Raspberry Pi 3 - Setup

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Finally setting up my Raspberry Pi 3 after having it for half a year.

Intro

Having bought my raspberry pi 3 for almost half a year, I finally installed OS on it. Though I have to say that the main reason for me to do it is because I felt terribly boring on the very first day of 2018. So in the following I am going to take a note of all the procedures I took to setup my Raspberry Pi 3.

Install OS

What we need?

  • Raspberry Pi 3
  • SD card (more than 16GB recommended)
  • Screen
  • Keyboard
  • Ethernet cable
  • Working router
  • Power supply (5V recommended)
  • Internet Connection!

Procedures

Download Page

  1. Go to download page of raspberrypi.org
  2. Download NOOBS as zip file
  3. Format our SD card
  4. Unzip NOOBS_v_xxx.zip directly to the formatted SD card
  5. Insert the SD card to Raspberry Pi 3 (there is an interface embedded in it)
  6. Connect Raspberry Pi 3 to a screen, a keyboard, an Ethernet cable that connect directly to our router, and most importantly, a compatible power supply
  7. Now we are all set and good to go! :)
  8. Switch on our Raspberry Pi 3 now and waiting for it to boot itself
  9. Follow the guidance from the GUI
  10. Done! :)

Connect to Wi-Fi

I feel pretty sorry when I put Ethernet cable on the list above. It took me like half an hour to find mine. Meanwhile, I found it really bothering having one more disturbing wire on top of my table which has already been messy enough.

So, let’s get rid of the wire and come to a wireless world!

Setting up Wi-Fi connection

  1. Open the terminal (keyboard shortcut ctrl+alt+T)
  2. Edit the network interfaces file ($ sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces)
  3. Replace whatever in the file to:
auto wlan0

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
iface default inet dhcp

Note:

  • This file /etc/network/interfaces contains all known network interfaces.
  • The bottom four lines allows wlan as a network connection method, and use /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf as our configuration file, which actually is also true without explicit configuration like this.
  1. Quit and save (ctrl+X, then Y, then enter)

Configuring Wi-Fi connection

We can do it in many different ways, like from GUI interface, or typing $ sudo raspi-config in the terminal. Here, I am taking note of what is actually happening in our OS.

  1. Open the wpa_supplicant.conf file ($ sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf)
  2. Add the information of your Wi-Fi:
network={
    ssid="YOUR_NETWORK_NAME"
    psk="YOUR_NETWORK_PASSWORD"
    proto=RSN
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
    pairwise=CCMP
    auth_alg=OPEN
}

Note:

  • Basically what we need are ssid and psk
  • In case you are interested in the rest four settings, take a look at the ref[1]
  1. Quit and save (ctrl+X, then Y, then enter)

Now our Raspberry Pi should be all set. Reboot it and see if it works.

Conclusion

Now I have basically installed OS on my Raspberry Pi and got rid of the annoying Ethernet cable. I will keep calm and play with RPi. Cheers!

Ref

[1] Automatically connect a Raspberry Pi to a Wifi network