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What is AryaOS?

AryaOS is a Linux operating system that turns a small, inexpensive computer into a situational-awareness gateway for TAK. It ingests data from radios and sensors, converts it to Cursor on Target (CoT) — the native language of ATAK, WinTAK, iTAK, and TAK Server — and delivers it to the operators who need it, whether they are standing next to the box or across a wide-area network.

Everything is pre-installed and pre-wired. You flash a card, power it on, and manage the whole system from a browser.

What it does

Any phone or computer running ATAK, WinTAK, or iTAK, paired to an AryaOS gateway, sees live tracks in native TAK formats:

  • Aircraft from ADS-B (1090 MHz) and UAT (978 MHz).
  • Vessels from AIS, over the air or from an online aggregator.
  • Drones from Remote ID and DJI DroneID.
  • Own position from an onboard GPS, shared to the whole team.

A single AryaOS box can run one of these missions or all of them at once, and can relay the combined picture to a TAK Server for the wider force.

Proven in the field

In its original AirTAK configuration — an AryaOS box and an ADS-B antenna in a backpack, powered by a USB battery, paired to a phone over Wi-Fi with no internet — operators have tracked aircraft at ranges past 50 miles. AryaOS is in daily use for wildland fire, security, and search-and-rescue.

How it works

Sensors feed local CoT gateways, which all publish to a single on-box hub called Charontak. Charontak is the switchboard: it fans the combined picture out to the local Wi-Fi mesh (Mesh SA) and, optionally, upstream to a TAK Server. This hub-and-spoke design means you point your feeds at one place and change where the data goes in one place.

flowchart LR
    subgraph Sensors
        SDR[SDR radios<br/>1090 / 978 / AIS]
        RID[Remote ID<br/>drone receivers]
        GPS[GPS / GNSS]
    end
    subgraph AryaOS box
        ADSB[adsbcot]
        AIS[aiscot]
        DRONE[dronecot]
        LIN[lincot / gpstak]
        HUB{{Charontak hub<br/>127.0.0.1:28087}}
        ADSB --> HUB
        AIS --> HUB
        DRONE --> HUB
        LIN --> HUB
    end
    SDR --> ADSB & AIS
    RID --> DRONE
    GPS --> LIN
    HUB -->|Mesh SA<br/>239.2.3.1:6969| EUD[ATAK / WinTAK / iTAK]
    HUB -->|TLS / enrollment| TAK[TAK Server]
    HUB -.->|GDL90| EFB[ForeFlight / EFB]

Each gateway is a small PyTAK program. Because they all share one framework, they behave consistently: the same TLS settings, the same URL schemes, the same site-wide configuration file. See the full software suite.

Managed from the browser

AryaOS is designed so an operator never needs to SSH in. A hardened Cockpit web console on port 9090 (reachable over HTTPS) exposes:

  • The AryaOS Site page — TAK destination, TLS certificates, TAK Server enrollment, device role, radios, updates, VPN, hotspot password, support bundles, and Node-RED admin password. See AryaOS Site.
  • The Charontak lane editor — a structured editor for where CoT flows.
  • Per-gateway pages — one for each sensor (adsbcot, aiscot, dronecot, …).

SSH is still available for advanced work, but it is never required for normal operation.

Device roles

Rather than shipping a different image per mission, one AryaOS image adapts at runtime. Pick a device role in the web console — Air, Maritime, Counter-UAS, Multi-sensor, or Relay — and AryaOS enables the right sensor pipelines and disables the rest. The CoT routing core always runs.

What's in the box

Layer What AryaOS provides
OS Debian-based, hardened, arm64 image for Raspberry Pi ¾/5
Sensors ADS-B/UAT decoders (readsb, dump978-fa), AIS (AIS-catcher), drone Remote ID, GPS (gpsd)
Gateways adsbcot, aiscot, dronecot, lincot, gpstak, gdltak, charontak, and more
Admin Cockpit web console with the AryaOS Site page and per-gateway plugins
Networking Onboarding Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth PAN, Tailscale VPN, firewalld
Ops One-click updates, redacted support bundles, SBOMs, neighbor discovery

Next steps