Raspberry Pi Workshop
Burning Raspbian to an (micro)SD Card
For Mac:
For Windows:
Download and install Etcher: https://etcher.io/
Flash the image
- Open Etcher
- Select the Raspbian image
- Select the drive to which you want to burn
- Double check your selections
- This is critical, as you run the risk of overwriting the wrong drive (including your primary hard drive)
- Click “Flash!” and wait until Etcher writes and validates the image. This can take around 10 minutes.
- Once finished, eject your SD card
Ports
Plugging in your peripherals
- HDMI
- Keyboard and Mouse
- MicroUSB Power Supply (5V/2.1A)
Boot for the First Time
Get your MAC Address
- In the Raspberry Pi GUI, click the Terminal icon in the top left toolbar
- Run the command
ifconfig
- Locate the
wlan0
section and find and write down theHWaddr
; it should look something like:b8:27:eb:00:00:00
- This is the MAC Address for your wireless adapter on the Raspberry Pi; you will use it to register the Pi on the network
Register with the CMU Legacy Network
- Go to https://netreg.net.cmu.edu/
- Enter and select the link to “Register New Machine”
Select the “Legacy Wireless Network” and click the in-line “Continue” button.
Enter a name for your Raspberry Pi
Enter the wlan0
MAC address from the raspberry pi
Now we wait…
Changing the Default Settings
- Open Raspberry Pi Menu > Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration
System
- Change Password
- Change Hostname
- Boot to CLI
Interfaces
- Set everything to enabled, except VNC
Reboot
Open Terminal and type
CRON
- Cron is a task scheduler
- You can add tasks to cron using the
crontab
The command
will take you to the root crontab, meaning your tasks will run regardless of which user is logged in
You can also use special signifiers
A common example is to start a program a few seconds after startup:
Connecting to WiFi
- This is easiest to do in the GUI
- To enter the GUI from commandline mode, run the command
startx
- Find the WiFi icon and select CMU
We are going to test to see if our connection has propagated by running the command
If it returns with a list similar to this:
then you are connected. If not, keep waiting.
SSH
- Once your pi is on the CMU network, you should be able to SSH into the device from your laptop
- Run the command (but fill in your own info)
ssh $USER@$URL
for example ssh pi@hostname.wv.cc.cmu.edu
It will ask if you want to add this to the list of known hosts, type Yes
Updating Packages
Linux has a built-in package manager called apt-get
We need to update the list of package repositories:
Next, we want to get the newest versions of all our packages:
(this may take a while and require some user confirmation)
Installing Packages
Raspbian comes with Node.js installed, but the version is very old.
We need to add a new repository to our package manager:
Now, install Node.js:
Install and Configure Samba
Install Samba with:
Go to the Samba configuration folder:
Rename the configuration file (so we have a backup):
Make and edit a new one:
- Copy this into new file:
Set up a new password:
Restart the Samba service:
- On your Mac laptop, you can now mount the Raspberry Pi filesystem on your computer by going to Finder and typing
⌘+k
- Enter smb://pi@$yourIPAddress
Getting the example code
- Clone the repo to your Pi by running
git clone https://github.com/Making-Things-Interactive/button-twitter.git