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Quick Start

Get CoT events on the TAK network in under 5 minutes.

1. Install PyTAK

python3 -m pip install pytak

sudo apt update -qq
wget https://github.com/snstac/pytak/releases/latest/download/pytak_latest_all.deb
sudo apt install -f ./pytak_latest_all.deb

See Installation for more options.

2. Write your first sender

Save this as send.py. It sends a takPong marker to a TAK Server every 20 seconds over plain TCP.

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import asyncio
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
from configparser import ConfigParser
import pytak


class MySender(pytak.QueueWorker):
    async def handle_data(self, data):
        await self.put_queue(data)

    async def run(self):
        while True:
            await self.handle_data(tak_pong())
            await asyncio.sleep(20)


def tak_pong():
    root = ET.Element("event")
    root.set("version", "2.0")
    root.set("type", "t-x-d-d")
    root.set("uid", "takPong")
    root.set("how", "m-g")
    root.set("time", pytak.cot_time())
    root.set("start", pytak.cot_time())
    root.set("stale", pytak.cot_time(3600))
    return ET.tostring(root)


async def main():
    config = ConfigParser()
    config["mytool"] = {"COT_URL": "tcp://takserver.example.com:8087"}
    config = config["mytool"]

    clitool = pytak.CLITool(config)
    await clitool.setup()
    clitool.add_tasks(set([MySender(clitool.tx_queue, config)]))
    await clitool.run()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

3. Run it

python3 send.py

Change the COT_URL to match your TAK Server address and port. See Configuration for all URL formats including TLS, UDP multicast, and more.

Common connection patterns

Network COT_URL example
TAK Server TCP tcp://takserver.example.com:8087
TAK Server TLS tls://takserver.example.com:8089
ATAK direct (phone) tcp://192.168.1.50:4242
Mesh SA (multicast) udp://239.2.3.1:6969
Debug to console log://stdout

Next steps