These five Pi techniques will help elevate you out of the beginner stages, from readwrite.

However, there’s a steep jump-off point between the basics and the intermediate stuff. When you move from “setting up your Pi” tutorials to stuff like “building a media server,” the pre-project requirements start to get a little dicey. Many intermediate Pi tutorials, including some of the ones here on ReadWrite, assume a few things about your Raspberry Pi setup.

Not every project will require all of the techniques suggested here, but knowing these procedures will make projects that do require them go much more smoothly later.

When you’re ready to go beyond the basics, here are some things you can do to prepare your Raspberry Pi for any pre-requirements that a tutorial could throw at you.

1) Using SSH

SSH, which stands for Secure Shell, is a cryptographic network protocol that lets you securely transfer data between your computer and your Raspberry Pi. Projects might require it so you can control your Raspberry Pi from your computer’s command line without hooking it up to a monitor or keyboard.

SSH now comes pre-installed in Raspberry Pi operating system Raspbian, so if you have installed the latest or close-to-latest version of NOOBS, you already have it.

To use SSH, first you need your Pi’s IP address. Boot your Pi to the command line and type:

sudo ifconfig
Three paragraphs will appear. Your IP address will show up in either the first or the third line, depending on whether your Raspberry Pi is hooked up to an ethernet cable or via a wifi adaptor. If it’s ethernet, look in the first paragraph, which starts with “eth0.” If it’s wifi, look in the third paragraph, which starts with “wlan0.”

Either way, you’ll see the words “inet addr” followed by an IP—something like 192.168.2.2, a pretty common default IP address that we’ll use for the duration of this article.

Now you have the address that’ll allow you to access the Pi from your computer. If you’re on a Mac, you already have built-in SSH. Launch the Terminal application and type:

ssh [email protected]
It’ll ask for your password. By default, this is always “raspberry.” If you’ve changed it to something else, use that instead. Now, you’re in!

If you’re on a PC, there’s an extra step…

Read more.

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