Headless Raspberry Pi Setup

What You Need:

• The Raspberry Pi (rPi)
• SD or Micro SD Card (the minimum recommended card size is 8GB).
• SD or Micro SD Card reader.
• A power supply for the Raspberry Pi.

1. Download Raspbian Image

Download the Lite image from here, Raspberry Pi OS > Raspberry Pi OS Lite.

2. Write The Image To The SD Card

Download and install Win32DiskImager, then:

• Connect the card reader or insert the SD Card in your reading support.
• Open Win32DiskImager.
• Click on Image File and select the Raspbian image.
• Click on Device and choose the drive corresponding to your Micro SD card.
• Click on Write and wait until the window displays “Done” under the progress bar.

In alternative you can use Etcher, for more information read this guide.

3. Setting up wireless networking

Add a file named wpa_supplicant.conf in the SD boot folder, paste and edit this code:

country=IT
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
update_config=1

network={
    ssid="your-wifi-name"
    scan_ssid=1
    psk="your-wifi-password"
}

More information about this configuration file here.

4. Enabling SSH

Add an empty file named ssh (without any extension) in the SD boot folder.

5. Boot your rPi

Insert your prepared SD card in the rPi, connect the power supply and let the magic happen

6.1 Find your rPi’s IP Address

If you need to access your rPi and do SSH stuff, you need to find his IP Address. Use fing to have a complete list of devices connected to yout network and to discover the IP of your rPi.

6.2 Set up a static ip for your Raspberry Pi

Modify the file dhcpd.conf located in the /etc/folder, go to the last line and add the following content:

eth0 
static ip_address = 192.168.1.100 / 24 
static routers = 192.168.1.1 
static domain_name_servers = 192.168.1.1 

wlan0 interface 
static ip_address = 192.168.1.100 / 24 
static routers = 192.168.1.1 
static domain_name_servers = 192.168.1.1

7. SSH into your rPi

Use a SSH client like PuTTY, Termius or the preinstalled terminal.

The default credentials of all rPi are:

username: pi
password: raspberry

8. Configure your rPi

After SSH into your rPi, you can configure it with this command:

sudo raspi-config

Now you can change your password and do other stuff. Here more information about the raspi-config.