00:00.49 archpodnet Welcome back to the archeotech podcast episode one seventy three and we're talking starlink for another few minutes I just want to talk about the ordering process real quick because it's really frustrating. First off, you have to go to http://starlink.com you have to start an account and you have to place an order that's going to cost you $100 it's a refundable deposit if you choose to cancel your order. They'll give you your hundred dollars back but it's $100 to put down and then you put in your service address. You have a billing address and you can put in your service address. And your service address is what will return the message that I got a year ago when I first put this on my account I tried reno I didn't know anything about it. So I tried reno and it said oh we're targeting service in your area in mid to late 2021 is what it said. I tried a bunch of other addresses of places where I knew I could have it shipped because I thought that's where I needed to send it and then I could change it because I'd heard you could change your service address. But I I didn't really get what that meant so I was trying like my parents' address in oregon my grandma's address in washington ah are are rachel's family's address in charlotte. But all those places are in relatively populated areas where you know they just didn't have starlink yet and the service always said mid to late 2021? Um, and then sometimes leading into 2022 well when I went to this ah rving event last month guy was saying no just try different random latitude longitude locations on the starlink map in like wyoming because that's where they are targeting and I did that and I did that like the day that I went to this seminar and all of a sudden I was now shipping in early february 22 and that was like three weeks away and then I got an email actually in the last week of january that said your starlink is ready to ship and when you get the your starlink is ready to ship email. First off it charges you four hundred and ninety nine dollars if you accept that because that's the price of the equipment in addition to that hundred you already paid. 02:00.84 Paul Fun. 02:02.51 archpodnet Have to pay it so it's basically six hundred bucks um so you pay the additional 500 for the dish and then you have 3 you have three days basically when they send you that email to change your shipping address which basically means your deliver your service address. So then I changed it to where we were in Arizona and it shipped to us and then. 02:14.91 Paul Um, right. 02:21.34 archpodnet Now I'm able to just basically change my service address whenever I want you can do it unlimited number of times. There's people that are publishing like Google maps where they ah all the points where they've gotten starlink so you can see these places where it has it because starlink doesn't actually publish where they have service. This is all basically crowdsourced information. And ah, and and people are just trying to figure it out so it is it is and I I don't know if they're doing that just to stay a little bit mysterious or if they just simply it's it's a moving target so much that they just um I don't know they're just not paying attention to it. They obviously know. 02:42.85 Paul That's a little frustrating. 02:57.65 archpodnet They have service because when you punch in your service address. You know it says that of course they know because it's they're satellites but the fact that they're so black boxed with the information. The fact that the cells are fifteen kilometer wide Hexagons is crowdsourced information people have literally moved the the pin around. A number of times and mapped it out basically using the coordinates on the really bad starlink map on their website and then put that onto like a Google maps map or some other or people that are using like gis for this to actually map out the cells and that's how we know what shape they are and how big they are and how we know basically where they are and how this all works. So yeah, that is a little frustrating I think they just want to get to the point where it just works for everybody everywhere which I get but for the early adopters man. They really need some more support. So anyways, so that's the ordering process and the cost um speeds Paul and I were doing some comparison speed tests I'm a little surprised. My speeds are as low as they are. We're right in the middle of a cell from what I can tell we're in the middle and nowhere outside Tucson but we're getting 86 download and this is on my computer connected to wi-fi the starlink router. It actually comes with its own router for an extra. Cost you can buy ah a part that allows you to run starlink through your own router. But if you don't get that which we don't have yet then we're running it through the starlink router which is a pretty good router. Actually I don't know a whole lot about it. But it's like all the latest bells and whistles as far as routers. Go um. But we're getting eighty six megabits per second down and 14 up but we've seen as high as 230 down and like 60 up. 04:33.89 Paul Um, and by comparison I'm on my cable internet at home I'm getting 100 down and ten up but the big caveat is that both of us are on wi-fi so you know that last step introduces a lot of variability into into. 04:44.74 archpodnet Yeah, yeah, yeah. 04:52.12 Paul These measurements you know would be much better if we were wired directly to our routers and then we could see more realistic or more reliable numbers because as we all know you know wi-fi is extremely variable to placement of the ah the computer relative to the router and what's in the way and if there's metal in the way and. 05:01.68 archpodnet Brett. 05:07.33 archpodnet Ah. 05:11.44 Paul What kind of reflections you have and so on and so forth. 05:13.40 archpodnet Yeah, and that's the thing with the starlink you can't actually even plug into the router. Um, it's got one hole in and that's coming from the dish. The rest of it is wi-fi out. Yeah, so you have to buy the $40 part or whatever that you actually plug the the cable coming in from the dish and it comes with a seventy five foot cable by the way. 05:19.68 Paul Um, oh wow. 05:31.58 archpodnet So you can put this thing basically wherever you want we bought a pole that has ah an upper suction cup and a lower suction cup so we can basically we have a sixteen feet of pole that we can put anywhere on our Rv to get it basically over the ah rv and up over any obstructions that might be in the way it needs a view of the Northern Sky which is a little different than most satellite dishes for like Tv and stuff which are all equatorial so you need a view of the ah southern sky with starling's focus right now on northern more rural areas starlingk needs a more um northern focused view of the sky. So if you're thinking about your house which is where a lot of people are getting starlink if you live in a rural area. But you're surrounded by trees. You're gonna have to think about where you're gonna put that thing if you don't have an unostructed view of the Northern Sky so it' ah, you're gonna have to get it up high or or get it far away from the house but the router the ah the dish everything is completely waterproof and in fact, the dish has automatic heating on it that will um. 06:20.61 Paul Um. 06:30.25 archpodnet You know, melt off snow and things with when it senses snow on the dish. It will actually melt off the snow and do that That's where and attract cats I was going to say that's where the article coming around for that is That's why the cats don't like the flat one because it's smaller this this is rectangular one? Yeah so um. 06:32.86 Paul Right? And to track cats. 06:45.56 Paul Ah, ah, let me ask you a question about that placement. Um, how finicky is it. You have to like get it exactly the proper angle Um, or how much leeway do you have and in aiming it. 06:52.91 archpodnet Oh I've never worried about it I haven't worried about it. You don't have to aim it. You just plug it in it Aims itself. It takes just a couple minutes. Um, even if oh yeah, yeah, it'll track right now. It'll track everything. Yeah, so. 07:02.22 Paul Oh so it's like got a motor on it. Well no interesting. 07:11.22 archpodnet Yeah, you don't have to aim it. You don't have to do anything and in fact, people have done tests where they started driving and the satellite will start to track now the problem with that you might think well then why can't I use it while I'm driving because the motors they have in there are not set up for doing seventy miles an hour down the highway and handling that kind of wind. 07:15.72 Paul Easy. 07:26.32 Paul Mother. 07:29.34 archpodnet While also tracking satellites and it's also not designed to so to so hop between cells you'd have to move your service so there's lots of things working against you. You know as far as that goes and when they come out with their mobile capable. One. It's going to be a lot more stable and and have more powerful motors to be able to handle. Those kinds of things of course it'll probably be in a dome or something like that too. So it doesn't have to deal with the wind and stuff a lot. But it's also going to have to be a lot more stable to handle vibration and things like that. Um, but no, we I put it up on this pole and I generally point it north because I don't want it to work too hard. Um, but it's. It's in stto mode when I take it out of the box which is basically flat um and then once I plug it in and I take it out of sto mode. It angles itself back up and then if we're in a completely new space. It might take 2 or 3 minutes but it doesn't take long for it to acquire satellites and and go online. So it's pretty quick. Yeah, all right? Well paul let's talk about oh I'll mention one last thing if you're crossing borders like I said Mexico we might have to get a new one. Um, it doesn't work across borders like a lot of things for some reason. It's highly regional even though it's the same dish. It's the same everything you physically have to buy a new dish you can use your same account but you have to buy a new dish if you go into Canada or Mexico and expect to use your start your starlink. So that's really strange to me I don't know why that is but. It is what it is so it's a whole regulatory government thing. Probably it's literally the same piece of equipment but you have to buy a new one now there's plenty. There's a lot of dishes actually on the open market right now they're going for more than you can get 1 from starlink because people are jerks. But um, I've heard of people you know rving in Canada you know for the summer or something like that and they got their starlink up there and then they come to the United States and they sell their canadian starlink dish and buy a us starlink dish just on the open market from somebody else. So there's definitely ah, a crowd for that. All right? so. The last part of this podcast in the last part of this segment and segment 3 we're going to talk about a really cool email that we got and and Paul's preparations for his upcoming projects because they're somewhat related so paul. 09:43.58 Paul Yeah, yeah, so let me cue that up um episodes I think 69 and 71 I was talking about projects that I'm working on specifically how I was trying to come about with with a methodology for using mobile gis for um. Mobile js for data collection in the field in Iraq and I was you know I was chewing with my mouth open I was I was mulling over certain ideas expressing some of the the problems and concerns I had in hope of getting some feedback and yeah wow we got a lot of feedback. Um. So actually before I go into what some of that feedback was I just want to put this out there if you're listening to this and you're working on any kind of project that is you know you're gearing up for field season. You're gearing up for a um for field school for whatever. Um, and you want to work through some issues some technical issues. 10:36.20 archpodnet Yeah. 10:37.64 Paul We would love to have you on this on this podcast to discuss those because I think that there's a lot of value in showing the process not just the finished product right? I Really like trying to grapple with the issues that we're having because somebody's always going to come up with some idea that that's. 10:46.16 archpodnet Yeah. 10:56.44 Paul Vastly simplifies or vastly complicates depending on on what you've done. Um, what you're working on and I think that's really good I Think that's really healthy for our field. So anyhow, yeah, so I received some great feedback I'm just going to briefly mention that in response to my mention of posting The. 3 D models of the ziggurat of orr and the edu Bla Ma at orr and that I was waiting to get permission for that from the from the Iraqi Antiquities authorities I got ah a very nice email from Former Interview. We guested on this on this podcast from a couple years ago Isaac ola and he. You know he was congratulating me I guess ah for taking you know the concerns of the ah of the iraqis and waiting you know and not just doing this because I could ah but. 11:37.61 archpodnet Nice. 11:50.71 Paul But actually trying to engage with the iraqis in the display of some of their own cultural heritage and he sent me a long link to um to a Youtube video and a link to an or actually he sent me a along a pdf of an article talking about 3 d modeling and community engagement and pipelines for engaging other people so it isn't just you know the. 11:52.27 archpodnet Me. 12:09.12 Paul Researchers in their ivory tower doing something because they can but to try to figure out how to get the various stakeholders involved in the process. Um, and this is again. This is something very healthy for our field I would love to have him back on at some point to talk about this? um. 12:21.93 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 12:24.79 Paul But this was a little sideways to what we were talking about some of the other things. Um wooter who you just interviewed on the Crm podcast and that should be coming out soon. Um I'm looking forward to seeing what he has say he's kind of a super commenter on our ah on our members only slack. 12:31.18 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 12:40.47 Paul And he gave me some very pointed very good ideas about my own mobile gis. Ah that vastly simplified it. Ah yeah, um, so what I have now for the mobile Gis and you know this follow-up to. 12:52.67 archpodnet That's awesome. 12:56.79 Paul That episode is that I've settled on using arcgis field maps as the the data collection and it took me a while to get to figure out how to use it I have a license now because I'm working for the University Of Pennsylvania on this project in lagosh I have a license through Penn and was brought into. The arcgis world that we have at Penn and got access to files and such that we had that I previously didn't have access to I've never used rgis. Well I used arc map like thirty years ago I think ah and but I've been using qgis heavily and I used grass. 13:27.41 archpodnet Sure. 13:35.11 Paul Quite a bit in my dissertation and so it took me a little bit to get my brain around arcgis I'm still learning it. But it's it's interesting. You know again to that left-handed scissors I don't have a preference at the moment between Arcgis and and qgis. It's just. To me. They seem to come at the same set of questions from exactly opposite ways my impression of qgis and of grass in the past was that it was primarily file-based right? You'd have a shapefile you would have a Ra or whatever. 13:55.80 archpodnet Right. 14:03.30 archpodnet In. 14:08.75 Paul And then to that you could attach data and my impression now of Archgis is it's more or less inverted. You start with the data from what you produce the maps. Um, and I realized this is a vast oversimplification but it took me just I had to step back and figure out that there were a few just. Very minor ways of readjusting my perspective on the software before I could actually use it and now that I have done that readjustment. Um I started using it I found a nice tutorial online that explained how to set up field maps I started using that so again because of Vutter's input and because of um. Because of then having some free time to play with this I now have 3 ipads set up all ready to go kits with extra cables and battery packs and such with our gis field maps that hopefully in the field if you go there and you. Click a button and you choose what kind of ah a recording it is and it you know gives you ah, there's a different color for write-offs and for positive and negative and and you click another button to say what time it is when you make that that recording and another button to put your name into it and boop away you go. 15:23.45 archpodnet Um. 15:25.21 Paul I'm not even putting down the ah the coordinates or while it's recording the coordinates by Gps but I'm not even putting down the name of the target location because I realized I could just match that up with nearest neighbors in gis afterwards. So I simplified this as much as possible. The other half of this. 15:35.70 archpodnet Yeah, right. 15:42.58 Paul Is How I'm simplifying the processing of the data because we're going to be collecting a lot of a lot of whatever is on the surface which is mostly going to be potchurds but it includes shell and slag and you know any of a number of more specific kind of of artifact heights we might find bits of statuary we might find. Bits of metal objects I don't really know until we actually start doing it but I want to accommodate that and what I ultimately want to do is I Want to take these broad categories and do heat Maps. You know so bring them back into the yeah gis and also take things that are important. 16:06.20 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 16:18.63 Paul On their own right? So if say we have a piece of Diagnostic pottery pull that out of the system to hand over to the ceramicist so she can do her work with the tools that she's used to using but then still have that link back to the original collection location so that we have you know a trail of the pervenience of the objects and so right now I'm exploring doing that. 16:31.18 archpodnet Oh. 16:38.14 Paul Bit in in wild node right? Having a very simple form that material or artifact type by material and artifact type you go to tooo 2 count weight count weight count weight and then if there's something that you want to pull out. There's another subform on there that you. 16:38.93 archpodnet Okay. 16:55.96 Paul Click on and and say hey I'm pulling this object. This will be its ah its artifact Id within the artifact Id system here's a photograph here's why I'm taking it out of the system and hopefully we can make you know it's going to require more brain power to do that processing than it will to do the data collection. But I. Think that I can get this really honed as a very quick sort of assembly line routine. 17:21.70 archpodnet Nice Well, that would be really awesome and it's it's cool seeing all these like different tools come together right? So you can actually do something because it's not always just like a a 1 ne-stop shop solution. For for different things that you want to do and and you have to understand all these tools. That's why I like talking about this stuff on this podcast so people can say oh that's a thing I'll use for this.. That's a thing I'll use for this.. That's a thing I'll use for this and it's just ah, it's just ideal when we do that. So. Let's take a break and finish up this discussion on the other side and we'll end up bringing in another listener that brought in some some great information for all of this and we'll talk about that in a minute.