Setting Up The Raspberry Pi

Installing Raspbian:

Starting up sshd:

This allows connection through any terminal emulator (e.g. putty on windows or JuiceSSH on android).

Enable I2C bus (for ThunderBorg) through raspi-config

Setting ethernet static IP address:

Although the Raspberry Pi connects to the wireless network, in case of no wireless I still want to connect to the raspberry pi via ethernet. By setting a static address on my laptop for the ethernet port, and a static address on the raspberry pi on the ethernet port I can connect using wifi most of the time, but for a faster connection (on the raspberry pi 2 with a wireless dongle anyway) I can plug in an ethernet cable directly between the laptop and the raspberry pi.

This will also give me a guaranteed connection on competition day when wireless connection may be unreliable.

Note: using the ethernet connection - I will also try and setup configuration of a separate static address for the hotspot wifi connection so I can get internet access on the day.

Setup Wireless static IP addresses based on SID

Edit /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf to add wireless sids - or add them through raspi-config

Edit /etc/dhcpcd.conf to give the following entries. (This also includes the static address for ethernet).


# Ethernet static IP configuration:interface eth0static ip_address=192.168.22.173/24#static ip6_address=fd51:42f8:caae:d92e::ff/64static routers=192.168.22.1static domain_name_servers=192.168.22.1 8.8.8.8 fd51:42f8:caae:d92e::1
# home wifissid GRANITEstatic ip_address=192.168.22.23/24#static ip6_address=fd51:42f8:caae:d92e::ff/64static routers=192.168.22.1static domain_name_servers=192.168.22.1 8.8.8.8 fd51:42f8:caae:d92e::1
# mobile hotspotssid CgAndroidAPstatic ip_address=192.168.43.23/24static routers=192.168.43.1static domain_name_servers=192.168.43.1 8.8.8.8 fd51:42f8:caae:d92e::1


Install XRDP

  • $ sudo apt-get install xrdp

XRDP is an alternative to VNC and allows a conection from the Windows Remote Desktop client. Switch off the GUI background image for a faster experience.

This is good for the initial setup - although the Pi will be running in non GUI mode when Sputnik is up and running.

However it will also be useful when we need to run pixymon to calibrate the Pixy 2 camera.

Note - there are issues with using a UK keyboard with xrdp. This link gives an updated keyboard file for the UK. Copy it to /etc/xrdp as km-00000807.ini

Then change the /etc/xrdp/xrdp_keyboard.ini files to add the UK mapping. This uses 'gb' for the mapping - eg. 

[default_rdp_layouts]
rdp_layout_us=0x00000409
rdp_layout_gb=0x00000809
rdp_layout_de=0x00000407

Add gb to the [default_layouts_map] section and the [rdp_layouts_map_mac] sections for completeness.