Issues with TF understanding/navigation stack

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Hello, My name is Drew and i'v just started work in the robotics field, as well as with ROS so my understanding of even some more general things could be lacking if not totally missing. I'm looking for more information concerning the TF tree between the Navigation stack, hokuyo_node, and my odometry. I'v muddled through all the Q&A's i could find relating the subjects at hand but to no avail. So to the point.

I have set up my robot so far to have odometry information via an arduino using ardros as a base. It sends odometry information as well as receives twist commands for my motor controller. I'v also got a hokuyo_node and publishing its scans. I'v also been through the entire navigation stack tutorial many many times and i do believe i'v got all of the costmap, amcl, and other properties for my robot set up ok. My issue is when i try to run the stack it errors out and says

"Waiting on transform from base_link to /map to become available before running costmap, tf error: Frame id /map does not exist!"

now this i'v tracked down to be associated with the amcl node publishing this transform which leads me to believe that the hokuyo_node isnt doing whats needed so the amcl node isnt functioning properly. My main question is how to perform the TF from base_link -> base_laser because im am confused on the subject. i'v read about the transform publisher in the navigation stack setup but i'v also read that the hokuyo_node does the posting by itself. So im not overly sure exactly how to clear up this issue.

Thanks ahead of time, and if you need any more information I can try my best to get it ASAP.