Configure your Raspberry Pi without Keyboard and Display

 As an intensive Raspberry Pi user you have an image with a suitable OS just in case. For example, my images are all preconfigured for my private networks and I just have to copy them to an SD card and put them into the Raspberry. Then I can start right away - with whatever. The configuration of a new Rasbian can usually be done by bringing the small single board computer with a network cable into the LAN.

But there are circumstances where these approaches don't help and the circumstances don't allow you to connect the Raspberry to the network via the network cable and only WLAN is available. There is an easy way to do this configuration on a laptop directly after copying the Raspbian image to the SD card. I describe the steps for Windows, Linux and (soon) OSX.

I refer here to the standard Rasbian, the Howto does NOT work with Raspbian lite. (Stand 2016-05-27-raspbian-jessie-lite.img)

The image is downloaded from https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/.

I refer here to the standard Rasbian image, the Howto does NOT work with the Raspbian lite image. (Stand 2016-05-27-raspbian-jessie-lite.img)

Initial configuration using Windows

Copy the downloaded image to the SD Card using WinDiskImager32 

Then a part (one of two partitions) of the copied image is visible in Windows Explorer.

A new file called wpa_supplicant.conf is created in this area. The following information will be added to this file (I like to use Notepad++ or Textpad for editing) 

update_config=1
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev

network={
   &nbsp ssid="SSID"
    psk="Passwort"
}

Once the file is saved it can be used in the Raspberry. When the Raspberry is started, it gets an IP address from the WLAN which can be used to access the Raspberry. Most routers or access points have a web frontend which can be used to find out the IP address of the Raspberry. If this is not possible, a network scanner will help. Scanning the whole network is not (that easy) possible with Windows onboard tools. On iOS and Android Smartphones I have Fing for this.

Initial configuration using Windows

Under Linux you can copy the image with the dd command to the SD card. First you have to check the device name of the SD card under Linux. Before the card is inserted the mounted storage devices are listed. This is done with the command: 

df -h

Then the SD card is inserted and the command 

df -h

is executed again. The return should contain

/dev/mmcblk0p1

or

/dev/sdd1

I will use the mmcblk0p1 in this case. Afterwards the device is unmounted with umount. If there are several partitions on the SD card (recognizable by mmcblk0p2, mmcblk0p3, ...), all of them have to be unmounted.

Afterwards the image can be copied to the SD card. It is important that the image is copied to the SD card and not to a partition. Therefore the name to copy to is /dev/mmcblk0 or /dev/sdd and not /dev/mmcblk0p1 or /dev/sdd1.

The command to copy is:

dd bs=4M if=2016-05-27-raspbian-jessie.img of=/dev/mmcblk0

Of course you can also copy with your preferred GUI on a current Ubuntu (16.x). This is quite easy with the usb-imagewriter. The usb-imagewriter must be installed.

After the card has been written, the SD card must be remounted. The easiest way is to remove the card for a short time and plug it in again. 

df -h

With you can see that the card has two partitions. One partition is called /dev/mmcblk0p1 and the other /dev/mmcblk0p2. Here the smaller partition with a size of about 50 to 100MB is interesting. On this partition we will copy the WLAN information, which will be moved to the right place later on the first start of Raspbian in Raspberry.

In the terminal I open the file wpa_supplicant.conf with the command: 

sudo wpa_passphrase testwifi testpassword >> /dev/ mmcblk0p1/wpa_supplicant.conf

and all information for the WIFI configuration needs to be inserted with the following structure:

update_config=1
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
network={
    ssid="testwifi"
    #psk="testpassword"
    psk=d28f6e7bcc45536a1930c0010f1d8a8e16c5dc154cc1309ae97859f2586924df
}

In order to connect to the Raspberry later, the IP address must be obtained. If the MAC address (or the manufacturer code) is known, the Raspberry is started and after a few moments scanned for the Raspberry with nMap. The manufacturer code (called OUI) can be found at http://aruljohn.com/mac.pl. Click on vendor lookup in the input mask and enter the manufacturer of the map.

The MAC address part 80:F1:02 is here exemplary for my Edimax WIFI USB adapter. 

nmap -sP 192.168.50.0/24 | awk '/^Nmap/{ip=$NF}/80:F1:02/{print ip}'

Now you known everything to connect to your Raspberry with SSH. Have fun :)

Configure WIFI on Raspbian before the first boot

Usually when I prepare a Raspberry for a new project or just want set up a new operation system I configured the network with attached screen and keyboard. Sometimes this is not possible and the WIFI needs to be configured before the first boot of the Pi.

The actual Raspbian distribution Jessie released on May 27 216 (NOT the lite version) or newer brings a cool feature to preconfigure the WIFI settings. A keyboard and a screen aren't necessary to bring a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian to life.

Configuration on Windows

1. download the Raspbian image on RapsberryPi.org and extract it
2. if you don't have download the Win32DiskImager to copy the image to the SD card
3. insert the SD card in your card reader (micro SD cards with adapter, start the Win32Diskimager (it will ask to run as Administrator), and select the extracted image file (from 1)
   
4. click "Write" to start the transfer of the image to the SD card 
5. when the process is finished successfully, you should see a part of the SD card in Windows Explorer
   
6. right click into the SD card folder and create a new text-file with the name wpa_supplicant.conf
7. open the file (if possible with Textpad or Notepad++) copy the following text into the file, ensure the bold parts are changed to your WIFI, the quote marks are necessary
   
   
   update_config=1
   ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
   network={
       ssid="testwifi"
       psk="testpassword"   
   }
   
   
8. save the file, move the SD card from your computer to the Raspberry and start it 

During the first boot of Raspbian, the file wpa_supplicant.conf will be moved into the folder /etc/wpa_supplicant/ for future starts the WIFI credentials will be in the right place and the Raspberry should be able to connect to the WIFI. The file will be not longer accessible under Windows. 

Configuration on Linux

1.  download the Raspbian image on RapsberryPi.org and extract it
2. before inserting the SD card, check the attached devices with this command:
   
   
   df -h
   
   
3. then insert the SD card and repeat the command after a few seconds
   
   
   df -h
   
   in the output you should find a line like
   
   
   /dev/mmcblk0p1
   
   or
   
   
   /dev/sdd1
   
   okay in this example I will use "mmcblk0p1".
4. With the command:
   
   
   mount
   
   you need to check if the SD card is mounted somewhere. If so, unmount the SD card with
   
   
   sudo umount /mnt/sdcrd
   
   
5. Because df shows the partition and we want to copy the image file to the device, the name of the device in the copy command will be /dev/mmcblk0 or /dev/ssd 
6. when the device name of the SD card is known, the image file can be copied there. the command is:
   
   
   dd bs=4M if=2016-05-27-raspbian-jessie.img of=/dev/mmcblk0
7. after the successful copy to the SD card, the card can be removed and reinserted. There will be a check for the partitions again
   
   
   df -h
   
   in the output you should find again the same /dev/mmcblk0p1device with the command
   
   
   mount
   
   you will see the mountpoint of the SD card (in this example should be /mnt/sdcrd) 
8. in this folder should be files like
   
   
   bcm2708-rpi-b.dtb
   bcm2708-rpi-b-plus.dtb
   bcm2708-rpi-cm.dtb
   bcm2708-rpi-2-b.dtb
   bcm2708-rpi-3-b.dtb
   bootcode.bin
   cmdline.txt
   config.txt
   ...
9. with the command (change in the command mywifi to your SSID and mypassword to the password of your WIFI)
   
   
   sudo wpa_passphrase mywifi mypassword >> mnt/sdcrd/wpa_supplicant.conf
   
   you will create a file wpa_supplicant.conf in this folder
10. now the SD card can be unmounted
    
    
    sudo umount /mnt/sdcrd
    
    the card can be removed and inserted in the Raspberry. 

While starting the Raspberry the first time, the file wpa_supplicant.conf will be moved to it's usual location in /etc/wpa_supplicant. The Pi will connect with the configured WIFI during boot and you can use SSH to connect to the Raspberry. The default login is
username: pi
password: raspberry

Raspberry Shairport speaker in IKEA bamboo box

Round about two years ago, I started to play around with Shairport on Raspberry. Over the time the solution become a great part to listen podcasts and Music in the house. Unfortunately, a Raspberry and an attached speaker wasn't looking nice. Stumbling over the IKEA hack web page the idea was born to put the Raspberry in one of the IKEA bamboo boxes I had at home.
 
Assembling the hardware
Setting up the software

In the end the result will look like this.

The project did not focus to high end HIFI and therefore I did not spend any time calculating a perfect speaker. The equipment for the speaker is very cheap to keep the budget at a lower level.

Assembling the hardware

What did I use

• the bigger box of the IKEA Dragan bathroom dish set 
• a Raspberry Model A
• a SD Card (4 or 8 GB is more than enough)
• a KEMO M032N amplifier
• a Visaton FRS8 speaker
• a USB car charger
• some resistors, a potentiometer
• some wood
• and a piece of 
• acoustic fabric

 All together I spend less than 60 or 70 Euros - well for this price you will find wireless speakers with Bluetooth... probably also with better audio quality. But of course you will not find a Airplay compatible speaker nor have the fun of tinkering the things.

The amp uses 12V, so the box will run on 12V power source. The source of the Raspberry Pi is 5V. To convert the 12V input voltage I removed all plastic parts and from the USB charger and soldered some wires on it.

Before assembling the raspberry and the speaker into the IKEA box, I soldered the resistors and the potentiometer to a stereo to mono converter. The layout should be as in this diagram:

After finalizing the electrical work, I need to macgyver the box. Honestly I think that I am not very skilled for wood work but luckily all of this would be covered in the IKEA Box and by a piece of fabric :) I finished the assembling after I completed the software configuration because until the completion of the network configuration a keyboard and display was necessary.

Setting up the software

As in the most of my project i have chosen Raspbian as operation system. It's a Raspberry specific Port of the always stable Debian. What we need more?
Download the latest version of Raspbian Jessie from the Raspberry Pi project site. In a first step I removed all the unnecessary packages:

sudo apt-get purge console-setup desktop.* desktop-base dillo gnome.* gsfonts gtk.* gvfs.* libgtk.* libqt.* libxcb.* libxfont.* libxt.* lightdm lxde.* lxpanel omxplayer openbox penguinspuzzle python-tk python3-tk shared-mime-info tcl.* x11.* xarchiver xauth xdg-.* xkb-data xinit xserver.* wolfram

Afterwards the network configuration. First the WIFI passphrase will be stored as hash value in the conf file:

sudo wpa_passphrase mywifi mypass>> /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

In the next step the WIFI adapter wlan0 will be configured as DHCP, which means that the Raspberry will get it's IP address from the router the config file should look like this:

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
allow-hotplug wlan0
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid "ssid"
wpa-psk "password"

The network configuration is complete and the interface can be restarted:

sudo ifdown wlan0 && sudo ifup wlan0

After a few seconds we check if the wifi interface has been connected to the Router and obtained a IP address:

sudo ifconfig

Next step was to update and upgrade the OS:

sudo apt-get -y update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade

After the successfull update a new firmware has been installed:

sudo rpi-update

Okay the OS is up to date, now we can install some necessary packages for Shairport:

apt-get install autoconf libtool libdaemon-dev libasound2-dev libpopt-dev avahi-daemon libavahi-client-dev git

The next step is to clone the Shairport sources from git

git clone https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync.git

When it is done we change the directory

cd shairport-sync

an build the config files for the installation of Shairport

autoreconf –i –f

followed by a configure command with following options:

./configure --with-alsa --with-avahi --with-ssl=openssl

in the next step Shairport will be compiled from the cloned source

make

and finaly installed.

make install

For Raspian Jessie is a start up script nessesary, to ensure that Shairport will come up on boot. Create a new file with the following command

nano /etc/systemd/system/shairport-sync.service

and paste this contend (change the bold part for YOUR Shairport name):

[Unit]
Description=Shairport AirTunes receiver
After=sound.target
Requires=avahi-daemon.service
After=avahi-daemon.service
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/shairport-sync -a "MyShairport"
Restart=always
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

After saving the file, the script need to be added to systemd services:

systemctl enable shairport-sync.service

Done. Shairport can be started with the command:

systemctl start shairport-sync.service

to check if the start was successful:

systemctl status shairport-sync.service

The result should ne something like this.:

shairport-sync.service - Shairport AirTunes receiver
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/shairport-sync.service; enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2015-03-01 17:33:51 UTC; 3s ago
Main PID: 3040 (shairport-sync)
CGroup: /system.slice/shairport-sync.service
           ââ3040 /usr/local/bin/shairport-sync -a MyShairport

Mar 01 17:33:51 spi03 systemd[1]: Started Shairport AirTunes receiver.
Mar 01 17:33:51 spi03 shairport-sync[3040]: startup

Okay now we do a reboot and check if the Raspberry will obtain a IP address and Shairport is starting. If so, after a few seconds the Shairport will be available as target in iOS.

As I mentioned before, the final assembling has been done after successful software configuration. The result is a low budget Airplay player in a nice box. :)