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Set your callsign and team colour
Before anything appears on your teammates' maps, TAK Can needs to know who you are. This is the first thing to set up.
⋯›Settings›Profile
- Callsign — how you appear on every connected device. Keep it short and unique.
- Team — pick a colour that matches your role. Your map icon inherits this colour.
- Role — Team Member, Team Lead, Medic, Forward Observer, etc.
- CoT type — leave as "Friendly Ground" for most dismounted uses.
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Your callsign broadcasts in every CoT position report. Choose something recognisable — especially on mesh where there's no server to resolve conflicts.
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Read the map — what you're looking at
The main screen is the situational awareness map. In standalone mode it shows your own position, any data feed markers, and any mesh peers if you have mesh enabled.
- Your position — blue accuracy circle and directional arrow at your GPS location.
- Coloured pins — each team colour corresponds to a contact. Pin shape indicates CoT type (ground, air, vehicle).
- Info bubbles — tap any pin to see callsign, coordinates, heading, speed, altitude, and last-seen age.
- Freshness dot — green = active (<2 min), yellow = recent (2–10 min), red = stale (>10 min).
- Last-seen age — shown next to the callsign (e.g. "3m", "1h") and updates every 30 s.
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Long-press any map point to drop a marker or start a range ring. Tap the compass to toggle between north-up and heading-up orientation.
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Enable data feeds — free, no account needed
TAK Can pulls live situational awareness data from public APIs and renders it as CoT markers on your map. Most feeds are free and require no API key. AIS vessel tracking requires a free key from AISStream.io.
⋯›Data Feeds
- ADS-B Aircraft — live aircraft positions worldwide. Follows your map view — pan to any region to see planes there.
- AIS Vessels — live ship positions worldwide via AISStream.io (free API key required — tap "Get Free API Key" in settings). Star ★ any vessel to track it globally.
- 511 Road Incidents — construction, closures, and accidents in Ontario, Quebec, BC, and Alberta.
- Alert Ready — Canada's national emergency alert system: amber alerts, severe weather, wildfires, earthquake EEW.
- Active Wildfires — NRCAN hotspots with severity and stage of control.
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Feeds are proximity-filtered — only incidents within your configured radius (default 100 km) appear on the map. You won't be flooded with markers from across the country.
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Search any marker and jump straight to it
When the map has many markers, the search sheet lets you filter by name or type and jump directly to any contact, aircraft, vessel, or camera.
⋯›Search
- Search across all visible data — contacts, aircraft, vessels, road incidents, cameras.
- Category filter chips — tap Aircraft, Vessel, Contact, Camera, etc. to narrow results.
- Tap any result → map centers and zooms in (~1 km view) and selects the marker.
- If you are already zoomed in closer, your current zoom is preserved.
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Search works entirely on-device against the live Core Data store — no network request needed, results appear instantly.
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Overlay live weather radar on the map
TAK Can can render live precipitation tiles directly on top of the map. Three backends are available — ECCC and RainViewer require no account or API key.
⋯›Settings›Map & Display›Overlay Manager
- ECCC GeoMet — Environment Canada radar. Best for Canada. Rain, snow, precip, GOES satellite.
- RainViewer — global coverage, clean design, infrared view.
- OpenWeatherMap — adds wind, temperature, pressure layers (optional API key for higher limits).
- Tiles are cached for 10 minutes — toggling layers is instant after the first load.
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Radar opacity is adjustable. Set it around 60–70% so map labels remain readable underneath.
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View live highway cameras
Highway cameras from Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec 511 appear as green pins on the map. No account or key needed — they load on demand.
⋯›Data Feeds›Traffic Cameras
- Tap any green camera pin on the map to open the viewer.
- Toggle between Still image (JPEG snapshot with refresh) and Video (native AVPlayer stream where available).
- Multi-angle cameras — many Ontario and Quebec cameras have multiple directions; a segmented picker appears at the bottom.
- Over 1,000 cameras across four provinces loaded from public 511 APIs.
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Camera locations are cached per-session. Pull to refresh the camera list in Data Feeds settings to pick up newly added cameras.
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Export and share your situational picture
Everything TAK Can sees can be exported — contacts, tracks, chat — and shared via AirDrop, Files, or email, even without a server.
⋯›Export & Share
- TAK Data Package — import directly into ATAK, WinTAK, or another TAK Can device.
- KML Tracks — open in Google Earth, Maps, or any GIS tool.
- CSV Contacts — spreadsheet-ready contact list with coordinates and last-seen.
- Chat Log — full chat history as plain text for after-action review.
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Use AirDrop to transfer a TAK data package directly to a teammate's device for a fully offline contact handoff.