How to boot up & start using raspberry pi using laptop as a monitor

Question

I have recently purchased a Raspberry PI 3 Model B+. I also have an ethernet cable, a 8GB SD card with raspbian os on it as suggested by most of the tutorials(using etcher), an HDMI cable & my laptop. So, here's the issue I'm facing.

• How do I know if the system has boot up?
• How can I ssh into the PI, I mean how do I actually connect to it to my network & get its IP address?
• How do I use my laptop as a monitor for the PI.

There are many resources available on the internet, but they seem ambigous & are not very helpful. Please can someone guide me?

Answer 1

You can SSH into a Raspberry Pi by setting up the SDcard to enable the network and ssh for you to SSH easily into.

• To enable SSH, place an empty file named ssh (with no extension) at the root of the SDcard.
• To enable the wired network, plug in your network cable and look at your router logs to figure out the ip address used by your Pi.
• If you need a wireless connection, you will need to add a properly filled wpa_supplicant.conf file to your SDcard root. (more infos here, just use to fill the file data,not where to put it)

You now should be able to log into your Pi with ssh <User>@<IpAddress>

Answer 2

1. Create new file called "ssh" in /boot/
2. Connect wire internet from you PC to your Rasp, start your raspberry.
3. Use cmd or putty or any other SSH apps. The IP address to the you Rasp will be "raspberrypi". Your default username is "pi" and your efault password is "raspberry"

For example, if you use cmd: "ssh pi@raspberrypi". Then enter your password.

After connected to your Rasp, you now should be able to enable "VNC" in raspi-config. Finally, you can connect to your Rasp by VNC Viewer

Answer 3

How do I know if the system has boot up?

If you have Raspian installed, the first moment you give power to the Raspberry the ACT led will blink green and you'll see the startup process on your monitor

How can I ssh into the PI, I mean how do I actually connect to it to my network & get its IP address?

There are multiple ways to do this but I will tell you the most useful one in my case:

1. You can wait for the raspberry to boot up, connect it either through Wi-Fi or Ethernet cable, open a terminal on your raspberry and type ifconfig and if it's connected correctly you'll see your raspberry's IP address to which you'll connect through SSH.
2. You can login into your router interface and look for the raspberry's IP from there

Open up a terminal window on your computer now and just type ssh <user>@<raspberryIP>

If I'm not mistaken, the first time Raspian boots up will set the user to pi, so in this case you would type something like ssh [email protected]

You'll need to type yes when your computer first connects to it and then you'll be required to insert your raspberry login password.

That's it!

How do I use my laptop as a monitor for the PI

Not every computer is able to do this since a computer is not meant to act like an external monitor and their HDMI port is only intended to output data and not receive input data.

First make sure that your computer is able to do that, which in most cases it's not. Otherwise you should directly connect it and your pc should ask you what action to perform in that case.

Answer 4

How can I ssh into the PI, I mean how do I actually connect to it to my network & get its IP address?

It is possible to run a Pi headless (meaning without a display). The solution is to use ssh. But you have to set up the Pi to allow ssh. Do this by putting an empty file named "ssh" on the SDcard using windows. You also need to have the Pi IP address on your network. If you have a local router and admin privileges open the router web page and look for "connected devices". Plug the Pi into the router and it will show up in the list with its IP address. Open the Putty utility on your laptop. Set for ssh and connect to the Pi's IP address at port 22. You will get a shell window asking your to login.