ATAK Plugin Unreliable Messaging

All,

In testing the official ATAK plugin, it seems that the location data transmission is very reliable in making it through. Messaging, however, rarely works. Any ideas why this might be?

Is there appetite to alter the plugin to instead of forwarding geo-chat messaging and the TAK location information to the app, we instead bring the meshtastic native messaging and location sharing data into TAK? This approach would seem to be more efficient on channel utilization and provide for read receipts etc within messaging in TAK.

Honestly not sure if it applies in your situation but from what I have been seeing on the forum, Reddit, and facebook, a lot of the positioning data inaccuracies and not updating has to do with the quality of the GPS antenna. What board are you using?

Using a T Beam Supreme and a Canary. Quality stuff. My guess is the channel utilization being extremely high from a poorly optimized plugin forwarding excessive data to be sent over the mesh, hence unreliable messaging.

Even stranger, TAK messages won’t go through, but when I just switch to messaging in the Meshtastic client app they go through fine, even with TAK still running in the background.

For what it’s worth. I was having massive issues with the official ATAK plugin not sending or receiving messages. I found a ‘fix’ that has been working for me.

It seems ATAK doesn’t like to sent or receive messages from units not on its map. I was testing indoors and was able to message in the meshtastic app but not in ATAK. Manually setting your location (if not location from GPS) registers you with the ATAK devices on your network and allows the, fairly reliable, sending of text.

Hope it helps.