I wonder what the theoretical minimum size would be for an antenna that can maintain a half-decent connection with the current generation of starlink/iridium/et.al. satellites.
Check out the Garmin inReach Mini or Rock Seven's RockBLOCK 9603. They're already relatively small -- I could imagine those circuits getting smooshed into a phone case. However, I doubt the connection would be anywhere close to half-decent. Would be useful for emergency text-messaging after a disaster, though.
Would be useful for emergency text-messaging after a disaster, though.
Disaster is probably the least useful use case for this. The satellite would be overloaded from all the people requesting help. A far more plausible use case is if you got lost hiking or something.
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I wonder what the theoretical minimum size would be for an antenna that can maintain a half-decent connection with the current generation of starlink/iridium/et.al. satellites.
Check out the Garmin inReach Mini or Rock Seven's RockBLOCK 9603. They're already relatively small -- I could imagine those circuits getting smooshed into a phone case. However, I doubt the connection would be anywhere close to half-decent. Would be useful for emergency text-messaging after a disaster, though.
Disaster is probably the least useful use case for this. The satellite would be overloaded from all the people requesting help. A far more plausible use case is if you got lost hiking or something.
Or multicast down, but probably couldn’t get more than a few kbps without killer expenses.
Outernet was an application of this concept:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othernet
But reality is that cellular coverage world wide gets better and better.
I would presume it's not that much smaller than the size they built Dishy