◤ Tactical Mesh Comms · Built on OpenMANET · v0.1.0-dev ◥

CICADATAK

Build-your-own MANET radios with mesh text, image, voice, GPS tracking, and internet backhaul — no cell towers, no infrastructure, no subscriptions.

Build a Node Flash Firmware Get the App

Link

batman-adv

Band

913 MHz S1G

Range

1+ mi / hop

Mesh

SELF-HEALING

01 // What it does

[ A ]

Off-Grid Messaging

Encrypted text and image messages over the mesh. No cell service needed — messages hop across nodes automatically.

[ B ]

Push-to-Talk Voice

Opus-encoded PTT audio over the mesh. Hold the button, talk, release. Works like a radio.

[ C ]

GPS Tracking

Every node shares its position. See your whole team on an offline map with satellite imagery cached on-device.

[ D ]

Meshtastic Bridge

Optional LoRa radio extends alerts and positions to Meshtastic devices — a second comms radio alongside the HaLow mesh.

[ E ]

Internet Backhaul

If any node has an ethernet or Starlink uplink, it shares internet to every other node and connected phone.

[ F ]

ATAK Compatible

Broadcasts Cursor on Target (CoT) messages. Interoperates with ATAK, iTAK, and WinTAK over the mesh.

[ G ]

End-to-End Encrypted

WPA3-SAE on the radio link, plus a team passphrase for application-layer E2E. No data leaves your mesh.

[ H ]

Self-Healing Mesh

batman-adv routing. Nodes find each other, relay traffic, and reroute around failures automatically.

02 // Three radios, two jobs

Two radios do the comms — a long-range HaLow mesh and a low-rate LoRa bridge — for reach and interoperability. The third is a WiFi access point: it's simply how your phone connects to run the app, not a comms link.

Primary Mesh

HaLow · 802.11ah

913 MHz · 2 MHz BW · S1G

Morse Micro 802.11ah carries the mesh backbone — over a mile per hop, self-healing batman-adv routing for text, images, voice, and CoT.

Device Access

WiFi · 2.4 GHz

WPA3-SAE · EUD Access Point

How your phone connects to the node to run the CicadaTAK app — no pairing, no cables. It's your control link to the node, not a comms radio.

Long Range

LoRa · Meshtastic

906.875 / 920 MHz · US plan

An optional Heltec LoRa radio extends positions and alerts to the wider Meshtastic ecosystem when HaLow range runs out.

03 // Why it exists

OpenMANET is a free, open-source firmware that turns a Raspberry Pi and a Morse Micro HaLow radio into a real ad-hoc mesh network — BATMAN Advanced routing, 802.11ah at 913 MHz, over a mile of range per hop. CicadaTAK is built directly on it: the mesh underneath every CicadaTAK node is OpenMANET's work and its upstreams' (OpenWrt, batman-adv), and we credit it fully.

OpenMANET is transport by design — and it's a good design. It moves packets and Cursor-on-Target across the mesh with no server anywhere: situational awareness rides serverless multicast, and you pair it with ATAK as the application. If you know ATAK and want that stack, OpenMANET alone is excellent.

CicadaTAK packages the same mesh for people who don't want to assemble a stack at all. Flash an SD card, join the node's WiFi from your phone, and a five-field in-app wizard does the rest — text, images, push-to-talk voice, GPS tracking, offline maps, an optional Meshtastic/LoRa bridge, and internet backhaul, working the moment the node boots. And it speaks Cursor-on-Target too, so ATAK users can join the same mesh and share the same picture — it's a complement to the ecosystem, not a replacement for any of it.

No SSH. No command line. No server to stand up. Just turn it on and go.

▲ US operation only. Every radio is baked to country='US' — the HaLow channel set is US S1G (902–928 MHz) and the LoRa side uses the US plan. The downloadable image is not certified for operation outside the United States as shipped.