I am looking for a solution for our 17m sailing boat that can take inputs from Starlink, 4G and shore based wifi, and provide relatively reliable boat internet. (Only my husband and I live aboard, and use the internet for personal use only, so it does not need to be 100% reliable, and some outages are okay, as long as they are relatively quick and easy to resolve!). We are looking for low power consumption powered directly from 24V batteries, ideally with capability to work in Europe, US and Pacific regions. We envisage that most of the time we will use Starlink, some of the time we will want to use 4G / 5G cellphone signal (but not sure that a range extender external aerial is worth that much to us), and very rarely will we be in a marina where we will use their wi-fi.
I’m considering the Pepwave BR1 Pro 5G with the Pepwave 40G maritime antenna mounted on the first spreader of the mast. However, the cable run would need to be at least 14 metres so my understanding is that I’d need five cables made up to 12 metres length. Also, I have another antenna on my mast (either from the VHF radio or an AIS aerial or a wifi range extender, I am trying to find out which is which!), mounted about 1.2 metres away from where I was thinking of mounting the 40G.
I’d like to understand:
how much of an issue will it be having 14m of standard cable? should I switch to a lower loss cable? (in which case, I’m not sure whether there is room to fit five of the bigger cables). At what point does the gain of the antenna get cancelled out by the loss of the cabling so that I might as well just use the small antenna that the BR1 comes with?
how much will the performance of both my VHF and the Peplink be adversely affected by having the two antennae only 1.2 metres apart? Do they need to be further apart and if so how far? Does the answer to this make any difference if it is the VHF aerial compared to AIS or range extender aerial?
is there a simpler solution that offers most but perhaps not everything I am looking for but will save all the complexity of running five specially made cables up the mast?
The mast is currently down while we change the rigging, but goes up again in a couple of weeks, so I will need to move quickly to install the new solution if cables need to be run up the mast!
Thanks for your recommendations,
Julia
I am not a boat specialist.
But…
VHF use 30MHz to 300MHz and LTE use 450MHz to 3.8GHz. (depends of the country)
So… have both antennas close… Will not be a problem.
About ethernet cable… just 14mts… you can use an CAT5e shilded cable. (1gbps speed)
Hi Marcelo, thanks for your reply. Good news that I can keep the aerials close together. Regarding the cable, I understand that I can use ethernet cable from the Starlink to the BR1 router. What about from the BR1 router to the 40G antenna though? I think I will need 5 separate cables here, and it is this distance that is about 14m, what cables would be best for this? thank you!
You have to modify this solution to your own needs but it covers the basics.
If you don’t want to run 4-5 coax up your mast, you have to use a dome. You can do everything you want with a HD 5G dome but you need a managed switch to connect the starlink… or you need a second router (like a B One. ) in Synergy.
The pro 5G and 5 coax works, but a dome will always be the solution for less cabling.
Hi Paul, thanks for your suggestion. I had seen the dome but I gather it’s quite a bit more expensive than the 40G antenna, and it is more than I was looking to spend right now. But I understand the point you make, that it is an easy way to manage longer cable lengths. Are there any more economical solutions though?
In effect, you have two options, where you will need to make the balanced decision yourself, and yes, I understand it’s budget related
You seem already very much on top of what is required.
As you outlined
BR1, maritime 40G (or Maritime 42G if you want Wi-Fi capability included)
the cable run being more than 10m, you will want LMR400 (the thicker cable), the thinner cable precut comes in 5m lengths, you can get it custom length of the 14m you want, but your losses will be high. It will still be better than the stubby antennas directly on the unit below deck.
If you have your mast down, and the space to run the thicker cable, I suggest you do… But your mast will be your master here.
Note you only need 4 cables for the cellular function, the GPS is not required, just useful. You can always take the GPS antenna supplied and mount it on deck height (it does not need to be in the mast, it just needs a clear view of the sky).
As to antenna distance, as already mentioned in a previous post, VHF works on different frequencies, so you don’t have to keep them far apart, but do space them a little, whatever your spreader allows you to do.
When you get the Starlink, make sure it comes with the Ethernet adaptor, this will plug into the BR1.
Option 2, is indeed the Dome.
performance wise, you will see it work better than the previous setup, purely because there is no antenna cable in between.
The cable run is also much nicer as it is a single Ethernet, which is flexible and relatively small.
The drawback is, 1. To change SIM card you need to open the Dome (in the mast…) or buy the SIM injector. 2. You will need a managed switch below deck. 3. you will need to purchase the virtual WAN option on the Dome if you want to combine the Starlink into the same setup (for bonding and better management).
I hope this covers what you are asking, if not… ask more
To be honest, if you have starlink you won’t need the others, it will always be superior to LTE and WIFI. If you are in a marina and getting shadowed by other boats, then you will be close to the Wifi and cell and won’t need a good tall antenna. A B-one 5G will probably be Fine. Br1Pro5g too…
In continuation,
Power. With the peplink you have no issue as it is built for a variety of power sources. Meaning you can run it directly from your battery supply.
The starlink on the other hand is a little more difficult as it’s supplied power supply is a transformer connected to a 100-240vac. Although the dish is supplied by an POE setup, it’s draw is very high and thus a normal POE supply will not work for you.
There are some starlink resellers who have started building/splitting their own 24vdc/POE starlink transformers but I’m not aware of any who sells them separately. But you may want to have a search for this.
The newly released peplink b-one-5g is a very nice unit. But it’s built to be in an office space. It’s not built to be in a harsh environment with salty air.
So again it’s your choice. The BR1 will last longer, but it’s pricier.
Thanks for some really helpful ideas, tgorter, Paul_Mossip, Marcelo.
As I’ve said, I ruled out the 5G dome due to its cost. However, now I am wondering, is there a older technology 4G dome that I could buy, so that I only need an ethernet cable up the mast, that is priced to reflect it’s older technology and hence maybe within my budget?
If I can’t find a 4G dome using ethernet, then I will probably not mount an antenna on the mast as it sounds as though the signal loss will be considerable. Handy to know before buying it, thanks for your advice!!
another option you can use the same BR1 Pro 5G with MB-42G antenna and deck mounts. For this installation you would install antenna not on the mast but somewhere on the deck if that is possible keeping the distance beween the antenna and router up to 6 feet. Then the attenuation is reasonable and the installation also is not so complicated.
MB-42G contains all antenna you need for BR1 Pro 5G like 4x 5G/LTE + 2x Wi-Fi + GPS.
This options is a very common for a smaller boat/yacht owners.
It is no longer in production, but maybe if you do a search you can still find it, or even 2nd hand from e-bay. I know of some yachts that have upgraded already, so you might find some others who still want to. It also allows for VWAN licence, so you can add the Starlink to it. The overall performance may be reduced, though. And it has no Wi-Fi (neither does the HD 1 5G, but the HD1 Dome Pro does have WAN Wi-Fi)
(Peplink.com - Model Comparison)
Hi Tim,
Thank you. We are hoping to keep our set up simple. So we were planning to use the RV starlink dishy, with motor disabled, on our radar pole. We’ll take the starlink to a POE injector which we will power from a 48V DC supply via a 24/48 converter. Then take the ethernet cable to the router.
I was hoping the ethernet cable could be run all the way up the mast to the first spreader, where we could mount the HD1 dome.
I have a few questions:
how do we get power to the HD1 dome (separate power cable up the mast?)
what device do we need in order to change the SIM card from inside the boat?
will the frequency of the HD1 dome your distributor has in stock cover EU and US frequencies?
with the router being outside the boat up the mast, will the wifi it generates be as good a signal as if we had the router inside the boat? i.e will the signal make it through the deck? or if we want a strong wi-fi signal inside the boat, and aren’t too worried about picking up marina wi-fi signal when we are offshore, are we better off mounting a router inside the boat instead?
will the dome interfere with the AIS antenna that is mounted 1.2 metres away on the spreader?
what performance difference (if any) is there between the 4G and 5G dome, other than that the 5G dome uses 5G so is faster?
Thanks
Julia
how do we get power to the HD1 dome (separate power cable up the mast?)
The Dome is POE powered, the same Ethernet cable also carries the power to the Dome.
will the frequency of the HD1 dome your distributor has in stock cover EU and US frequencies?
The HD1 Dome comes in a single flavour (Global / FirstNet / CAT-18) so it covers basically all 4G frequencies except China & Hong Kong)
with the router being outside the boat up the mast, will the Wi-Fi it generates be as good a signal as if we had the router inside the boat? i.e. will the signal make it through the deck? Or if we want a strong Wi-Fi signal inside the boat, and aren’t too worried about picking up marina Wi-Fi signal when we are offshore, are we better off mounting a router inside the boat instead?
Here comes one of the differences between the HD1 and the newer HD1 5G and Pro. The HD1 Dome (4G) does not have Wi-Fi. Therefore, if you want to receive Wi-Fi from the marina, you would need to use an alternative way.
Another forum member mentioned that they had installed a Dome (with Wi-Fi) and they were happy with the coverage. But you should always note, The Wi-Fi is either a client (to receive Marina Wi-Fi) OR an AP (to provide you with Wi-Fi service) but not both at the same time. I would suggest you have a simple Wi-Fi AP below deck with you to give you the best performance. A Wi-Fi AP up the mast will never give you the best performance, but will be excellent to share your Wi-Fi with all your neighbours
will the dome interfere with the AIS antenna that is mounted 1.2 metres away on the spreader?
No, AIS works in the VHF frequencies and thus does not overlap. And you have ample spacing in any case at 1.2m distance.
what performance difference (if any) is there between the 4G and 5G dome, other than that the 5G dome uses 5G so is faster?
In summary, that is it, 5G is faster. It also provides more bandwidth. It is faster because of changes in the RF technology, in the bandwidth allocation, and the frequencies the technology has access to.
The other thing you need to consider is that
The HD1 Dome was not designed to be a router with multiple WANs. It is capable of it, but it is not what it was designed for.
You will need to purchase a “vWAN” licence (with any of the Domes) to be able to have it work as a router handling multiple WAN connections (cellular and Starlink)
AND
you will need a managed switch below deck that is capable of VLANs, as you will have to send up the Starlink signal to the Dome, and send back down the WAN connection that you are using cellular or Starlink or both (possibly bonded).
I recently implemented a similar system, but in a truck camper instead of a sailboat. I think there are many parallels.
Started out cell only with an HD1 Dome, sim injector and AP One AC Mini for wifi. Easy to deploy and works really well as long as there is a cell signal. But we travel a fair amount where there is not cell coverage.
For adding Starlink, I went with adding a second router to the configuration. I am using the MAX BR1 Mini. This makes multiple WANs easier to manage, and the BR1 Mini has a very affordable 4 year PrimeCare package, which has all the goodies including virtual WAN, WiFi as WAN and SpeedFusion Connect. This will give you the ability to bond Starlink and cell together when both are available.
Starlink comes in on the WAN and my HD2 Dome is configured in Synergy mode over the virtual WAN and the LAN port is connected to the sim injector. On the roof are 2 ethernet cables, one for the dome and one for starlink. Everything else is inside.
Wifi from the BR1 Mini has been good, seeing range close to 200’ with the 2.4 band dedicated to WiFi as WAN and the 5ghz band for wifi clients. This is with the BR1 Mini installed inside and just using the included paddle antennas.
I also upgraded to an HD2 Dome, so I have a good condition, perfect working order HD1 Dome for sale at a very attractive price. PM me if you have an interest.
The HD Dome Pro works very well. I have it on my boat along with the Starlink Flat HP dish. The dome will provide coverage up to 20+ miles offshore when mounted on the mast spreader. Running cellular cables up the mast is very lossy and difficult. And most of the boaters I know that have installed the larger ariels (40G or 20G) have found the sheets will get fouled in them and they eventually get pulled off the spreader. Another option you can consider, which would be simpler and less expensive would be to use the new Balance One 5G and a 42G antenna mounted on your coach roof or davits. If you plan to use the Starlink dish for your primary, then the inexpensive Balance One 5G will give you an alternative when in harbor. When I store my boat for the season, I pause my Starlink and use the 5G with a data only SIM that’s coupled with my eSIM on my mobile phone. Saves me quite a bit in Starlink costs.
I would replace the likely installed LMR195 with the only slightly large LMR240. A 14m 195 cable at 700 MHZ has loss of 4.3 dBi. A 14m 240 cable at 700 MHz has loss of 2.9 dBi.
just to make sure that everyone knows what the damping means. 3dB is a halving of the signal
If you calculate in the higher Frequency, it’s more extreme.
14m HDF195 is at 2400MHz 8.4dB
14m LMR240 at 2400MHz 5.94dB
14m LMR400 at 2400MHz is 3.11dB
I would use at least a LMR400, better an HD1 Dome without a loss, because you can get a lot of problems when the antenna cable run is not perfect.
Thanks Dennis and Lenl for comments on the cable, Gary for your feedback on the Dome Pro and Greg for info on your installation. Giedrius, thanks, I will also look at the MB 42G
I don’t have room for four LMR400 cables up the mast so I can see from Dennis and Lenl’s comments that I really need to reduce my cable length. I could install the BR1 Pro 5G in a cupboard in a room next to the main living area on the boat in order to reduce the cable length to less than 10 metres. But would the signal from the router be strong enough to pick up wi fi signal in the aft cabin 10 metres and several wooden doors away from it? I’ve tried with a cellphone on hotspot and the hotspot connection drops in and out a bit, but presumably the signal will be much stronger with the BR1 Pro 5G? Is there a way to estimate the performance difference between the two options (1) the BR1 Pro 5G using it’s own antenna, mounted in the main living area, and (2) using the BR1 Pro 5G with an external antenna (Maritime 40G or the 42G) with 10 metre LMR240 and positioning the router one wooden wall away from the main living area?
Looking at the deck mounted MB 42G, how much better would this be than just using the antennae that the BR1 Pro 5G comes with?
And what performance differences would I see between a deck mounted MB 42G compared to the maritime 40G on the first spreader, 6m above deck, and an incremental 8m of cable compared to the deck mounted MB 42G?
Sorry for the basic questions!! To recap my requirements, I won’t ever need speeds for anything more than downloading one movie at a time, I’d like to minimise power consumption on board hence I will not have starlink powered up all the time and hence cellphone signal offshore is important to me, there will only ever be two or three users on board and I don’t expect to tap into marina wi fi much, but I’d like a solution that is robust without costing the earth while minimising ongoing costs (i.e I’d like to avoid the vWAN licence requirement tgorter flagged so am ruling out the HD1 Dome). Thanks for your help.
