One our most recent journey, we discovered we needed Starlink a lot more places than just at camp. The biggest example of where we'd need Starlink was in some of the giant swaths of land we'd be covering as we drove from remote destination to remote destination, which didn't have anything, let alone cell coverage. We made the trip work with placing starlink on the dashboard, but as the highway through the Navajo Nation showed us, Starlink sure didn't want to stay put that way. I looked into a suction cup mount setup, but then it was blocking the passengers view forward that much more... and then it dawned on me. Why not put it in the truck bed under the tonneau cover?
The truck bed mount under our tonneau cover had a LOT of advantages for our use case. A truck bed mount for Starlink meant was out of the cabin and not bothering us, which was a big win on long stuffy truck rides. A truck bed mount also meant Starlink was out of sight to the general public anywhere we parked, which helps keep aspiring thieves away. Sure you can't steal and use Starlink, but thieves don't necessarily know that... and where there's internet there may be laptops, etc etc.
After our trip I decided to try and see if anybody had designed any truck bed mounts up and... nope. No options existed. This seemed like yet another great DIY project to expand my cad skills with, and thus it was off to OnShape to design something up.
I took design direction from the tonneau cover lamps I already had, and borrowed from their clamp design. I also grabbed a model of Starlink mini to confirm my fitment, though it was so specific to the manufacturer design it was a modest reference at best. With a bit of faffing and a few test and prototypes print, I had a design!
Here's my printed starlink setup in place under my Tonneau cover. As you can see, the tonneau cover goes right over the starlink mount. Starlink has zero issues going through my fabric tonneau cover either, giving us pretty solid up and down speeds. While it's not as stable of a connection as one facing the horizon, for our purposes... it should do the trick.
With our setup, our truck has a 5th wheel trailer connection in the truck bed that we could pull power from. We used the following parts combined together to get a stable power sources to our Starlink mini.
- Starlink 30v Boost Accessory Adapter Plug - Starlink just doesn't like operating much around 12v or so. We found that it is much happier around 30v, and this little plug has zero issues stepping your 12v setup up to the 30v starlink wants. It's also the most simple design and the price was good so it treated us well.
- 7-Way Power Access, 7-Pin Trailer Plug to Female Cigarette Lighter Socket - Now you need a way to get from your truck bed 7 pin connection to whatever else you want to plugin, and this simple adapter did the trick for us. It's actually been very useful for other things as well, allowing us to run various air pumps or tire pumps right from the back of the truck.
For the tonneau bed mount you've got two options if you want your own. The first option is downloading it from My Makerworld... once I ensure the design is solid enough and share it there for others to use. Currently I'm still testing it.
If you don't have access to a 3d printer however, you're in luck. I sometimes 3d print stuff for folks, and I just collect a very modest profit ontop of my costs to make it and ship. Reach out to me via email, and I'll see what I can do for you! Anything I print is made utilizing 3D-Fuel made in America Filament, and since I designed it and print it for you... that's about as Made in America as you can get!