ATAK Plugin — Map Depot
Download Map Depot 1.4 (pick the one matching your ATAK-CIV version, sideload, then load it in ATAK's Plugins manager):
- ATAK-CIV 5.6: https://github.com/takwerx/map-depot/releases/download/v1.4/ATAK-Plugin-MapDepot-1.4--5.6.0-civ-release.apk
- ATAK-CIV 5.7: https://github.com/takwerx/map-depot/releases/download/v1.4/ATAK-Plugin-MapDepot-1.4--5.7.0-civ-release.apk
- ATAK-CIV 5.8: https://github.com/takwerx/map-depot/releases/download/v1.4/ATAK-Plugin-MapDepot-1.4--5.8.0-civ-release.apk
All releases: https://github.com/takwerx/map-depot/releases
User guide with screenshots: docs/USER_GUIDE.md (https://github.com/takwerx/map-depot/blob/main/docs/USER_GUIDE.md)
PURPOSE AND CAPABILITIES
Map Depot downloads map data from inside ATAK. Without it, getting elevation or a map source onto a device means a web browser, the Downloads folder, and the Import Manager -- a sequence that is awkward on a phone and impossible with gloves on.
Six kinds of data, each installed into the directory ATAK already scans, so nothing has to be imported by hand afterwards:
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Elevation. DTED2 by state or province. Every cell is verified against a SHA-256 digest before it is installed, because a truncated .dt2 reads as valid to ATAK and silently corrupts line of sight and viewshed. Downloads resume, and a region already partly present fetches only what is missing.
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Streaming base maps. MOBAC map source XML and streaming vector tile configs -- satellite, street, topographic, nautical, and transparent overlays such as BLM roads and trails, FEMA flood hazard zones and current fire perimeters.
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Offline public lands. US Forest Service vector basemap packages, one per national forest or grassland, fetched directly from ArcGIS Online.
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Offline ranger district maps. Forest Service ranger district and forest visitor maps as georeferenced PDFs, which install as image overlays and draw over whatever base map is already in use.
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Incident maps. The operational products a going fire's GIS shop posts to the NIFC archive -- ops, division, air operations, transport, briefing and IR -- browsed by geographic area and fire. Filenames written for a desktop file browser are renamed for a phone screen, keyed to the operational period rather than the plot time, with the original shown underneath.
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Drone IR maps. The same, for infrared flown by uncrewed aircraft and posted to the UAS Wildland Fire Consortium. Flight logs and geodatabases are left out; only georeferenced maps and KMZ overlays are offered.
Any folder in either archive can be pinned to the top of the list, so a crew assigned to a fire reaches it in one tap rather than four.
The catalog is fetched at runtime and cached, so a device that has been to the depot once still shows what it holds when there is no signal. The two incident archives are read live, since what they hold changes through the day.
STATUS
Version 1.4. Verified on ATAK-CIV 5.8.0.3.
POINT OF CONTACTS
takwerx https://github.com/takwerx/map-depot/issues
PORTS REQUIRED
Outbound TCP 443 (HTTPS) only. The plugin opens no listening ports and accepts no inbound connections.
Hosts contacted:
- The depot itself, which is a preference and not a fixed address. It serves the catalog, the map source files and the elevation cells. It ships pointing at a Cloudflare R2 bucket.
- www.arcgis.com and tiles.arcgis.com, for Forest Service basemap packages, which are fetched from their publisher rather than mirrored.
- data.fs.usda.gov, for Forest Service ranger district and forest maps.
- ftp.wildfire.gov, for NIFC incident maps. Public, no account.
- uaswfc.org, for UAS Wildland Fire Consortium drone products. Public, no account. Both are preferences rather than fixed addresses, and both are rejected if not HTTPS.
Installing a map source does not itself contact that source's server; ATAK does, when the operator turns the layer on. Which servers those are is visible in the source list before anything is installed.
Non-HTTPS depot addresses are rejected.
EQUIPMENT REQUIRED
An Android device running ATAK-CIV 5.8.0.x, and enough free storage for whatever is downloaded. The plugin checks free space before starting and refuses rather than filling the device.
EQUIPMENT SUPPORTED
No peripherals. No GPS, radio, camera or Bluetooth use.
COMPILATION
Standard ATAK plugin build. Set sdk.path in local.properties to an extracted ATAK-CIV SDK, then:
./gradlew assembleCivRelease
The release build applies minification and ProGuard.
DEVELOPER NOTES
Files are placed where ATAK's own classification puts them, since the directory decides what ATAK treats the file as: map source XML in imagery/mobile/mapsources, streaming configs and vector tile packages at the imagery root, georeferenced PDFs in grg, KMZ in overlays. After a file lands, ATAK is told: imagery through a layer scan, GRGs through the import pipeline, because GRG discovery otherwise runs only at startup.
Removal notifies ATAK before deleting the file. The reverse order leaves a tile reader holding a path that no longer exists.
Downloads stage outside any scanned directory and are moved into place once complete, so ATAK never sees a partly written file and registers a broken layer.
Region, source and package identifiers arrive over the network and become both URL components and filenames, so each is validated against a closed pattern before use, and every written path is checked to be inside its intended directory.