Of Course We're Taking Starlink to a Wedding Fayre 🤣

This might be the most Yorkshire Magic Mirror thing we've done for at least a few weeks.

We're taking Starlink to a wedding fayre.

Why? Because venue Wi-Fi has annoyed us.

That's basically it.

Well... there's slightly more to it than that. But if you've followed us for any length of time, you'll probably know how this story goes. Something annoys us. We wonder if there's a better way. We start testing things. And before long there are cables everywhere and another box is threatening to take up permanent residence in the van.

This time, we've apparently gone to space. 🤣

It Started With a Spinning Wheel

We've had small connectivity issues plenty of times.

Nothing catastrophic. We've always resolved them or adapted.

Switch connection. Tether a phone. Retry something. Wait a little longer. And occasionally deploy the emergency backup system:

Turn on the charm.

Because when somebody has just created something brilliant and wants it delivered to their phone, there's nothing quite like standing there thinking:

Come on...

Come on...

Any time today would be lovely...

while smiling as though everything is completely normal.

We're good at adapting. That's part of events.

We'd just rather have more options so we don't need to.

Then Last Weekend Happened

At a wedding fayre, we arrived early as we always do.

There's a reason for that. We get set up, establish a baseline, test everything and make sure we're ready before couples start coming through the doors.

Internet? Tested.

Products? Working.

Everything? Lovely.

Then the other suppliers arrived.

More phones. More laptops. More devices. More people joining the venue network.

And the connection we'd tested earlier suddenly wasn't the connection we had when the fayre started.

Some suppliers obviously needed it.

Some didn't even chuffing need it for anything they were delivering to their clients.

But everybody was sharing the same resource.

For us, connectivity isn't just about checking an email. Image delivery to a client's phone requires a connection. Increasingly, so do some of the experiences we're building.

That got us thinking again:

Why have one way of doing something when we can have several?

Obviously, the Answer Was Satellites

Most normal people might investigate another mobile data plan.

We appear to have acquired a satellite dish.

To be completely accurate, we haven't bought this one.

A company we've helped in the past owed us a favour and had a Starlink V2 Standard available.

So rather than sitting around theorising about whether satellite internet could be useful for Yorkshire Magic Mirror, we borrowed it and decided to find out properly.

This is absolutely an us thing to do. 🤣

Test one indoors wasn't convincing. So outside it went. This is apparently what Friday night product development looks like now.

Photo:Yorkshire Magic Mirror

Searching for satellites. All because we want somebody's event image to arrive on their phone without us thinking about the connection.

Photo:Yorkshire Magic Mirror

And the Stupid Thing Is...

The venue we're going to this weekend actually has decent Wi-Fi.

Typical.

After all the venues where another independent connection would have been incredibly useful, we're testing Starlink somewhere that already has a perfectly usable connection.

But that's actually ideal.

We're not trying to solve Sunday's venue. We're trying to give ourselves better options for the next hundred.

Maybe Starlink is the best connection somewhere.

Maybe mobile data is better.

Maybe the venue has brilliant internet.

Maybe one of them suddenly isn't playing nicely.

The point isn't to declare one winner and depend on it forever.

The point is having choices.

We're Not Promising the Impossible

This isn't about claiming every connected feature will always be available everywhere.

That's not a promise we're going to make.

Internet connections fail. Hardware fails. Mobile coverage changes. Buildings get in the way. Things happen.

What we can do is give ourselves more ways to respond when they do.

If one route isn't working, why not have another?

And another?

We'd much rather stand at an event deciding which available connection is best than desperately trying to persuade the only one we've got to behave itself.

We're Not Testing a Speed Test

We're going to test the full product line.

Image delivery.

Memories.

Memories Live.

Our AI experiences.

The caricatures.

Everything.

Then we'll start killing things.

Connection working?

Great. Kill it.

What stops? What keeps going? What can switch? Where is the weak point? What happens when several products are doing their thing at once?

That's much more useful to us than setting up a dish in an empty room, running a speed test and declaring ourselves telecommunications experts.

Because discovering a failure point deliberately while we're testing is useful.

Discovering it accidentally with people waiting in front of us isn't.

Test One: Can We Use It Indoors?

Not particularly.

Excellent.

We've learned something.

So, in the finest tradition of Yorkshire Magic Mirror product development, we carried it outside and plonked it down amongst the flowers.

Then we waited.

Searching for satellites...

Then:

Entering Starlink network.

And finally the little green dot appeared.

Online.

Satellite found. Joining the network. Progress.

Photo:Yorkshire Magic Mirror

And then the little green dot appeared: Online.

Photo:Yorkshire Magic Mirror

First outdoor result: 125 Mbps down, 15 Mbps up and 46 ms latency. Nice. But Sunday is the real test.

Photo:Yorkshire Magic Mirror

Oh. It Works. 🤣

And because we're incapable of simply accepting that something works without immediately poking it:

Speed test.

125 Mbps down.
15 Mbps up.
46 ms latency.

From a satellite dish we'd just put in the garden.

All because we're fed up with occasionally having to tell somebody, "Give it a second, your image is coming..."

🤣

But this isn't the test.

This is proof that the idea works.

Sunday is the test.

We're Interviewing Starlink for a Job in the Van

We're not reviewing Starlink.

There are plenty of people who can tell you how many megabits it can do while standing in a field.

We're interviewing it for a permanent job in the van.

Sunday takes us from one laptop in the garden to a wedding fayre, multiple devices, our actual products and real people using them.

We're not particularly interested in whether we reproduce 125 Mbps.

We're interested in something much simpler:

Can our stuff just work?

Can somebody create something and receive it without us having to think about which network we're using?

Can Memories do its thing?

Can Memories Live do its thing?

Can the AI products do their thing?

And when we deliberately take one route away, have we got another?

That's what gets Starlink the job.

Tonight it passed the interview to get through to round two.

Sunday it gets the practical.

If It Gets the Job...

This V2 Standard isn't necessarily the Starlink we'd eventually own.

If the experiment proves genuinely useful, we'll look at the current portable Starlink option that best fits what we do — likely the Mini/Roam type of setup, or whatever makes most sense when we make that decision.

Something designed to live in the van.

Something we can deploy when we need it.

And because apparently satellite internet isn't quite enough nonsense for one experiment, we're also considering a suitable battery bank.

Our own connection.

Potentially our own power.

For marquees, fields, rural venues and temporary event spaces, that starts getting very interesting.

Nobody Is Booking Us Because We've Got Starlink

At least we hope not.

There won't be a:

SUPER DELUXE SATELLITE WEDDING PACKAGE — £499

🤣

This isn't another line for an invoice.

It's infrastructure.

The guest shouldn't care whether their image travelled through the venue's fibre connection, a mobile network or via satellites above Yorkshire.

They take a photograph.

We make something brilliant with it.

They get it.

That's the experience.

Everything complicated should happen behind the scenes.

Are We Still a Photobooth Company?

Sort of.

Increasingly, we're an events company that builds quite a lot of technology.

Our own software. Memories. Memories Live. AI experiences. Caricatures. Image delivery. Display systems.

And now, apparently, satellite internet.

The Wedding Guide UK has already been onto us about the caricatures with essentially one message:

"Write it and we'll share it. Get on it quick."

That's exciting, but becoming a technology company isn't the objective.

The objective is events.

We want to create some of the best event experiences in the UK without somebody needing to spend £25,000 creating a once-in-a-lifetime designer party.

Interesting technology helps us do that.

Building our own things helps us do that.

And having several ways to keep those things connected might help us do it more reliably.

So, Sunday...

We'll load the van.

Magic Mirror.

Magic Mini.

Memories.

AI.

Caricatures.

All the usual ridiculous collection of equipment.

And, for the first time:

Satellite dish.

We'll connect it all up, put it under proper load and see what happens.

Maybe it'll be brilliant.

Maybe it'll expose things we haven't thought about.

Maybe we'll discover Starlink has absolutely no interest in becoming part of Yorkshire Magic Mirror.

That's why we're testing it.

But if it works, we'll investigate the portable setup that actually suits us and there may be yet another box living permanently in the van.

Who gets hold of Starlink because they want to make sure somebody receives their ridiculous AI caricature at a wedding fayre?

Us.

Obviously. 🤣