RedPort Aurora Iridium WiFi Terminal

[robgrant1]

Anybody have first-hand experience with the RedPort Aurora Iridium WiFi Terminal? Any thoughts about the Aurora versus the Iridium Go!? I'm considering getting one or the other to get weather forecasts, foregoing an SSB or a Navtex.

[monte]

It works well but the GO is simpler, cheaper and cheaper ongoing rates

[ikop32]

Yes, I also looking into to find the answer. Probably going with Aurora

For me is critical to connect laptop and with GO I have to use XGate.

Iridium GO! only works with smartphones or tablets. You can’t use it on your laptop or computer. So if you want to use your laptop or desktop with the Iridium GO! you will have to purchase XGate.

See more at: Iridium GO! or Aurora: Which is the Better Choice for Satellite WiFi?

[rspott]

My spouse uses Predict Wind on her laptop connected to the Iridium GO via wifi.

We find this laptop-> Predict Wind -> Iridium GO connection is much more reliable and easy to use compared to the 3 step process of getting weather data via the Predict Wind offshore app on our phone or tablet.

Phone calls are reasonable and remind me of making calls from Anchorage to the bush of Alaska back in the early 90s. You will sound like a very far away participant that is sitting in the bathroom. Best to establish a 'go-ahead' or 'over' protocol with the other side of the call to reduce talking over each other.

Email is semi-reliable but it is important to note that you can ONLY check iridium based email via the GO. This means if you get a giant message and it gets stuck you will not be able to download any other message. It is very hard to unclog the logjam once it starts. The solution to many of these logjams is to simply create a new iridium mail account. This is not possible while off-shore. I suggest you follow the guidance here to allow you to clear the log jam via a wifi or cell connection when you get to port: Clever Trick with Iridium GO Email Cuts Costs

Web browsing is painful. A colleague of mine works in the sat-com business. He said this recently: The current Iridium network is not really 9600 baud, it's quoted as 9600 because that's a theoretical speed you can achieve if transferring a v42bis compressed text file at 2400 bps. Basically the same as BBS dialup with a good quality US Robotics modem at 2400 baud if you download a pure ASCII text file.*

I was able to load very simple text only pages after a very long pause, and many retries.

In my experience, the external antenna makes the GO 10X ‘faster’ and 10X more reliable.

[lsoltero]

Originally Posted by rspott

Email is semi-reliable but it is important to note that you can ONLY check iridium based email via the GO. This means if you get a giant message and it gets stuck you will not be able to download any other message. It is very hard to unclog the logjam once it starts. The solution to many of these logjams is to simply create a new iridium mail account. This is not possible while off-shore. I suggest you follow the guidance here to allow you to clear the log jam via a wifi or cell connection when you get to port: Clever Trick with Iridium GO Email Cuts Costs

Web browsing is painful. A colleague of mine works in the sat-com business. He said this recently: The current Iridium network is not really 9600 baud, it's quoted as 9600 because that's a theoretical speed you can achieve if transferring a v42bis compressed text file at 2400 bps. Basically the same as BBS dialup with a good quality US Robotics modem at 2400 baud if you download a pure ASCII text file.*

I was able to load very simple text only pages after a very long pause, and many retries.

In my experience, the external antenna makes the GO 10X ‘faster’ and 10X more reliable.

A few things to note... when using the Iridium Mail & Web apps you can clear up a log jam (created when you request an email which is too big) by hitting the cancel button. You will then be presented with several options. You purge the inbox, you can move any emails larger than your BigMail cuttoff back into BigMail, or you can choose to continue the transfer later. You can also set the size of the BigMail filter (50KB is the default) before reconnecting so that when you move emals back to BigMail the move uses the new size.

This also works with XGate on Laptops. In XGate you will find the recovery options under the filters->configure menu...

The iridium network's raw transfer rate is 15 KBytes per minute... So browsing the web is very painful... Even with compression the transfer rate is too slow to access many (most) of the websites on the internet.

Weather (with predictwind ios/laptops) and Email downloads (ios/android/laptops with IMW or XGate) are reliable ... Web browsing not so much.

take care,

--luis