Network: weakness or strength?

If you read the last post, you've already met my camera setup. The cameras were only half the story.

After streaming for a while, I realized the majority of the trouble I'd been having originated with the network.

I started with the hotspot on my phone and quickly realized that wasn't covering it. I just wanted to watch the game — not play whack-a-mole with stream health every inning. So I upgraded to a cellular hotspot. $30–50 a month for the peace of mind that it would just work.

The reality was that it was marginally better. Yes, I could walk to the snack bar without the camera losing the network connection, but I still ended up doing the same dance around stream health every game. I went through several of them, each one promising to be better than the last, none fully living up to the hype. Some fields were better than others. A couple we played at were a nightmare.

Then came Starlink — for the same money I was paying for cellular, with the promise of a high-speed connection anywhere. Could this finally let me concentrate on other things?

Yes and no. When it's good, it's really great. But I had to get the rig right to get wifi coverage that stretched to the outfield camera and both baseline fences. Like most technical things, once you get it set up the way you want, it's great. It took me a bit.

I started with the Starlink Mini — built-in wifi, connects anywhere with a clear view of the sky.

I love the back-of-the-pitcher shot, so I decided the easiest way to make this work was to hardwire the Mini to my outfield camera. That's usually where you get the clearest view of the sky on the field.

The problem is the Mini's onboard wifi doesn't have the range to reach the backstop fence. So I picked up the Starlink Gen 3 router ($120). Through trial and error, I worked out that if I hardwire it to the dish and the camera, set it as the master, and disable the Mini's onboard wifi, I get what I actually want: a waterproof wifi 6 mesh router that's fast.

Now, if you recall, my sideline cameras were ZowieCams paired with Vonets wifi adapters. I thought: what if I replace the Vonets with a few Starlink mini mesh routers? That would give me a view of my whole network in the Starlink app, and at the time they were only about $40 — though not waterproof. (Starlink has since stopped selling the mini mesh; the Gen 3 is the only mesh option now.)

I tried several iterations — up to 3 mini routers paired with the Gen 3 in centerfield. I learned that multiple mesh routers cause issues. Starlink recommends no more than 3, and I wanted 4. I played with them, figured out how to protect them from the elements and mount them with the cameras. But even then, multiples still didn't connect consistently.

I eventually pared it down to 1 Mini at the backstop and 1 Gen 3 in the outfield. That seems to work best for me, and it's what I run today.