Android Team Awareness Kit<\/a> (ATAK), developed by the government and available off-the-shelf for government users. ATAK is, first and foremost, a kind of \u201cblue force tracker,\u201d allowing users connected through the app to see where everyone is. It\u2019s the kind of situational awareness tool that\u2019s common in video games but harder to replicate in real life. Running ATAK over a mesh network means that the team can still have and share that kind of information even if other, traditional communication infrastructure like cell towers are down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cWe get into these disconnected environments and we have, you know, quite a bit of problems with being disconnected as far as technology perspective,\u201d says Ari Delay, the La Honda, Calif., fire chief. \u201cOur radios typically work, but when we attempt to communicate certain things that are geographic in nature, especially in the early phases of an incident, they\u2019re hard to articulate because we typically don\u2019t have hard copy maps and we don\u2019t have a way to be able to move information back in between forces out in the field.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Delay first started using goTenna when he purchased the commercial version with his own funds, and since then has found it an invaluable tool in the field. Delay described a fire his team responded to in Alturas, California, in the northeastern part of the state. In an area of zero connectivity, Delay used goTenna to plot routes through forest service roads and then share those routes with his team. That kind of plotting and planning is useful for both getting the right people to the danger, and getting people away from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen we get into pretty hairy situations, we will define what we call TRAs, or \u2018temporary refuge areas,\u2019 and it\u2019s basically a safety spot where we have provisions, where they will come and go back to protect themselves during a burnover or some type of a fire situation where it\u2019s really untenable,\u201d says Delay. \u201cFor me, this is allowing us to be able to communicate those types of things, message back and forth between our team in that completely disconnected environment. We\u2019ve never had that ability before in the field.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The goTenna Pro X is marketed specifically at military and public safety customers. Beyond the baseline capability to integrate the mesh network with other communications tools, it can operate on frequencies in the 142-175 MHz (VHF) & 445-480 MHz (UHF) ranges, can use end-to-end encryption, and each unit can last up to 30 hours on a single charge. It\u2019s built to easily plug-in ATAK, and it includes goTenna\u2019s own native situational awareness app. The pocket-sized transmitter can pair with iOS or android devices, and even without being paired to specific phones the transmitters can still relay other signals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A standalone goTenna unit is priced at $849, for a mesh networking radio, a UHF or VHF antenna, Team Awareness app and ATAK plug-in. A Pro X Deployment Kit is priced at roughly $25,000 per kit, with each kit containing 20 Pro X devices and a charging case that can fit 30 devices, while weighing in at just 25 lbs. Repeatedly goTenna stressed the relative light weight and low cost of its technology, drawing from the strength as a commercial product first later adapted into a military and public safety tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It can also enable not just teams of humans, but teams of humans and drones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe had a request to map the entire core and center of the Paradise Camp Fire,\u201d says Delay. \u201cI utilized the goTenna Pro Xes to track the drone teams and use it for communications within the drones teams. They had lost pretty much all their infrastructure. We mapped about 23,000 acres over a couple of days with about 14 drone teams that consisted of law enforcement and fire folks throughout the state of California.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Watch a video about it below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n