Yes same guy. Eric Aselin is leading the initiative on the Fed side. He is the only reason I know anything about ATAK. He is the perfect example of perseverance and not taking no for an answer. Him and Dave Zader out of Boulder fire have done a ton for domestic use of ATAK specifically for wildland fire. You are a better person for knowing Eric.
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YES! he is the example, we have talked at length about how much resistance/ignorance he has had to overcome. small world!
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Wanted to give a technology front update as the season gets underway. ATAK now has a public release version (PR) that anyone can download and use. You can get it on the home page at www.takmaps.com It does strip away the ability for plugins. If you are government you can sign up at the same site for an account and get the ATAK Civilian version that has plugins and the plugins are available from the site.
So the PR version is first step to hopefully ATAK coming to the Playstore. iTAK is also getting another try. As far as wildland use it has a ton applications. It can ingest our current maps from the GIS unit (or from the ftp site) they just need to be converted from the pdf format to the geotiff format. I have found the quickest conversion is using freeware GIS program called QGIS. You open the pdf in QGIS and export as Tiff. ArcMap has this ability but ArcPro does not (gofigure) so I have been using QGIS successfully and its super fast. I am hoping as the ATAK popularity grows Situation Units/GIS Units will host their daily map in this format for consumption Here is a link on how to do it. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R96ut1-Lbc7VmYBqkOMpaKwQ_oaNEweq/view?usp=sharing
The cool thing about ATAK is you can bring all your maps in as one map data package. So you could take the geotiff ops map, transportation, IR map, IR KML data, Branch map etc and put them in a folder then zip that folder up and then import it all at one time. No more downloading each map separately. This folder could be hosted by the IMT cloud and local network file distribution systems we have all been used to i.e. dropbox, googledrive, box.com etc etc. Hoping the IMTs can add this to their workflow. Would maybe add 10 minutes to what they currently do now.
So for ATAK to be really bitchen and collaborative you are hooked to other users via network connection to a TAK server or using TeamConnect which is basically a hosted TAK server you pay a yearly fee to use. Some people build their own TAK servers some pay others to set up a TAK server for them some use TeamConnect. Here is the Team Connect website https://goteamconnect.com/
So if your connected into a server you can share data with other users. Send shapes, chat etc. If you arent connected you can still use ATAK with gotennas or beartooth. Think off grid mesh network. You can also use ATAK offline like you currently use Avenza and its still very powerful.
So back to the map. You can reduce the transparency so you can see base imagery below it. Custom Base maps are xml maps you can import. ATAK comes with some base maps but if you want google hybrid or host of others I have it here in this folder for you. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1v4drGf0xTUEp9qRCOVxMcfRAy63rKSyX
You can cache areas for offline use. Bring in KML network links from MODIS, VIIRS etc. ATAK has a whole host of measuring tools, tracks, lines, polygons for drawing etc. All the core wildland symbology for points. It can export these points in a variety of formats including kml, kmz, shapefile, gpx etc. You can load terrain elevation models and get 3D imagery. I am hitting the highlights here there is a ton of stuff. Here is a little video we did with samsung shows some of this stuff.
The Colorado Center of Excellence https://www.cofiretech.org has created some cool ATAK starter youtube videos. These go from "Ive never used Android (I was in that boat on the Mendocino Complex when a guy from the USFS named Eric Aselin called me about this thing called ATAK…the rest is history) to getting some of the tools going. If you join takmaps.com they have a whole other host of video resources for all the tools as well. Last video shows off what you can do with geospatial video in ATAK as well and live feeds from a UAS thats flying in ATAK. Hope this was informative.
AJ
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Oh bots got to love em
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A little update on ATAK.
As was mentioned before ATAK-PR is available for download from www.takmaps.com
Im still working on GIS exporting geospatial tiffs as a product that would be available for download. Remember you can always use QGIS to convert pdf to tiff. Working on a better tutorial and how to use it Google Earth as well.
If you want full network action for ATAK you need to get on or host your own takserver or subscribe to TeamConnect for 100 dollars a year per device. (its what my agency uses) They can be found here https://goteamconnect.com/
Here is a youtube channel dedicated to ATAK and a ATAK-CIV informational website from the Air Force Research Lab at https://www.takciv.org/
Here is a google drive folder on some our fire dept training powerpoints on using ATAK and TeamConnect. More coming soon.
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Thanks, AJ!
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For those wanting to check out ATAK and how it can be used we have added all 509 wildfire alert cameras. Currently they are geolocated at their location. Auto populating field of view of the camera within ATAK coming very soon. It will be just like the web instance.
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Hey there. Nice job. Link to check that out ?
Thx
Private message and I can get it to you.
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made a down and dirty updated tutorial for making geopdf into geotiff for google earth or atak. Working on a google earth tutorial for the tiffs.
Here is ftp site https://ftp.nifc.gov/public/incident_specific_data/
Here is tutorial
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PI9iCqo4Y7rAmTdbJEO2smpfRPKxSpN5?usp=sharing
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Updated some tutorial stuff I added another document on using geotiffs in Google Earth.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PI9iCqo4Y7rAmTdbJEO2smpfRPKxSpN5?usp=sharing
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Some new videos on ATAK -
Here is a video of AA51 footage in ATAK from the other night on the Rowher incident. DPA layer turned on and the perimeter polygon. Additionally 3D on so you can tilt the map.
Another cool thing about TAK is the ability to port in ADS-B broadcasting from Aircraft. This updates about every 3 seconds. Here is a screen shot of a new solution we are working on. This is aircraft on the Soledad fire in Los Angeles County. You can see its bringing up CAL-FIRE Copter 305. You get a lot of metadata with it as well.
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Just an update. I have been fielding a bunch of questions on ATAK.
Its Android only for now. iTAK coming soon. Its on its second attempt and looking like this time its gonna go.
www.takmaps.com you can download ATAK-Civ and that gets you full version. You have to register with a .gov account to get extra plugins for now. You really dont need them right off the bat. Hoping all of this on the playstore within the year.
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AJ, thank you for taking the time to inform us! Please keep it coming!
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how about early august i do a little webinar on it, just about finished with grad school and then will have the time,. if you need help in this thread there are links to help guides on atak, youtube videos etc,
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ok I have read through the thread, how do I go about aquiring ATAK?
Go to takmaps.com and download it. I will do a webinar in first week of august to help everyone through it. There are resource links in the thread about video sources for training and some of my agencies power points.
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