Starlink Mini Uplink Setup Guide

1. Activate the terminal

A new Mini must be activated against a Starlink account before it will pass traffic. Do this at home over good internet, not in the field.

1. 1

   Create a dedicated email address

   Register a fresh mailbox for this terminal and store the address and password with the aircraft — the email is your permanent key to the Starlink account. One terminal per account: Starlink does not reliably let you bind multiple terminals to one account.

2. 2

   Register the terminal

   Open starlink.com/activate and enter the serial number printed on the back of the Mini’s housing (it starts with M1HT…), or the KIT number (KIT4M…) from the box.

3. 3

   Pick the Roam plan

   Choose ROAM — it is the only plan that allows in-motion use and international travel. Residential, Business, Land Mobility, and Maritime are not what you want here. If a trial option is offered (e.g. 7-day / 50 GB at $0), take it — you can evaluate the terminal before paying for a month.

4. 4

   Add a payment card

   The card can have a zero balance — Starlink only makes a $0 authorization charge, confirmed through your banking app. The name on the card must be the real cardholder name.

5. 5

   Handle the address check

   If the service address fails validation ("Provided address appears to be invalid"), tick the "This address cannot be validated, but I know it is correct" checkbox and continue — this is expected for field deployments without a formal service address.

6. 6

   Set the account password and store credentials

   After checkout, set an account password and file it together with the email credentials and the terminal serial number. You will need all three for support, transfers, and reactivation.

Ukraine: terminals used in Ukraine must additionally pass Starlink's Ukraine verification flow before field use — complete it in the Starlink account as soon as the terminal is activated.

2. Manage the plan and the terminal

Everything account-side lives at starlink.com under your terminal's login. The Service Plans tab lists each terminal with its status; clicking into one shows data used this billing period, firmware version, kit and serial numbers, uptime, and remote Reboot / Stow / Transfer actions.

• Roam – 50 GB (~$50/mo) covers evaluation and intermittent operations. Streaming eats roughly 1–3 GB per hour, so 50 GB is 20–40 flight hours.
• Roam – Unlimited for daily operations — pricing varies by region; check the account page for your rate.
• Pause when idle. Roam plans can be paused month-to-month from the account — no reason to pay for a terminal sitting in storage.

3. Wire it to the AirCast device

The Mini exposes a LAN Ethernet port and runs its own router with a DHCP server. AirCast needs nothing special:

1. Power the Mini from 12–48 V DC — from a battery through a suitable regulator, or the supplied mains adapter at a ground station. Budget 25–40 W sustained.
2. Run an Ethernet cable from the Mini's LAN port to the Pi 4's Ethernet port. The Pi picks up an address over DHCP and the uplink is live — the AirCast dashboard, stream, and telemetry work exactly as they do over 4G.
3. Give the dish open sky. Obstructions (trees, masts, the airframe itself) cause periodic dropouts that look like random stream stalls — check the obstruction map in the Starlink app before blaming the software.

The dish itself always answers at 192.168.100.1 from the LAN side — the Starlink app uses it for status, and it's reachable from the Pi for diagnostics.

4. Monitor the link

The official Starlink app covers basics (obstruction map, speed test, WiFi settings). For operations, the open-source Star Debug app exposes much more of the terminal's live state: dish service status and firmware, router ping latency, internet reachability indicators, and remote Reboot / Stow / Unstow controls. It also has an Inhibit GPS switch that disables the terminal's internal GPS so positioning relies on the Starlink constellation alone — relevant in GPS-denied environments.

Aircast also reads the dish's local API and shows obstruction, latency, loss, throughput, and alerts right on the dashboard — see Starlink dish status.

Advanced: external GNSS into the dish

The Mini normally relies on its internal GPS to track satellites. Third-party hardware mods exist that add an NMEA input inside the terminal, letting the flight controller feed it real-time position — from the autopilot's own GNSS or a CRPA anti-jam antenna. In contested RF environments this measurably improves link stability and sustained bitrate. On the ArduPilot side it's one unused serial port set to NMEA Output at 115200 baud, with TX and GND wired to the mod's input.

This requires opening the terminal and installing an add-on board — it's not something AirCast ships or supports. If you fly with such a mod, verify it by comparing the satellite count in Mission Planner against Star Debug: they should track within a satellite or two, and a persistent mismatch means a wiring, port, or baud-rate fault.