Power your Starlink Mini with your towable RV's 12 volt power
What’s the best way to power your Starlink Mini Dish? How can you easily run the cable without cutting a hole in your RV’s wall? We found a great solution from our friends at the AirGear Store called the Mini Link.
Essentially the Mini Link uses the 12 volt power from your trailer’s seven-pin connector to provide power to the Starlink Mini. It’s a really simple, elegant solution and it works beautifully.
What is the Mini Link?
Essentially the Mini Link is a female plug compatible with the seven-pin connector used on travel trailers and fifth wheels. There’s also a fuse in line and a heat sink along with a connector compatible with the Starlink cable.
Most towable RVs provide power to the seven-pin connector (though not all!) from a direct connection to the battery of the RV itself. This is how the Mini Link gets its power that it supplies to the Starlink Mini.
Many of us have pretty extensive power solutions in our RVs. For example, those familiar with our travels and podcast know that we have a MasterVolt power system from ABC Upfitters. The sun keeps our battery nice and charged so a small draw like the Mini Link and the associated Starlink Mini aren’t an issue at all.
The Mini Link is designed so that it can be mounted to the frame of the RV or other convenient spot if you choose. We just keep ours in a tote inside a compartment and pull it out when we want to use it.
The components of the AirGear Mini Link for Starlink Mini devices
The Starlink Mini
One of the interesting things about the Starlink Mini is that everything is contained in one component. Rather than many other internet solutions, the Mini packages both the router and receiver into one unit.
So you don’t have a router inside your RV and then an antenna outside the RV as you did with previous Starlink systems. There are several advantages to this.
One of those is that the unit is easier to deploy. It’s also less expensive to make which means it’s less expensive to buy. Another advantage is that it consumes less power which is great if you enjoy off-grid camping as we do.
The Starlink Mini doesn’t have quite as strong a performance as previous units but it’s also plenty for most RVers.
There’s just a single cable that’s a power cable. The Mini comes with a wall wart power adapter that uses 120vac household power but the Mini itself only uses 25-40 watts of DC power from 12-48 watts. In other words, the Mini Link can provide the 12 volt power to the Starlink dish easily without having to use the power brick nor 120vac household power.
How we use the Starlink Mini
The way we use our Starlink Mini is by placing it to get optimal exposure to the satellites above (no kidding). We have sometimes mounted it on our flag pole using the pole mount that came with the dish and other times just placing it somewhere on the ground.
Since the router is in the dish itself, we use our Winegard antenna system to grab the connection from the dish.
The reason we do this is that the smart TV and other gadgets inside the RV are locked into the Winegard’s Wifi network. The Winegard system can get Internet from its own T-Mobile-based connection or from the Starlink. It can also pull in from Campground Wifi but we avoid this for so many reasons listed here.
Doing this means we don’t have to reconnect the TV and Hughes Power Watchdog and all the other things we have that are now connected devices every time the signal changes. Those gadgets just look to the Winegard system and then it’s he Winegard systems job to find the Internet.
Hopefully this makes sense.
One more thing
One last thing - we got a nifty little case for our Starlink Mini on Amazon (because everything’s on Amazon!). What I like about this case is the build quality but it also holds the dish, the cable, the pole mount and the household power adapter. Essentially this case lives in the same compartment as the batteries so when it’s time to deploy the Starlink Mini, it’s all neatly nestled in one place.
