I'm specifying the country I'm using this device in (India) with its ISO/IEC alpha2 code. With the SD card still plugged in and mounted, you create a file containing the SSID name and passkey of the network you want to connect to.įire up the terminal, navigate to the SD card.Įnter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Without a monitor or any I/O devices connected, how are you supposed to connect the RPi to a wireless network? It's simple. It took about 10 minutes to write the image to the SD card.

I used an old, class 4 SanDisk 16 GB micro SD card I had lying around with the official Raspberry Pi micro SD adapter. The GIF below shows you how quick and easy it is: I like to use Etcher to write OS images to SD cards/USB drives. I can always install one later, if necessary. Having decided that I'm going to do a headless setup, I figured I'd get the 'Lite' version, which does not come with any desktop environments. I first downloaded the Raspbian Stretch Lite operating system image from the Raspbian downloads page. This way of setting it up involves a few extra steps, as compared to how you'd normally go about it (i.e., with a display and input devices). When you want to set up a device like the Raspberry Pi without using a display or a keyboard, you do a 'headless' setup. I've been wanting to use Node-RED for some of my DIY electronics projects for quite some time now, and I figured I'd put off setting up the RPi long enough! I knew it was possible to do a headless setup, but I never got around to it.

I was also disappointed that it came with a mini HDMI port, because I didn't have mini-to-regular HDMI adapter or cable to connect a monitor. When I first received it, I was surprised that there were two separate micro USB ports for power and USB input. I purchased a Raspberry Pi Zero W in December 2017, and aside from plugging in the power adapter to check if the green light comes on, I haven't touched it since. This is my very first post on dev.to, and I hope you find it helpful.

Rpi zero w headless setup