How to get started with Raspberry Pi without a monitor
Raspberry Pi without a monitor ("headless")
If you're coming to a workshop (such as the UNESCO MLW 2015), please bring your laptop! Here's why.
The Raspberry Pi is a little, but fully-fledged computer, that can be used with a keyboard/mouse and a screen (computer monitor, or TV, DVI, VGA, HDMI, or composite). However, for many workshops, it's not possible to bring sufficient screens and keyboards/mice - you'll appreciate that the size and weight of monitors/keyboard are many times that of the Raspberry Pi!
However, at workshops, participants often come with their laptops, and fortunately we can use these to connect to Raspberry Pi, which means we don't need monitors/keyboards. In other words, the laptop can act as the screen and keyboard/mouse for the Raspberry Pi.
You can do this in two ways:
- Using "ethernet" (using the wired ethernet ports on the laptop, connected to the ethernet port on the Raspberry Pi)
- Using a "serial connection" (using a USB port on the laptop, to connect to some GPIOs on the Raspberry Pi)
We call this way of connecting to another computer "headless" (as opposed to using a monitor, the "head" in this analogy).
Serial connection
The serial connection is easy to set up, but allows text-based access only, and requires a special cable (which is cheap, but takes time to order). It just requires the installation of a driver, and downloading putty (on the laptop). You use You can then easily connect to the Raspberry Pi. However, this is text-based only. This is sufficient e.g. to explore sensors and some programming, but it doesn't allow you to use any graphical applications, or to see the "Desktop".
Ethernet (ssh / VNC)
Making an ethernet connection just requires an ethernet cable (which is easily available), and it allows both both text-based and graphical user interfaces. However, in the absence of a "switch" (which we cannot bring to the workshop in sufficient numbers), it requires setting up “Internet Connection Sharing” ("ICS").
If you can, please explore “Internet Connection Sharing” on your laptop before the workshop, and enable it. You can then just connect to the Raspberry Pi using an ethernet cable (which we will provide).
Also, install putty, as well as a VNC client.
