Arma Connect

An Android(™) app to connect to Arma through the Arma2NETConnect Plugin.

About

This is an Android(™) application that connects through an Arma2NET plugin to Arma. Development started at AlphaSquad. It is a client-side mod and plugin that connects to your Android phone or tablet through a local wireless connection. For more details, see the BIS forum thread.

Features

Current

Live map with player location through GPS
Date and time display from the game
Weather (clouds, rain, fog, etc.) (forecast needs more commands from BIS)
Altitude

Planned/Possible Future Features

Chat log
Gear/inventory
Task listing
Bi-directional map marker creation/updating

Requirements

Android phone/tablet version 3.0 or higher (I've only tested with 4.3.1).
Wireless network setup and your phone/tablet connected.
@Arma2NET mod compiled and installed.
Arma2NETConnect plugin for @Arma2NET installed.
- Visual Studio 2013 Redistributable x86 (32bit version)?
- Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
@Arma2NETConnect mod installed for Arma.
ArmaConnect this application installed on your Android device.

Installation

Uninstall any previously installed version of the application if applicable.
Enable installation of third-party apps on your Android device. This can be found in Settings -> Security. Then check allow from "Unknown Sources". See details here. This needs to be done because the app is not in Google Play.
Install this application to your Android device (.apk binary).
Setup @Arma2NET mod and the Arma2NETConnect plugin.
Setup the @Arma2NETConnect mod.
Start Arma with the appropriate mods in your startup mod parameters. For example:
```
-mod=@Arma2NET;@Arma2NETConnect
```

Troubleshooting

Make sure your firewall isn't blocking the connection. Allow UDP port 65041 and TCP ports 65042-65043. Your operating system will probably prompt you at the beginning when it tries to make a connection. All network connections should be on the same subnet and will not leave your local network.
Check the Arma2NET logs. These can be found in Users/username/AppData/Local/Arma2NET/.
Check the ArmaConnect logs. These can be found in Users/userame/AppData/Local/Arma2NETConnect/logs/.
If you have problems downloading the maps or loading up the GPS try clearing the maps by clicking Clear Maps on the Settings page in the Android app.
If you found a bug, please create a ticket on the appropriate Github project page.

License

Arma 3 is a product of Bohemia Interactive. Map images, markers, and other image assets are copyrighted and are used under the Arma Public License. No assets from Arma will be stored on Github.

Please do not release this application under any other name or on the Google Play(™) store. This application will always remain free under the GPLv3 license.

Android is a trademark of Google Inc. Google Play is a trademark of Google Inc.

The Android application uses two third-party libraries. TileView is released under the MIT license. It in turn uses DiskLruCache which is released under the Apache version 2 license.

Some images are part of the Tango Icon Library which is released under Public Domain.

Maps

Maps are downloaded by the Android application upon startup. The files are provided by running Arma 3 with the @Arm2NET mod and plugin enabled. The folder structure should look like this:

Arma 3\@Arma2NET\Addins\Arma2NETConnect\maps\maps.txt
Arma 3\@Arma2NET\Addins\Arma2NETConnect\maps\altis\
Arma 3\@Arma2NET\Addins\Arma2NETConnect\maps\altis\125\
Arma 3\@Arma2NET\Addins\Arma2NETConnect\maps\altis\250\
...

Each map has it's own folder with corresponding tiled map images. These are created using the convert_maps.sh script. Make sure the map folder name is lowercase. In addition, make sure you have the maps.txt file setup. This file contains the maps and corresponding dimensions and scaling. For example:

Stratis, 8192, 8192, 1.0
Altis, 11520, 11520, 0.375
Tanoa, 1928, 1928, 0.125520833

If you make changes or add additional maps (for example 3rd party maps), you wil need to clear the map cache on Android. This can be done by navigating to the Settings page in the Android app and clicking Clear Maps. This will then re-download all the image files.

For Developers

Opening the Android project:

Use Android Studio and import via Gradle

The overview of events for networking between the Arma plugin and Android device is the following:

Plugin sends out UDP message on port 65041. This is similar to a heartbeat message since we don't know what IP address the Android device is running on.
Plugin sets up a TCP thread on port 65042 to listen for incoming Android connections and data.
Android device receives UDP message on port 65041 and remembers the IP address of the Arma computer.
Android device sends TCP connection request on port 65042.
At this point, the handshake is complete and all data transfer is done between the two using TCP.
If there is a network failure or one system dies, the connection can be re-established via the UDP heartbeat and the above steps.
Plugin sets up a TCP thread on port 65043 to listen for map image downloads.
Android device sets up TCP via port 65043 to request map image download from the plugin.

Thanks To

AlphaSquad for help and testing.
Robalo for help with the Arma mod and scripting.
Hatchet for help with map images.

firefly2442 / ArmaConnect

readme