Raspberry Pi – Getting Started with a Headless Pi

So in order to keep life somewhat simple at the moment, I’m not planning to immediately connect the Pi to the network via cable / monitor / keyboard or mouse…that means it’s gonna be headless.

Step 1 download the latest Rasbian LITE image

Step 2 extract the .img file from the file that was downloaded

Step 3 connect the sd card to the computer and use Etcher to flash the sd card to the latest raspian image

Step 4 enable ssh functionality by connecting to /Volumes/boot followed by touch ssh (this created a blank file called ssh)

Step 5 enable wireless functionality by editing /Volumes/wpa_supplicant.conf to reflect the following changes, when complete save the changes and eject the sd card

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
network={
    ssid="YOUR_SSID"
    psk="YOUR_WIFI_PASSWORD"
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}

Step 6 connect your pi to power and turn it on

Step 7 ping raspberrypi.local to determine your ip

Step 8 ssh raspberrypi.local -l pi with a password of raspberry

Step 9 perform the following tasks

a) sudo raspi-config

b) sudo apt-get update

c) sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

d) sudo reboot

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