🍓 Raspberry Pi Setup

During this course, we will be using a Raspberry Pi 4B as our main computer. This section will walk you through the steps to get your Raspberry Pi up and running.

The Raspberry Pi is a small, single-board computer that can be used for a variety of projects. It is a great tool for learning about computers and programming, and it is also a great tool for building projects.

What you will need

• Raspberry Pi 4 (provided by the course)
• a microSD card (provided by the course)
• a USB-C cable (provided by the course)
• a computer with a USB port.

Setting up the Raspberry Pi

The RPi has a microSD card slot on the bottom. Insert the microSD card into the slot, and connect the RPi to your computer using the USB-C cable. The RPi will power on automatically.

tip

If you are using a Windows computer, you may need to install a driver for the RPi. You can download the driver here.

1. Download and extract the zip file.
2. Open Device Manager on your computer and locate COM & LPT ports.
3. Connect the RPi to your computer and locate the new device (it should be called COM PORT ...).
4. Right-click on the device and select Update Driver Software.
5. Browse to the folder where you extracted the zip file.
6. Install the driver.

Check that the driver was installed by opening a terminal and running the following command:

ping backseat.local
# or, if the above command does not work, try the following command:
ping 192.168.3.2

Connecting to the Raspberry Pi

Once the RPi is powered on, you can connect to it using SSH. We will be using Visual Studio Code to connect to the RPi.

1. Open Visual Studio Code.
2. Install the Remote - SSH extension.
3. Click on the Remote Explorer icon in the left sidebar.
4. Select on the Remotes (Tunnels/SSH) from the dropdown.
5. Click on the + icon next to SSH.
6. Enter the following command in the input field:

ssh blue@backseat.local   # again, if backseat.local does not work, try 192.168.3.2

The default password is iamblue.

note

You might be prompted to select a config file. If so, select ~/.ssh/config or C:\Users\<username>\.ssh\config.

note

If you are asked to accept the host key, type yes and press Enter.

note

If you are asked the operating system of the remote host, select Linux.

Once connected, you should see a terminal window in Visual Studio Code (bottom). You can now run commands on the RPi.

For example, you can now run the following command to check the IP address of the RPi:

hostname -I

Creating a new user

The default user on the RPi is blue. We will be using a new user for you for this course.

1. Run the following command to create a new user:

sudo adduser <username>

warning

Please choose a generic (non-personal) password, as you may need to share it with your TAs or other team members during the course of the project.

2. Enter a password for the new user.
3. Enter the password again to confirm.
4. Enter a full name for the new user.
5. Press Enter to skip the rest of the prompts.

Setting up the new user

1. Run the following command to add the new user to the sudo group:

sudo usermod -aG sudo <username>

2. Run the following command to switch to the new user:

su <username>

3. Run the following command to create a new SSH key:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "<username>@backseat.local"

4. Press Enter to save the key in the default location.
5. Press Enter to skip the passphrase prompt.

Connecting to the Raspberry Pi using the new user

Similar to the previous section, you can now connect to the RPi using the new user.

1. Click on the Remote Explorer icon in the left sidebar.
2. Click on the SSH Targets icon at the top of the sidebar.
3. Click on the + icon at the top of the sidebar.
4. Enter the following command in the input field:

ssh <username>@backseat.local

5. Enter the password for the new user.

You are now connected to the RPi using the new user you just created.

warning

When you are done using your Raspberry Pi, run sudo poweroff and wait for it to complete before unplugging your RPi. If you skip this step, you may end up corrupting your RPi.

Setting up the RPi for the course

For this course, we will be using a few tools that are not installed by default on the RPi. We will now install these tools.

ZSH

zsh is a Unix shell that can be used as an interactive login shell and as a command interpreter for shell scripting. Zsh is an extended Bourne shell with a large number of improvements, including some features of Bash, ksh, and tcsh.

We will use zsh as the default shell for this course. Although it is already installed, we will configure it as the default shell so it is used automatically in all terminal sessions.

Set as default shell

chsh -s $(which zsh)

Restart shell

Restart the shell:

exec zsh

When prompted with the Z Shell configuration function for new users, select option 0 to proceed using the default configuration without making changes.

Oh-My-Zsh

Oh-My-Zsh is an open source, community-driven framework for managing your zsh configuration (and it comes with a bunch of plugins and themes).

Install

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

.zshrc

The .zshrc file is a script that is executed each time a new zsh shell is started. It is located in your home directory (~/.zshrc).

You can edit the .zshrc file with your favorite text editor.

We will be adding some configuration to the .zshrc file in the next sections.

VS Code Extensions (Install Inside Remote SSH Session)

After connecting to the Raspberry Pi using Remote SSH, you must install the required VS Code extensions on the remote machine (not locally).

Step 1: Open Extensions Panel

• In VS Code, click the Extensions icon in the left sidebar or press: Ctrl + Shift + X

Step 2: Confirm You Are Connected to the RPi

• Look at the bottom-left corner of VS Code. You should see something like: SSH: <username>@backseat.local

warning

If you do not see this, you are not installing extensions on the Raspberry Pi.

Step 3: Install Required Extensions

• Search for and install the following extensions:

Python

Jupyter

Step 4: Install on the Remote Host (Important)

• For each extension, click Install.
• When prompted, select: Install on SSH: <username>@backseat.local

warning

Do NOT select “Install Locally”.

Step 5: Reload VS Code

• After installation, Press F1 then run: Developer: Reload Window