a map to a particular address. But---- we use our GPS to see things enroute as we go, or look things up as we're moving along or find alternate routes etc. 

With our upcoming planned trip to Alaska, it means going through some very remote sections of Canada and Alaska (where of course there are absolutely NO cell phone signals). By having the ability to travel with our Starlink aiming up to the sky while in motion, we can continue our internet signal as we move down the road for all of our internet needs. Also, our cell phones can produce and receive calls using Wi-Fi calling, VoIP.

Well, that's all well and good. Hook up your Starlink and it works as you drive down the road. Starlink also has a small mini dish that works really well by just setting it on the dash and it works through your front windshield. But that's limited to only 50 GB. We use a lot more of that with our "roam" plan and that has unlimited GB internet use.

When we travel or camp we usually like to be boondocking, and that means living off our two 6 volt batteries.

Also, with this new added feature of being able to use it in motion, it means we would have to plug it in to the household 120v AC outlet and run our inverter all the while just to run the Starlink. For all the hours during traveling, we would be running our inverter. And incidentally, our inverter is the original installed 1000 watt unit from Winnebago and it is not pure sine wave. We do like pure sine power for any of our sensitive electronics.  The Starlink draws between 60 and 80 watts of power.

Starlink has answered the call of RV and Overlander folks asking for a 12 volt DC to DC power source. That solves all of our power needs by having the already 12 volt DC system of Starlink being powered by a separate 12 volt DC unit. When you buy Starlink Gen 3, it only comes with a big white converting brick as a power source that changes it from DC to 120v AC, you know, regular household current. 

But now Starlink has come out with a separate DC to DC brick power source that you can swap your dish over to when you want to run it just off a 12 volt DC system. 

So we ordered it directly from Starlink. There are some aftermarket scabbed together devices that can be bought on Amazon or other places on the internet. But we decided that for such an expensive piece of equipment, we would go with original equipment DC to DC power source from Starlink. It runs $110 and came quickly within a few days, even being a brand new item in high demand. 

So here it is this power source for DC to DC. The only problem is, it draws a very high amount of amps that are more than what the average car cigarette lighter type outlet of 10 amps can handle. The Gen 3 unit draws sometimes 10-12 amps. Especially if searching for satellites or first starting up.  So instead, the end of the cord is a XT60 power connector, commonly used in remote control airplanes and hobbyist equipment. It's up to you to figure out how to get a decent source of power into that cord!  

We had already tried putting our Starlink temporarily up in our skylight. Plugging it into household 120v AC current. It works wonderfully! Now we want to just find a way to reroute the new DC power cord down into the side and attach to our 12 volt battery power was our next step. 

This is only a temporary hookup
 to see if it worked thru the skylight

We did some research, watched a lot of YouTubes, and started scouring the internet for the right amount of connections that would fit our needs. We decided that if we were going to run some wires, we wanted to hide them within the wall cavity.  We needed an XT60 outlet to plug and unplug from that had this same XT60 fitting. We also wanted an on and off switch so we can operate the Starlink only when we want, and cut power to it if we don't want it drawing from our 12 v batteries when not needed. 

So we ordered a myriad of things that came in the mail. We don't have any local stores that sell stuff like this!

Of course, I did a YouTube of the entire process. If you'd like to just click on there you can see 

what we did and 

how we did it and 

why we did it

https://youtu.be/l-J5EQoXthM?si=gXbGufzVzEMQDmsA

It is not a "how-to", 

it's a "how we did it".

We started with figuring out where we could run these wires down to our compartment where our coach batteries are located underneath the entry step. These batteries also charge from our alternator while we drive down the road, so it really won't be a drain at all on our system. 

We discovered that by pulling off a large vertical trim piece we could expose the hollow opening in the wall between the passenger side of the cockpit and the bottom edge of the bunk.

This hollow wall easily had enough room to conceal the wiring between the top bunk and down to the floor. The next step was to find a passageway from the floor through to the underside compartment where the batteries are stored. 

Fortunately, Steve found a foamed in area in the corner of that wall chamber that had already been accessed and refilled with spray foam insulation. Perfect! We didn't have to drill any holes in our floor. We could run the wires by adding a piece of wire loom right through there!

The other end of the wire has a 20 amp fuse, and then it is fed through to our battery compartment located underneath the steps. Here it is hooked up to the large main fuse and a ground post.

Our motorhome house battery set up contains two 6 volt Trojans hooked in series, supplying us with 12 volt power. We can charge them four different ways: 

1. With our solar

2. Plugging into our Bluetti power station,

3. While driving from the engine's alternator

4. Or if we happen to be camped somewhere and plugged into shore power.

To help securely support the dish up in the skylight, we came up with the idea of these tension rods. They are used for RV refrigerators or cabinetry to secure items from falling out. We bought some of these long skinny felted pads that are used for furniture legs that are sticky on one side. We put them along the bars of the tension rods to help prevent any rattling noise as we go down the road.

Of course all the while we were working on it, Nick was supervising patiently from his spot on the love seat.

Once the wires were pulled through and hooked up and double checked and triple checked with the voltmeter, Steve was able to foam in the open area to prevent any other intrusions or leaks from below.

Here you can see the back side of an additional electrical outlet he added while he had the wall open for the 12v DC outlet. 

We are severely lacking in any household 120v AC outlets in the front portion of our motorhome. Winnebago just never put any up near the front at all.

We will find this extra outlet very handy for things like the vacuum cleaner, my sewing machine, or just recharging my camera batteries. So while the wall was open he added this 120v AC outlet and then he supported it from each side with a wooden 2x4 block. 

Now let's go up the wall where the wires are fed behind it. Here's the on/off switch. This will enable us to flick the Starlink system off to save battery power rather than just unplugging it.

Inside of the wall is the wire harness with each connection of XT60 joins wrapped in electrical tape to prevent them from ever coming apart over the years due to vibration.

Steve cut a hole in the top corner of the bunk and recessed this XT60 outlet. It also has a little cover to keep dust or dirt from accumulating in the hole. We situated it far over in the corner, that even if we did put the bunk mattress in, we could still reach the plug. We only put the bunk mattress in if a grandkid might be coming along with us. Otherwise it's stored in the garage.

Now the DC to DC power brick and the modem/router and the coiled up cords will ride securely up on the bunk in a concealed plastic tote. I forgot to take a picture of that.

The last step was to situate the Starlink dish up in the skylight. The stretcher bars look they like they will hold really well. The dish is very lightweight. We do have another set of stretcher bars to go side to side if we think we need to. But we can also pull the little slider bars for the skylight that are attached to the screen or the shade portions for added support.

In this photo you can see how the little felted strips from furniture protector pads are between the tension bars and the dish itself. We hope this will be sufficient for rattling noises, but we won't know until we are actually on the road. 

Now it was time to put the plastic trim strip back on that closes up the opening in the hollow wall. It really is amazing how we could take that off and fish the wires through and put it all back in the same spot again. 3 screws. Pop the decorative plastic covers on. Done.

We also plugged my little motorhome night light from my Mom into the outlet to test the extra 120v AC outlet. This will be handy for running 120v AC household current things up in this area of the motorhome. 

Since everything was tested, we also brought out the Starlink to fire it up and try it out. Remember, this is usually kept on a post by our house as our home internet source. When we are gone, we have a smaller MiFi unit that operates our cameras and security system.

Once everything was up and running correctly, we let Starlink do it's thing and connect to the satellites. We ran an advanced speed test and everything was absolutely wonderful!!!

Granted, we were parked in an area of absolutely no trees overhead. So we got a perfect view of the sky by the Starlink dish laying flat in our skylight. 

The next test will be as we are actually driving down the road and see how well it works. Other RVers with the same setup have reported absolutely wonderful service with no interruptions or problems with connectivity.

So, until we take off and go anywhere, we will be home here posting what we can, when we can.