How to setup Meshtastic and ATAK

Stay in contact with friends, family, and boogey bois using Meshtastic and ATAK.

Meshtastic:

ATAK:

Plugin:

Devices:

Links to Amazon are affiliate

0:00 Intro
0:22 What is LoRA?
1:45 LoRA Uses
2:23 What is Meshtastic?
3:33 Meshtastic Rebroadcasts
4:21 Private Channels
4:37 Meshtastic setup
4:49 Flashing your Device
5:43 Meshtastic App
6:15 Making a Private Channel
8:09 ATAK + Meshtastic
9:45 ATAK working!
11:03 Solar Nodes
11:55 The Why
12:26 The Outro
12:50 The Word

Music by Karl Casey @WhiteBatAudio

[SixtyAteWhiskey]

Alright let me clarify a few things.

1. I am dumb 33cm does not equal 15 in, my b I used American math.

2. Taiwan utilizes 920-925 MHz for Lora

3. I stated that LoRA does not NEED repeaters, not that they can’t or don’t utilize them at all.

4. Yes LoRA has a confirmed transmission record of over 830 mi and a confirmed 1 to 1 transmission through Meshtastic of over 200mi.

5. I figured it was slightly obvious if you really read into the Meshtastic documentation, but that 830 mi number comes at the requirement of having line of sight. If in a congested area you will likely need a repeater nearby. I am sorry for any confusion or undue anger I caused with not clarifying.
In my anecdotal experience I have been able to TX/RX across my city which has several elevation changes in between, which is what I based the rest of this video on. *I am not trying to be intentionally misleading.* It was a mistake.

6. LoRA at 915mhz in the US, which is what I reference in the video later on, does not require licensing to utilize for LoRA.

7. it is not that deep, I am not being paid by Meshtastic or anyone else to make this video. I DO have affiliate links which I have placed the appropriate warning there to alert people as to such. I thought this would be a decently fun project for people to do and possibly a form of disaster communication if SHTF.

[maxdelayer]

For much of the past week most of my city has been without cell service or internet due to a hurricane (not to mention water and power in some places) and it's surprising to me how powerless I felt without any connection to the outside world or way to check up on local friends who live closer to the disaster zone. Most people are getting news for food/water distribution and what stores are open via a local FM radio station. I was very jealous of the first person I saw with a walkie talkie - made me wish I got into radio as a hobby earlier. It's very funny to me that as soon as I get cell service back and can watch youtube, this is on my feed. I assumed this type of option existed but had never researched it, and this video is a super helpful breakdown of how to get my foot in the door on this hobby. Definitely going to learn more about this so that I'm prepared in the future!

[protectyoura]

I’ve utilized this recently on an elk hunt and it worked fantastically guiding a friend in on an elk from the opposite ridgeline. This would also work well for cases of natural disaster/ cyberattacks. It definitely has its role in a handful of situations

[JODmonn]

This is going to be so much useful in basecamps, treaking routes, natural disaster and so many other things.

[affordabledcgenerators]

I have a rugged Ulefone with a giant battery. No cell plan, use it with my Garmin messenger, bring it when I travel, has a wifi phone number. I don't bring my personal phone with sensitive data anywhere in case it is compromised.

This would make a great addition to have meshtastic capability and ATAK.

Thanks for the video!

[p.]

Great video -- I'm not a LoRa expert however, just a kind correction: LoRa works like wifi, so yes there are no routers, switches or bridges but the AP itself does blast the signal out to all devices until it finds a recipient. Because of this, if an ARP is sent out to 'node a' that is meant for 'node c' a single point of failure can occur if 'node b' (which knows where to send it after 'node a') goes down. It's important that all nodes are either within range of each other or that you have a redundant node up that detects "hey 'node b' is down, reroute traffic through 'node 2' instead".

[imaginsharky]

11:48
the RoN police theme is actually so fitting for presentations like these, I plopped it into a presentation I had to do and I got compliments for that section

great video by the way, one of my friends were hit by Helene.... we're all looking for alternatives to cell now

[wilmertoorn]

And so good sir, you have found another subscriper. Good video. Clear information. No shenanigans. Very much appreciated.

[orsmplus]

Meshtastic + ATAK is awesome.

I use it when I'm out prospecting with my mates - we can share the locations of our finds. We can communicate that a 3rd party is in the area. We keep a PaxCounter at base camp to alert us to anyone coming near our camp while we're away. We can add old maps as overlays with the rubber sheet. And we can do all of this without any kind of wireless/phone reception.

[Adidas_Altyn]

THANK YOU FOR THIS im so glad there is more content on this, im gonna make a few for me and my friends

[tntgamerdotnl]

Great video, gonna look into this for comms with my family. Thx 👌🏻🤙🏻

[contabilidadeimperiocont]

From mato grosso here. This is so cool.

[Fish-Green_tea]

Hey! That map at 3:15 in your video shows Taiwan and China in the same color, but Taiwan government actually provides 920-925 MHz for Lora/IoT.

[JohnyRbt]

@sixtyatewhiskey bravo man, you need to do more of these. Clear concise and relevant. Very easy to follow- you got me fired up about some Meshtastic and you got a subscriber

[ReeseMacalma]

This is some really great info, thanks for making these kinds of videos - I'm really looking forward for more.

[waylonk]

There are numerous reasons why I shall subscribe to your channel

[phildf]

Didn’t realize ATAK was available to the civilian market, thought I was about to witness a COMSEC compromise video

[TheOfficialArgo]

I wonder if somebody with skill could make an ATAK version of the Mestastic firmware for keyboard enabled devices like the T-Deck. Cut out the middleman of the phone, and have 1 less battery to worry about dying.

[Vikingza]

Thank you for the very interesting video. How could one track the meshtastic node with internal GPS on ATAK using a Lora Noda as a receiver?

[JohnWeland]

I’d like to build a handful of stationary nodes with a admin, public& private channel. Then have a bunch of mobile units that only talk that private channel for ATAK.