Setting up Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi

The setup is the one thing that usually deters many novice enthusiasts from getting started with SBCs. Many times, the instructions are very generic and do not cover all the cases for various types of hardware components. That is why I have dedicated an entire section to the setup of Raspbian on RPi. In this section, we will demonstrate the setup in detail with all the board models ever produced, with the exception of the compute modules.

We need the following components for the setup:

Figure 1.11 – USB Type-C pin

Figure 1.12 – A Micro-USB pin

Figure 1.13 – A keyboard with an integrated mousepad

Figure 1.14 – USB OTG cable

Figure 1.15 – MicroSD to SD card adapter/converter

Figure 1.16 – HDMI cable

RPi 4B has a micro-HDMI output. Therefore, we need a micro-HDMI to HDMI converter. RPi Zero and RPi Zero W both have mini-HDMI outputs. So, for them, we need a mini-HDMI to HDMI converter. The following photograph shows the HDMI, mini-HDMI, and micro-HDMI ports, respectively:

Figure 1.17 – HDMI, mini-HDMI, and micro-HDMI ports

We also need to plug the mini- and micro-HDMI ends to the RPi boards and the HDMI to the monitor. If you are planning to use a VGA monitor, then we will need HDMI/mini-HDMI/micro-HDMI to VGA converters depending on the board models.

Here is a photograph of an HDMI to VGA converter:

Figure 1.18 – HDMI to VGA converter

The following is a photograph of a mini-HDMI to VGA converter:

Figure 1.19 – Mini-HDMI to VGA converter

The following is a photograph of a micro-HDMI to VGA converter:

Figure 1.20 – Micro-HDMI to VGA converter

We need a Windows computer and a wired or wireless internet connection.

Finally, we require an SD card reader, as follows:

Figure 1.21 – SD card reader

Many laptops have this (SD card reader) feature built-in. So, in that case, a separate reader is not required as we can use the built-in reader.

We will need a few more hardware components by the end of the chapter. We will discuss them when the need arises. For now, we are okay to proceed further.

Downloading the necessary software

To get started, we need to download all of the free software. Follow these instructions to download all the necessary software:

Preparing the microSD card manually

The best way of installing an OS on a microSD card is to do it manually. This allows us to prepare the SD card manually so that we have easier access to the /boot/config.txt configuration file, which must be modified, in a few cases, before booting up the RPi. We will discuss this in detail later. The default Raspbian image has only two partitions—boot and system. I recommend choosing, at a minimum, a 16 GB class 10 microSD card. Then, follow these steps:

The commented lines (that have # at the beginning) are disabled. We must enable these lines by uncommenting them. This can be done by removing # at the beginning of these commented lines.

Note

If you are using Linux or macOS, then you will find the instructions to install the Raspbian OS on your microSD card for these OSes at https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/.

Booting up the Raspberry Pi for the first time

Let's boot up our Pi for the first time with the microSD card using the following steps:

Now, our RPi board will start booting up. The green LED on the board will start blinking. Congratulations! The RPi board is booting for the first time.

Note

If your HDMI monitor is showing no signal, then power down the RPi and change #hdmi_force_hotplug=1 to hdmi_force_hotplug=1 in /boot/config.txt on the microSD card. Boot up the RPi with this changed setting and the HDMI monitor will show the signal.

Once the RPi boots up, the Raspbian desktop and a guided setup window appear, as follows:

Figure 1.31 – Welcome window on Raspbian

Click on the Next button, and the following window will appear:

Figure 1.32 – Window for setting the country

In the preceding window, set Country: and Language:. It will automatically select the time zone according to the country you selected. You can change that too if you wish. Click on the Next button, and the following window will appear:

Figure 1.33 – Window for setting a new password

You can choose to set a new password for the default pi user. If you leave it blank, then it will retain the default password. The following is the next window that appears:

Figure 1.34 – Window for setting up the screen

Check the checkbox if there are black borders on the edges of the desktop view. The Raspbian OS will rectify it upon the next boot. The following window will appear after you click on the Next button, but only if the board model has Wi-Fi:

Figure 1.35 – Wi-Fi connections

Choose the network that you know the credentials for, and click on the Next button. The following window will appear:

Figure 1.36 – Connecting to the Wi-Fi at my home

Key in your Wi-Fi password here, and click on the Next button. The following window will appear:

Figure 1.37 – Update Software

We can update the Raspbian OS and installed software here. We are going to learn how to do it manually in the latter part of this chapter. Click on the Skip or Next button, and the following window will appear:

Figure 1.38 – Confirmation of completing the initial setup

We have finished most of the setup. Now, there are a few more things to do before we reboot out RPi, so click on the Later button.

Now, in the top-left corner of the desktop, you should see a Raspberry icon. It is the menu for Raspbian and functions in a similar way to the Windows logo on Microsoft Windows. Click on the logo and navigate to Preferences | Raspberry Pi Configuration:

Figure 1.39 – Raspberry Pi Configuration in the Raspbian menu

This is the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool. It will open a window as follows, and we can change the settings of the Raspberry Pi board:

Figure 1.40 – Configuring the system

The preceding screenshot is the System tab. As of now, there is no need to change anything here. The following is the Interfaces tab:

Figure 1.41 – Configuring interfaces

Enable the camera, SSH, and VNC. The following is the Performance tab:

Figure 1.42 – Memory and Overclock options

This menu has an option for overclocking and GPU memory. For the RPi 4B, overclocking is disabled. We will learn how to overclock an RPi 4B board manually in the next chapter. The Localisation tab is as follows:

Figure 1.43 – Localisation options

You might want to change these settings as per your region of residence.

Once all these settings have been changed as per our choice, we can restart the RPi board by clicking on the Shutdown button in the Raspbian menu:

Figure 1.44 – Rebooting the Pi

Here, we find the option to reboot the RPi. Once we reboot, and if we have chosen to retain the original password for the default user, pi, the following warning message window will appear when booting up:

Figure 1.45 – Message after rebooting if the default password has not been changed

And this will keep on appearing after every boot as long as we choose to retain the default password.

Connecting various RPi board models to the internet

We can directly plug in the Ethernet cable to the RJ45 Ethernet port Pi boards. This will automatically detect the connection and connect to the internet.

Note

Make sure that DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is enabled at the Wi-Fi router, the managed switch, or the internet gateway.

PRi 1 A, PRi 1 A+, RPi Zero, RPi Zero W, and RPi 3 A+ do not have Ethernet ports. However, RPi Zero W and RPi 3 A+ have built-in Wi-Fi. We can use a USB Wi-Fi dongle for the remaining models:

Figure 1.46 – USB Wi-Fi adapter

Plug this Wi-Fi adapter into the USB port. If the USB ports are not enough, then use a powered USB hub. For Raspberry Pi Zero, we need to use an additional USB OTG cable, as discussed earlier.

After plugging in the USB Wi-Fi adapter, we need to open lxterminal. This is the command-line utility. We can find it as a small black icon in Raspbian's taskbar and under Accessories in the Raspbian menu. Once we click on it, the following window will appear:

Figure 1.47 – Raspberry Pi LXterminal window

We can type in the Linux commands here. After typing them in, press Enter to execute the command. We have opened this so that we can manually configure the network interface of Raspbian. It is quite easy. All the network-related information is stored in the /etc/network/interfaces file. To connect to the Wi-Fi after plugging in the USB Wi-Fi dongle, we need to add a few entries to this file. First, take the backup of the original file by executing the following command:

mv /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.bkp

Then, we can create the interfaces file from scratch by running the following command:

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

The preceding command will open the network interface's file with a plain text editor known as nano. It is a simple WYSIWYG editor. Enter the following lines there:

source-directory /etc/network/interfaces.d

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback

auto wlan0

allow-hotplug wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

wpa-ssid "AshwinIon"

wpa-psk "internet1"

After entering the lines, press Ctrl + X and then press Y. In the preceding settings, substitute AshwinIon with your own SSID and internet1 with a password for the same. Then, run the following command in Command Prompt:

sudo service networking restart

This restarts the networking service and connects to the Wi-Fi. In any case (Ethernet or Wi-Fi), the RPi is assigned with a unique IP address. We can find it out by running the ifconfig command at lxterminal. The output of the command will have the Ipv4 address listed under inet.

Another way to know the IP address of the RPi is to check the active client tables in the router or the managed switch that the RPi board is connected to. The following is a screenshot of my router's active client table where we can see an entry for RPi:

Figure 1.48 – Active client table of a home Wi-Fi router