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Raspberry Pi Setup

Follow these steps if you have a fresh Raspberry Pi an SD card with no running OS. This one will allow you to set up your Pi without having to connect a monitor or keyboard. You will need to have access to router for determining local the IP of Pi when it boots and joins the network.

If you already have a Pi with your preferred setup, you can skip to step 5.

Steps​

1. Download and install the Raspberry Pi imager​

Go to https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ and download the imager for your OS (Mac, Windows, Linux).

2. Write Raspberry Pi OS Lite to your SD card​

Select "Raspberry Pi OS (other)" > "Raspberry Pi OS Lite (32-bit)".

Other versions work, but there is no need for the desktop GUI.

3. Preconfigure wifi and ssh on startup​

On the same machine running the imager, create a wpa_supplicant.conf file with the following contents and your ssid and psk:

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

network={
 scan_ssid=1
 ssid="<your wifi ssid>"
 psk="<your wifi passcode>"
}

Copy the file to root of your SD card boot folder. For example, on the Mac:

cp wpa_supplicant.conf /Volumes/boot/

To enable ssh on start up, create an empty file named ssh (no extension) in the same boot folder

touch /Volumes/boot/ssh

4. Boot your Pi and connect to it via ssh​

# default password is "raspberry"
ssh [email protected]

Run sudo raspi-config to change your default password to something more secure. I also recommend generating a ssh key and adding it to authorized_keys.

  1. On your host machine connected to the Pi, run ssh-keygen -t ed25519.

    Choose "enter" for the defaults.

  2. Output the contents of your public key for pasting on the Pi.

    cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

  3. On the Pi, create a .ssh folder and copy in the public key to authorized-keys.

    cd ~
    mkdir .ssh
    cd .ssh
    echo "<contents of public key from step 2>" > authorized-keys

    The next time you connect via ssh, you should not be prompted for a password.

4. Configure Pi to auto login on start up​

Run sudo raspi-config again. Select Boot Options and choose Console Autologin.

5. Install git, vim, and Node.js​

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vim git

Install the latest LTS build of Node.js (currently v16.XX.X) for armv61, which can be found @ https://unofficial-builds.nodejs.org/download/release/v16.XX.X/node-v16.XX.X-linux-armv6l.tar.xz

# Example installing v16.14.0
wget https://unofficial-builds.nodejs.org/download/release/v16.14.0/node-v16.14.0-linux-armv6l.tar.gz
tar -xzf node-v16.14.0-linux-armv6l.tar.gz
cd node-v16.14.0-linux-armv6/

sudo cp -R * /usr/local/
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

6. Install yarn and pm2​

Yarn will be used for installing Node.js packages and pm2 for managing the running application.

curl -o- -L https://yarnpkg.com/install.sh | bash
# update .bash_aliases
# set global timeout to a higher number. Will be needed on devices with less power like the Pi Zero.
yarn config set network-timeout 600000 -g
yarn global add pm2
# generate the start up script
pm2 startup