So you followed part 1: Setting up ATAK, but now you want to set up comms and offline maps in ATAK. Let's do it.
COMMS:
First, confirm you've followed all the steps in Part 1 of our guide. You should see a green meshtastic logo in the corner. If you see the logo and it's red, make sure your node is connected and online. (Need a node? You can get them here!)
Also confirm that both phones can communicate via the Meshtastic App.
Settings:
Make sure wifi and cell service are off on the phones then go to the meshtastic plugin settings. You can find these under ATAK settings -> Tool Settings -> Specific Tool Preferences -> Meshtastic Preferences :
- Make sure Enable Relay to Server and Relay from Server are both "off" - if you end up setting up a server, you can enable these, but for now they are not needed.
- Show all Meshtastic Devices and Don't Show Meshtastic Devices without GPS - totally optional. I leave them both off but if you want to communicate with people who do not have ATAK but are on the mesh network, turn them on. It could help you find new nodes to act as repeaters for you while you are out in the field.
- Reporting rates—Turn these on. I set mine to 5 minutes, but while testing, you might want to increase this to every 1/2 minutes. If you are in an environment where signal discipline is imperative, consider lowering this or using dynamic if you are in a hide site. Or use a faraday bag when you are in the most sensitive areas.
- Only Send PLI and messages over meshtastic - if meshtastic is your only input for comms, you can turn this on, otherwise leave off.
- Text to speech - this is good if you have a headset and need to listen to text messages. I leave it off when not in the field
- PTT KeyCode, Meshtastic Channel Index and Hop limit. Leave these as default, especially if you are runninggrapheneOS on your phone. Graphene's keyboard has a bug that doesn't play nice with the plugin. If you areusing standard Android, you can play with the hop limit but 3 should be plenty.
- Allow switch command - Make sure to turn this on. You will need it for data packages.
Now you can communicate in the "All chats" channel. Once your device has sent a message via atak to another person on your team using that chat, they can either replay back in the "all chats" Channel or DM via the contacts list.
Once you are able to communicate, you should start sharing position info (PLI) between your nodes. Your contact will populate on the map in your ATAK setup.
Currently, Meshtastic does not support dedicated group chat, however the software is getting consistently updated. We will be testing regularly and keep you posted when we would recommend spending the time updating your device's firmware and the software.
We'll also follow-up with a recommended comms layering system so that you can have a robust plan for out in the field.
OFFLINE MAPS:
If you followed part one, you are able to stream in maps via the Maps menu. These are all online maps and won't be available when you leave wifi.
While connected to WiFi you can explore a huge selection of maps. Once you find one that suits you, look at the lower right part of the screen, you'll see a triangle.
- Toggle that triangle and it will give you three options - Select area, Download, and Cancel. Hit "Select Area".
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now you can use the options to select an area of the map. ATAK has a limit on how much you can download at once, so select an area that you'll really think you'll need. It will then give you some options for how detailed you might want to download.
- The sliders that appear below the map name will indicate how many tiles will be downloaded and what the level of detail is on each tile.
- Some maps have extremely high detail on their images, others don't. The USGSImageryTopo is fairlymodest and a decent place to start.
- You can add more detail to a map, so if you start broad and very course, and then start a download for a more specific area, You can get very detailed maps very quickly.
- There are more ways to download maps, we'll be covering those in upcoming guides
I want to give a special shout out to the developers on the Meshtastic Discord as well as everyone contributing to Meshtastic and Civ-Tak as a whole. Not so long ago, tech like this cost upwards of $40K to get everything you needed to get this up and running. Today with these guides, you can get plugged in for less than $500. This is all due to the devs on both Meshtastic and ATAK working for free and contributing their time and (immense) patience answering the community's questions. Go join their discords and if you're a developer, consider contributing the the project.
If you found this useful, don't forget to like, follow and subscribe. And if you don't have a meshtastic radio yet, and want to support us, pick one up from our store here. We ship insanely fast
