Open-source distributed SIGINT system — SDR signal detection + triangulation overlaid on ATAK in real time
Been working (mostly vibe coding, not going to lie) on this for a while and figured this community would appreciate it. It's a distributed SDR-based signal detection and triangulation system that streams everything to ATAK as CoT.
What it does:
- Detects radio emissions across 30+ signal types: PMR446, FRS, Marine VHF, TETRA, P25, keyfobs, TPMS, GSM/LTE, ADS-B, AIS, POCSAG pagers, BLE (including AirTag/Find My tracking), WiFi probe requests, drone RemoteID, LoRa/Meshtastic, ISM-band devices, and more
- Distributed sensor nodes report RSSI from known GPS positions, 3+ nodes triangulate emitter locations via multilateration
- Streams detections to ATAK as CoT markers in real time, aircraft, vessels, drones, vehicles, RF emitters all show up on the map with appropriate icons
- Generates RF activity heatmaps as KML overlays for ATAK
- Tracks device movement trails as CoT polylines
- Cross-signal device correlation (finds clusters of devices that always appear together)
- Voice interception with Whisper speech-to-text on PMR/FRS/Marine channels
- Modulation classification (FM, OOK, FSK, PSK, QAM, OFDM, no ML/GPU needed)
How it works:
- Central server (pelican case) with wideband SDRs continuously scans all bands
- Lightweight sensor nodes (~$80 each: RTL-SDR Blog V4 + GPS + Raspberry Pi zero) distributed across the area (stations or in operators backpacks)
- Short-burst signals (keyfobs, TPMS, pagers): nodes scan autonomously, triangulation via post-hoc correlation
- Long signals (voice, GSM): central detects and tasks nodes to tune and measure RSSI
- Everything logs to per-session SQLite databases, so you can do post-hoc analysis too
Web dashboard, shows live detections with category tabs (Voice, Drones, Aircraft, Vessels, Devices, Cellular...), a Leaflet map, device tracking, correlation analysis, and audio playback with transcripts for voice intercepts. Can also run standalone against historical .db files.
There are still some missing features, like the server to node coms (planned over Meshtastic), hopefully I will be able to implement it as soon as the rest of the hardware arrives.
Hardware:
- Multiple RTL-SDR Blog V4 (~$30) for most RF
- Alfa USB WiFi adapter for monitor-mode WiFi/drone detection and BT
- HackRF One for wideband, TX tests and further plans
- GPS module
- Server runs on Raspberry Pi 5
- Nodes are planned to run on Raspberry Pi zero
- Power hubs
Stack: Python, no cloud dependencies, everything runs locally. TAK server integration via client certificates.
Code is on GitHub. Happy to answer questions or hear ideas.