My Raspberry PI Setup – Maker's Digest

Whenever I get a new Raspberry PI to setup I have to go through the same motions every time. Time for a post to remind myself exactly what steps I go through to get that perfect setup.

Disclaimer: This is MY idea of a good setup, if you like it follow along, if not. Go have a soda pop!

Install Raspbian on SD Card

Grab Rasbian image from raspberrypi.org
Download Etcher (if you don’t have it)
Follow etcher directions to write image from raspberrypi.org to your SD card.

Configure headless options

In this section we need to create a couple of files on the boot partition of the SD card we just created. The first file called ssh will enable ssh, the second file wpa_supplicant.conf will configure wifi.

Open the boot filesystem on your computer
Create an EMPTY file called ‘ssh’. Do not allow any file extensions. If you are unsure how to do that, google ‘show file extensions’
Create another file called wpa_supplicant.conf and put the following in it.

country=US
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
    ssid="NETWORK-NAME"
    psk="NETWORK-PASSWORD"
}

Save that file
Eject SD Card
Cram it in Raspberry PI
Boot the pi.
You should be able to find the IP address by rooting around through your router.

If that all went well, we can now log into the raspberry pi.

Use your favorite ssh client / terminal. On windows mine is Putty. For mac os and linux (or any unix variant) you can most likely just use a a terminal for this. Google “how to ssh into a linux computer”
Default user name is: pi
Default password is: raspberry

Configure pi with built in utility

We will use the raspi-config utility to configure some basic options.

Run sudo raspi-config
Change User Password
Network Options -> Hostname
Localization Options -> Change Locale (Dont forget to deselect the default en GB setting
Localization Options -> Change Timezone
Localization Options -> Keyboard Layout
Advanced Options -> Expand Filesystem
Finish (A reboot will be required)

Upgrade and Upgrade

Here we make sure that the pi is as up to date as possible before starting a project.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Install Packages

Install basic packages that I use all the time.

Build Essentials
- sudo apt-get install build-essential
GIT
- sudo apt-get install git
VIM
- sudo apt-get install vim
SMASH (this is my own custom setting BS that I have had on every unix type box I have worked on for decades.
- git clone https://github.com/KalebClark/smash.git ~/.smash
- cd ~/.smash
- ./install.sh