fyi: Here is my guide that I created while I set up a Raspberry Pi Zero W. My previous Raspberry PI 2 Setup Guide here and I wanted to try the single-core Raspberry Pi Zero W. Eventually, want to run my Raspberry Pi from batteries (my older guide here).
I plugged in a 2Amp 5v micro USB powder pack, micro HDMI cable, micro USB keyboard and expected to see a light but nothing. This guide says the Raspberry Pi has no power LED. Unfortunately, I thought the power pack was faulty and I plugged it in a few times and corrupted the installed SD-card.
Failed Setup
After reading this guide I remembered I forgot to switch the monitor to the HDMI input (oops).
Yep, I realized I corrupted the OS on the SD Card.
Old Noobs Operating System
I checked the SD-Card (that I purchased from eBay) I noticed the SD-Card had an older NOOBS 2.0.0 installation in an in an invalid subfolder (that’s why it would not boot).
I plugged the Micro SD card into an SD-Card adapter and plugged it into my Mac (time to install a newer OS).
Downloading the latest Raspian Operating System
I visited https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ and download raspbian
I downloaded a 1.66GB Zip File.
The file took 30 mins to download.
I expanded the zip file to a 4.66 img file.
Formatting the SD-Card
I formatted my SD Card with the SD Card Association SD formatting tool from https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ here.
Setting up the SD-Card
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has a great guide on how to install the Raspberry Pi Raspian image onto an SD-Card here.
I downloaded the free 64MB Etcher program for Mac OS here https://etcher.io/ in order to copy (flash) Raspian onto the SD-Card.
I opened Etcher and selected the Raspian Jesse image file and clicked flash.
The flash will take between 5-10 minutes.
SD Card Contents
The Raspian image is now ready for reinsertion back into the Raspberry Pi to setup
1st Raspberry Pi (Raspian) boot.
The raspberry pi does, in fact, have a power/activity led with the latest operating system 🙂
The desktop loaded quite swiftly too. My Bay special keyboard detected just fine. You can manually connect to your wifi by entering the following command in the terminal (thanks to this guide).
Generic Config
I am not using the desktop much so I am happy setting 16MB for the video card.
Get the Mac Address and set a static IP Address (to allow remote SSH management)
After a reboot, I was logged into a shell and was able to bring up the devices network details (including mac address).
Test the network connection
I was successful;y able to ping a remote server via wifi.
Static IP Address
Todo: I set up my local ADSL router to give the Raspberry Pi a Static (known) IP every time it boots.
Update the Pi Software (after the network is up)
Now that I knew the network is working I was able to update the Pi software.
I re-ran the update just in case. Now my Pi is all up to date.
Installed Misc Software
More on setting up an NGINX web server here.
Set the Pi Mouse (regular sized USB devices)
I had small micro USB to larger USB adapters (from eBay) but could only use a keyboard or mouse at any one time. I Also had a micro USB to multiple micro USB and Ethernet adapter (from eBay) (SN: YS-LAN38) but it failed to work with NOOBS 2.0.0 (maybe it will work with Raspian latest)
I wanted to test regular devices in the case of an emergency.
Help
40 Useful Raspberry Pi Commands.
Todo
Add information on adding and using a 5MP Raspberry Pi camera and setting this up as a https://fearby.com/article/raspberry-pi-2b-security-webcam/secuerity webcam.
Donate and make this blog better
Ask a question or recommend an article
[contact-form-7 id=”30″ title=”Ask a Question”]
v1.2 DRAFT: Added more images