Tuesday 5 August 2014

Raspberry Pi B+ : Connect to your Pi with no display monitor, keyboard or mouse

        The new Raspberry Pi B+ was released on July 14th 2014. The following link does all the justice to know about the improved features of B+.  Please refer it here : Raspberry Pi B+

        The moment I had this credit card sized thing on my palm, I was so excited to get started with it. I downloaded Raspbian from Raspberry Pi Downloads Page and unzipped it. This is the image file 2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img you get after the unzip operation. I used the SanDisk 8GB Class 4 Micro SD card and dd tool to write to it. Refer Installing images on Linux here ( Please note, I did bs=1M with dd tool while writing). This was one of the guide I was following Quick Start Guide

But then, wait! Do you need a HDMI TV or display monitor, USB keyboard and a USB mouse to connect to it? Oh really!? I was not interested to invest any further. 

Here is what I did:

  1. I inserted the Micro SD card into the slot behind. 
  2. I had a micro USB cable my for Nexus 5. I used the same for the 5V power supply
  3. I had an Ethernet crossover cable already with me for some VPN stuffs. I took one of them and connected  one end to the router and the other end to the Pi Ethernet Port (next to 4 USB Ports) 
  4. Next, I used my laptop to connect to my Pi in the same network.
  5. On my laptop, 
    1. Opened Terminal. Typed in $ ifconfig  to get to know the IP address. 
      • For ex: if  inet addr:192.168.0.101 then our Pi should have  inet addr:192.168.0.*
  6. Next, for my rescue came the nmap tool. If you do not have it already installed, $ sudo apt-get install nmap 
    • Execute $ nmap -T4 -F 192.168.0.* on the terminal ( as per the example considered ) This will scan all the hosts which are up and then lists out the open ports. You will find Pi as one among them.
  7. If you like GUI Based, you may like Zenmap and can be installed by $ sudo apt-get install zenmap.
    • After installing, type $ sudo zenmap
    • Type Target as 192.168.0.*
    • Choose Profile as Quick Scan
    • Click on Scan
    • This will list the Raspberry Pi MAC Address and the IP Address
  8. Now, you know the IP Address of Pi. The default login for Raspbian is username "pi" with the password "raspberry"
  9. Time to ssh!
  10. Need to change your configuration settings after login? Type $ sudo raspi-config and change it accordingly!
Happy hacking! :)