Hi
I am having trouble getting the Meshtastic Atak Plugin to work correctly - and also have some clarification requested on the meshtastic.org documentation.
So…
- Atak configured on Samsung S20 and a Hauwei 2019 (not ideal but works ok). On a local wifi network they can talk between themselves; and adding Taky Server and a chat server adds functionality - all good. (ATAK v5.1.0.16 From play store)
Now to take it to the next step.
- Install Meshtastic from Play Store on both phones.
- New Heltec V3’s Flashed with Meshtastic; and added 1/4 wave attenas.
Now the two phones can send meshtastic messages via Meshtastic (wifi down) ; and have created private channel for the base channel and re-instated LongFast with AQ== on channel 1; tested public messaging on that channel with unknown folks; and private channel on 0 - all good.
So Meshtastic all working as expected - and impressed. NB: I was not sharing location information at all.
Now install ATAK-Plugin-Meshtastic.Plugin-1.0.25-b4cd4f08-4.10.0-civ-release.apk from Releases · meshtastic/ATAK-Plugin · GitHub
Nb: Have disabled TAK Server connection in both ATAKs and also disabled the Tak Chat (this is the more advanced one) plugin as well - as there is no wifi/server available.
Enable the new Meshtastic Plugin in Atak - and get a nice Green aerial on both phones; initially they started adding all found meshtastic nodes in the local area to the map and also into the Cyan Team (which a code review looks like that is as intended). So the plugin is active in ATAK and doing stuff.
Now this is where it “doesn’t work”…
- My two phones don’t show on the ATAK map - they did when it was wifi. Each phone shows itself in ATAK; but has no location, nor pointer for the other phone.
- The meshtastic node ID of the “other” phone appears in the ATAK contact list - but trying to chat does not result in a received message.
- If I send a channel message from meshtastic itself on phone A; it will be received in both meshtastic on Phone B and in ATAK in the “all Chat Rooms” room; but an attempt to reply from ATAK at all will not be received on the other phone
I then reconfigured meshtastic on both phones to share location (which should still be private due to channel 0 being private) - both phones in meshtastic have the geo data showing under nodes (for both phones) so this is being shared successfully.
TLDR;
- I can’t get messaging working correctly - which means (confirmed) that COT messages don’t get delivered either
- I can’t get PIL data flowing
- I have meshtastic node IDs in contacts as opposed to the call signs.
Other: I have tried with Meshtastic configured both as CLIENT and TAK; to see if it made a difference; I have changed the 86400 GPS sending to 120 seconds - no difference; I found one REDDIT post suggesting Medium FAST as opposed to Long Fast - have tried and no difference.
Clarification to documentation?!
here: ATAK Plugin | Meshtastic
At the bottom of the page it says:
A couple of important notes regarding this setup:
The intervals and behavior of TAK PLI broadcast will honor the settings configured for the standard Position configuration in Meshtastic.
The callsign sent with the PLI will appear in ATAK with the User Long Name configured for the Meshtastic device.
I am unclear if the snippet above is a global comment on the ATAK plugin - or if it is specific to the Standalone TAK Tracker usage (just above the comment). Hence - it could use a little clarification.
In any case I have Node ID as a contact Not the Meshtastic Long User name - If it only does the M L U N I can mirror call sign onto meshtastic - but at this time not a lot of point.
Thanks for reading to here and hope someone has an idea.