Raspberry Pi OS
Begin by installing the latest full version of Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit) on your system using the steps outlined on this Raspberry Pi Imager learn guide page. If you intend to have the Raspberry Pi installed somewhere out of the way and wish to connect to it remotely, then be sure to enable SSH and configure your public key in the customization menu of the Raspberry Pi Imager. It's also convenient to configure the WiFi network details inside of the Pi Imager app so that the Pi will automatically connect to your WiFi when it boots up.
After you boot up the Pi for the first time on a fresh Raspberry Pi OS image, run these commands to update the software preloaded in the system.
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
If these commands fail with network errors, use the WiFi settings in the OS to connect to your network and then try again.
Install iNTERCEPT
To install the iNTERCEPT software, you need to clone the repo and run the setup.sh script inside of.
The iNTERCEPT install script can take a while to complete. It compiles several things from source which can be a slow process, especially on older Pi models. The full install will take 10-15 minutes on a Pi 5 or up to 30+ minutes on older models. During the process, there are several prompts that must be answered to continue.
git clone https://github.com/smittix/intercept.git cd intercept ./setup.sh # Interactive menu (first run launches setup wizard)
The setup wizard will begin and walk you through several steps to install and configure various components.
If you know that you're only interested in certain types of radio signals and don't care about the others, then select the profile that contains the tools for the signals you're interested in. If you don't know what they are, or just want to tinker with anything available for your hardware enter 5 for the "Full SIGINT" profile.
During the installation, you'll be presented with a several yes/no prompts about installing certain components. Choose yes if you're unsure and want to experiment, or no if you know that you don't need the capability the component provides or want to minimize the time it takes to install.
After all of the prompts for installing different components, it will prompt about disabling kernel drivers that conflict with rtl_sdr being able to access the hardware device. Enter Y for yes to this.
At the end it will prompt to set up the environment variables.Â
The default server configurations are fine if you intend to access the system remotely from a browser on different computer on the same network as the Pi. If you're only going to access it locally in the browser on the Pi itself then you can change the HOST IP address to 127.0.0.1 instead of 0.0.0.0.
See the Security.md documentation file for more details and information about the implications of these configurations. If you want to keep the system running long term and accessible over the network, it would be wise to configure the firewall and authentication as shown in this document.
Next, the wizard gives you the option to set up PostgreSQL to store historical ADS-B data from aircraft. If you opt not to do this, you can still listen to ADS-B traffic but it will only be stored temporarily and lost when you navigate away from the system.
To enable history, enter Y and the desired database configurations. The default values are fine.
Once you've completed all of the prompts you're ready to launch the system using the start script.
Page last edited April 22, 2026
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