Building a Mobile RF Intelligence Platform
Introduction I turned a Raspberry Pi 4B into a mobile signals intelligence platform that runs headless in a case, logs every Wi-Fi network it passes, captures packets, records GPS coordinates for every device it sees, and scans for cell towers. All accessible remotely from anywhere in the world through a reverse SSH tunnel. This is a documentation of the full build from scratch. The Hardware Raspberry Pi 4B - the brain Alfa AWUS036AXML - dual-band Wi-Fi adapter with MediaTek MT7921AU chipset, supports monitor mode natively on Linux G-Mouse USB GPS antenna (u-blox 8 chipset) - shows up as /dev/ttyACM0, NMEA at 9600 baud HackRF One - software defined radio covering 1 MHz to 6 GHz for cell tower scanning VPS (DigitalOcean) - acts as a relay for the reverse SSH tunnel ...