CicadaTAK turns your phone into a live tactical display for places with no
cell service and no internet — backcountry, disaster response, large
properties, search grids, event perimeters.
It is the companion app for CicadaTAK mesh nodes: 900 MHz radio gateways you
build yourself from a fully documented hardware recipe (parts list and
instructions at cicadatak.com). Nodes form a self-healing mesh that reaches
over a mile per hop and relays through every teammate, so coverage grows as
the team spreads out. Your phone joins a node's WiFi and the radios do the
rest.
WORKS WITH ATAK AND iTAK
• Nodes speak Cursor-on-Target in both directions — positions, chat and
markers pass between this app and ATAK or iTAK devices on the same node
• No TAK server, no data plan, no setup beyond joining the node's WiFi
• Run this app, run ATAK, or run both side by side on one team
LIVE TEAM MAP
• Teammates update live with callsigns, colors and breadcrumb trails
• A position that stops being current turns grey and shows its age instead of
vanishing, so you always know how old the picture is
• Offline maps — download aerial, topo and street layers onto the node and use
them with zero internet
• Drop markers, draw geofence zones, measure distance and bearing, save routes
ENCRYPTED TEAM CHAT
• End-to-end encrypted with your team passphrase — the key never leaves your
team
• Share photos from camera or gallery, carried over the radio, never through a
server
• Delivery receipts, canned quick replies, and roll call for fast
accountability
PUSH-TO-TALK VOICE
• Live streaming PTT to the whole team — real voice traffic, not recorded
clips
• Tuned to stay intelligible on marginal links
LONG-RANGE LoRa BRIDGE
• Nodes fitted with LoRa hardware bridge to Meshtastic radios, carrying
positions and text far beyond the main mesh
• Three privacy modes, from open interoperability to fully dark
RUN THE NETWORK FROM YOUR POCKET
• Set up a new node from the app — no laptop, no terminal
• Live topology graph of every radio link, colored by measured throughput
• Node list with signal, battery and hardware status; one-tap ping for
round-trip time
• Trade speed for range across the whole team at once, with automatic revert
if a node doesn't come back
• Update node firmware over the air
YOUR DATA STAYS YOURS
• No accounts, no sign-up, no cloud, no analytics
• Everything travels phone to your own radio to your teammates' phones
• There is no server in the path, so there is nothing for us to see
IMPORTANT
• Full functionality requires CicadaTAK node hardware. Without a node the app
runs in Standalone Mode: your own GPS on the map, offline map browsing, and
every screen navigable — mesh chat, PTT and team positions activate when you
connect to a node.
• Nodes operate in the 902–928 MHz license-free ISM band on the United States
channel plan, which is also licence-exempt in Canada,Mexico, and Australia. No radio
license required.
• Build your nodes at cicadatak.com — an open, fully documented hardware build
on an open-source radio and mesh foundation.
