Red Port Optimizer vs Red Box Mailasail

[timmygobang]

Hi all,

I wondered if any here has had any experience with a Red port optimizer.

I have an Iridium 9555 on it's way to me, and have dived into the subject of comms at sea (we're doing the ARC this year)

So my primary objective is to get emails and grib files (also delivered via email of course) through the sat phone.

Both these boxes:

• act as advanced firewalls
• create a wifi spot
• take the hassle out of marrying up the sat phone with the laptop, simply connect the sat phone to the box and away you go
• are wifi extenders when purchased with an aerial, so I might be able to pickup wifi hotspots whilst at anchor

Red port optimizer costs £130 exc vat and I'll need a DV charger for £22

Red Box costs £484 exc vat

The Red Box comes with other toys built in, but I don't require them ie plugging a sim card in, as we can create hotspots from our phones in necessary.

I'm very tempted to just buy the red port optimizer as it's significantly cheaper, but thought I'd see if anyone has had experience with it, or has been in this dilemma before.

Thanks
Tim

 

[emnick]

Not sure if it's any use but I do use the NMEA over wifi with the redox, you can't use it with Navionics yet (so I'm told) but it works well with INAVX so you can get AIS on iPad etc. Works well for me.

 

[Allan]

We had an Iridium GO when we were offshore. Originally I thought it was a gimmick, but using a smartphone for calls and a tablet for emails worked out fine. The email back system for gribs etc was perfect for us. I'm sure you could link a tablet to your phone.
Allan

 

[timmygobang]

Not sure if it's any use but I do use the NMEA over wifi with the redox, you can't use it with Navionics yet (so I'm told) but it works well with INAVX so you can get AIS on iPad etc. Works well for me.

Hi Emmick, yup I don't need that facility as I can use the Raymarine app to mirror the charplotter but thanks for the info

We had an Iridium GO when we were offshore. Originally I thought it was a gimmick, but using a smartphone for calls and a tablet for emails worked out fine. The email back system for gribs etc was perfect for us. I'm sure you could link a tablet to your phone.
Allan

I did look at the Iridium GO, but decided to buy my friends sat phone as it was substantially cheaper than the Iridium GO.

Looks like YBW isn't the place to find people who've used this red box/port gizmo's

 

[Allan]

Hi Emmick, yup I don't need that facility as I can use the Raymarine app to mirror the charplotter but thanks for the info




I did look at the Iridium GO, but decided to buy my friends sat phone as it was substantially cheaper than the Iridium GO.

Looks like YBW isn't the place to find people who've used this red box/port gizmo's

I won't bore you with the stories but a number of people here are not impressed with the salesman for the redbox.
Allan

 

[Jonesey]

You don't actually need either; I used Airmail and a USB cable to connect direct to my 9555 and this helpful guide to make sure you don't waste any bandwidth:

http://www.ecosailingcharters.com/2014/09/using-iridium-satphone-with-airmail-for.html

Oh and as someone else mentioned, avoiding mailasail is certainly to be recommended.

 

[mariadz]

We had experience with the redbox on our Dufour 455 and went a different way when we bought the Moody.

I have not relayed my thoughts on the staff I met around the redbox, but being told that it wasn’t compatible with the industry standard Microsoft product at the time seemed frankly ridiculous. Have subsequently helped a friend set up theirs after a lack of help from the after sales area and i still found it unintuitive but can’t comment on the technology. For me there are lots of cheaper, easier to use and performant solutions out there.

 

[jdc]

I've used an Iridium phone for years (10 anyway) and it's been fine, and I've always used Mainsail who have been very good to me (and I think their support is good despite some others disagreeing: the plus side is you get to talk directly with a real, practicing, software engineer who really knows his stuff, but the minus side is that if you're not used to this kind of interaction it can be less emollient than you'd expect).

What, if anything, you need between your computer and the phone very much depends on your operating system. FWIW I recount here what I've used:

1. PC, running various Microsoft OS up to and including Windows 7 and Vista: no box required, just install the Mailasail software directly.

2. PC running Windows 10 (shudder). You don't need the Redbox provided you can configure the PC not to do its background checking for updates etc with the Iridium connection; you set up 'this is a metered internet connection'. see https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4028458/windows-metered-connections-in-windows-10. Thenceforth it can be used as was Windows 7, but I don't trust uSoft not to mess with this and break it in the future.

3. Linux (I used Ubuntu, but all should be similar). Mailasail do not support this directly, but you can make it work fine using just a plain (i.e. old-fashioned) dial-up. pm me if you need help doing this. No Redbox is required but it does use a little more bandwidth than the Windows version simply because the compression software from Mailasail isn't being used. However for light traffic and GRIBs it doesn't make any significant difference and it all works fine.

4. Apple MAC. Oh Lord, you're in a whole world of hurt (it's nonetheless what I now use). There is no way you can stop the MAC reporting everything you do to both Apple and Google behind your back, spying on all email contents etc. Unlike Windows 10 there is no means to turn this off. So you have to get a firewall. as just doing this takes 100 x the bandwidth available via Iridium. I installed 'LittleSnitch' and it was astonishing how much your computer is talking to Apple and sending them stuff that's absolutely an invasion of privacy, and, after many hours of fiddling with no useful documentation at all I got all filtered out except the contact to Mailasail's emil servers. But it was a fag and unreliable anyway. I also tried running Windows 7 on 'Parallels' and installing the Windows 7 app from Mailasail. That also worked, but seemed a bit flakey (it's the USB drivers I think).
But in the end I was given a Redbox so now use that.

The Redbox certainly saves hassle, and works, but it's not perfect: I find the connections are left up for long periods, using my minutes (you pay Iridium per minute connected not per KiloByte of data) so have to monitor this closely and click disconnect rather than relying on it doing so automatically.

So while you can work around needing a Redbox, it depends on your level of IT skill and patience.