Basically, a headless installation is installed by setting it automatically. So, the Raspberry Pi is directly connected to Wifi. After we have finished installing we can use SSH to access the Raspberry Pi via a wireless network. From SSH access we can install VNC for the remote Raspberry Pi desktop, or can install other applications. VNC (Virtual Network Connection) is a standard for doing just this. To use it, you have to install some software on your Pi. There are a number of VNC server applications, and the one we are going to use is called “tightvnc”. We can install the VNC server software using the SSH connection that we established earlier. Mar 01, 2017 We’ve previously looked at how you can connect to your Raspberry Pi from a Windows, Mac or Linux PC using VNC, but the integration of RealVNC with Raspbian Jessie and the PIXEL desktop update means that much of the process has been streamlined. Now the onus is on making sure you have the RealVNC server software configured on your Raspberry Pi, and a VNC viewer on your main.
-->In this tutorial, you begin by learning the basics of working with Raspberry Pi that's running Raspbian. You then learn how to seamlessly connect your devices to the cloud by using Azure IoT Hub. For Windows 10 IoT Core samples, go to the Windows Dev Center.
Don't have a kit yet? Try Raspberry Pi online simulator. Or buy a new kit here.
What you do
- Create an IoT hub.
- Register a device for Pi in your IoT hub.
- Set up Raspberry Pi.
- Run a sample application on Pi to send sensor data to your IoT hub.
What you learn
- How to create an Azure IoT hub and get your new device connection string.
- How to connect Pi with a BME280 sensor.
- How to collect sensor data by running a sample application on Pi.
- How to send sensor data to your IoT hub.
What you need
- A Raspberry Pi 2 or Raspberry Pi 3 board.
- An Azure subscription. If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.
- A monitor, a USB keyboard, and mouse that connects to Pi.
- A Mac or PC that is running Windows or Linux.
- An internet connection.
- A 16 GB or above microSD card.
- A USB-SD adapter or microSD card to burn the operating system image onto the microSD card.
- A 5-volt 2-amp power supply with the 6-foot micro USB cable.
The following items are optional:
- An assembled Adafruit BME280 temperature, pressure, and humidity sensor.
- A breadboard.
- 6 F/M jumper wires.
- A diffused 10-mm LED.
Note
If you don't have the optional items, you can use simulated sensor data.
Create an IoT hub
This section describes how to create an IoT hub using the Azure portal.
- Sign in to the Azure portal.
- From the Azure homepage, select the + Create a resource button, and then enter IoT Hub in the Search the Marketplace field.
- Select IoT Hub from the search results, and then select Create.
- On the Basics tab, complete the fields as follows:
- Subscription: Select the subscription to use for your hub.
- Resource Group: Select a resource group or create a new one. To create a new one, select Create new and fill in the name you want to use. To use an existing resource group, select that resource group. For more information, see Manage Azure Resource Manager resource groups.
- Region: Select the region in which you want your hub to be located. Select the location closest to you. Some features, such as IoT Hub device streams, are only available in specific regions. For these limited features, you must select one of the supported regions.
- IoT Hub Name: Enter a name for your hub. This name must be globally unique. If the name you enter is available, a green check mark appears.
ImportantBecause the IoT hub will be publicly discoverable as a DNS endpoint, be sure to avoid entering any sensitive or personally identifiable information when you name it. - Select Next: Size and scale to continue creating your hub.You can accept the default settings here. If desired, you can modify any of the following fields:
- Pricing and scale tier: Your selected tier. You can choose from several tiers, depending on how many features you want and how many messages you send through your solution per day. The free tier is intended for testing and evaluation. It allows 500 devices to be connected to the hub and up to 8,000 messages per day. Each Azure subscription can create one IoT hub in the free tier.If you are working through a Quickstart for IoT Hub device streams, select the free tier.
- IoT Hub units: The number of messages allowed per unit per day depends on your hub's pricing tier. For example, if you want the hub to support ingress of 700,000 messages, you choose two S1 tier units.For details about the other tier options, see Choosing the right IoT Hub tier.
- Azure Security Center: Turn this on to add an extra layer of threat protection to IoT and your devices. This option is not available for hubs in the free tier. For more information about this feature, see Azure Security Center for IoT.
- Advanced Settings > Device-to-cloud partitions: This property relates the device-to-cloud messages to the number of simultaneous readers of the messages. Most hubs need only four partitions.
- Select Next: Tags to continue to the next screen.Tags are name/value pairs. You can assign the same tag to multiple resources and resource groups to categorize resources and consolidate billing. for more information, see Use tags to organize your Azure resources.
- Select Next: Review + create to review your choices. You see something similar to this screen, but with the values you selected when creating the hub.
- Select Create to create your new hub. Creating the hub takes a few minutes.
Register a new device in the IoT hub
In this section, you create a device identity in the identity registry in your IoT hub. A device cannot connect to a hub unless it has an entry in the identity registry. For more information, see the IoT Hub developer guide.
- In your IoT hub navigation menu, open IoT Devices, then select New to add a device in your IoT hub.
- In Create a device, provide a name for your new device, such as myDeviceId, and select Save. This action creates a device identity for your IoT hub.ImportantThe device ID may be visible in the logs collected for customer support and troubleshooting, so make sure to avoid any sensitive information while naming it.
- After the device is created, open the device from the list in the IoT devices pane. Copy the Primary Connection String to use later.
Note
The IoT Hub identity registry only stores device identities to enable secure access to the IoT hub. It stores device IDs and keys to use as security credentials, and an enabled/disabled flag that you can use to disable access for an individual device. If your application needs to store other device-specific metadata, it should use an application-specific store. For more information, see IoT Hub developer guide.
Set up Raspberry Pi
Install the Raspbian operating system for Pi
Prepare the microSD card for installation of the Raspbian image.
- Download Raspbian.a. Raspbian Buster with desktop (the .zip file).b. Extract the Raspbian image to a folder on your computer.
- Install Raspbian to the microSD card.a. Download and install the Etcher SD card burner utility.b. Run Etcher and select the Raspbian image that you extracted in step 1.c. Select the microSD card drive. Etcher may have already selected the correct drive.d. Click Flash to install Raspbian to the microSD card.e. Remove the microSD card from your computer when installation is complete. It's safe to remove the microSD card directly because Etcher automatically ejects or unmounts the microSD card upon completion.f. Insert the microSD card into Pi.
Enable SSH and I2C
- Connect Pi to the monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
- Start Pi and then sign into Raspbian by using
pi
as the user name andraspberry
as the password. - Click the Raspberry icon > Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration.
- On the Interfaces tab, set I2C and SSH to Enable, and then click OK. If you don't have physical sensors and want to use simulated sensor data, this step is optional.
Note
To enable SSH and I2C, you can find more reference documents on raspberrypi.org and Adafruit.com.
Connect the sensor to Pi
Use the breadboard and jumper wires to connect an LED and a BME280 to Pi as follows. If you don't have the sensor, skip this section.
The BME280 sensor can collect temperature and humidity data. The LED blinks when the device sends a message to the cloud.
For sensor pins, use the following wiring:
Start (Sensor & LED) | End (Board) | Cable Color |
---|---|---|
VDD (Pin 5G) | 3.3V PWR (Pin 1) | White cable |
GND (Pin 7G) | GND (Pin 6) | Brown cable |
SDI (Pin 10G) | I2C1 SDA (Pin 3) | Red cable |
SCK (Pin 8G) | I2C1 SCL (Pin 5) | Orange cable |
LED VDD (Pin 18F) | GPIO 24 (Pin 18) | White cable |
LED GND (Pin 17F) | GND (Pin 20) | Black cable |
Click to view Raspberry Pi 2 & 3 pin mappings for your reference.
After you've successfully connected BME280 to your Raspberry Pi, it should be like below image.
Connect Pi to the network
Turn on Pi by using the micro USB cable and the power supply. Use the Ethernet cable to connect Pi to your wired network or follow the instructions from the Raspberry Pi Foundation to connect Pi to your wireless network. After your Pi has been successfully connected to the network, you need to take a note of the IP address of your Pi.
Note
Make sure that Pi is connected to the same network as your computer. For example, if your computer is connected to a wireless network while Pi is connected to a wired network, you might not see the IP address in the devdisco output.
Run a sample application on Pi
Clone sample application and install the prerequisite packages
- Connect to your Raspberry Pi with one of the following SSH clients from your host computer:Windows Usersa. Download and install PuTTY for Windows.b. Copy the IP address of your Pi into the Host name (or IP address) section and select SSH as the connection type.Mac and Ubuntu UsersUse the built-in SSH client on Ubuntu or macOS. You might need to run
ssh pi@<ip address of pi>
to connect Pi via SSH.NoteThe default username ispi
and the password israspberry
. - Install Node.js and NPM to your Pi.First check your Node.js version.If the version is lower than 10.x, or if there is no Node.js on your Pi, install the latest version.
- Clone the sample application.
- Install all packages for the sample. The installation includes Azure IoT device SDK, BME280 Sensor library, and Wiring Pi library.NoteIt might take several minutes to finish this installation process depending on your network connection.
Configure the sample application
- Open the config file by running the following commands:There are two items in this file you can configure. The first one is
interval
, which defines the time interval (in milliseconds) between messages sent to the cloud. The second one issimulatedData
, which is a Boolean value for whether to use simulated sensor data or not.If you don't have the sensor, set thesimulatedData
value totrue
to make the sample application create and use simulated sensor data.Note: The i2c address used in this tutorial is 0x77 by default. Depending on your configuration it might also be 0x76: if you encounter an i2c error, try to change the value to 118 and see if that works better. To see what address is used by your sensor, runsudo i2cdetect -y 1
in a shell on the raspberry pi - Save and exit by typing Control-O > Enter > Control-X.
Run the sample application
Run the sample application by running the following command:
Note
Make sure you copy-paste the device connection string into the single quotes.
You should see the following output that shows the sensor data and the messages that are sent to your IoT hub.
Read the messages received by your hub
One way to monitor messages received by your IoT hub from your device is to use the Azure IoT Tools for Visual Studio Code. To learn more, see Use Azure IoT Tools for Visual Studio Code to send and receive messages between your device and IoT Hub.
For more ways to process data sent by your device, continue on to the next section.
Next steps
You've run a sample application to collect sensor data and send it to your IoT hub.
To continue to get started with Azure IoT Hub and to explore all extended IoT scenarios, see the following:
In this tutorial, I will go through the all the steps to setting up a Raspberry Pi VNC server.
Once we have setup the VNC server, you will be able to remote desktop to your Pi, so you’re able to control as if you were sitting there with it.
The process of setting VNC all up is pretty easy, and at the end of it, you will be able to control the desktop of the Pi remotely.
This software is incredibly handy if you don’t have a screen or access to the Pi itself. If you just want a barebones command line approach, then be sure to check out the tutorial on how to SSH into your Raspberry Pi. This method is how I control my Pi pretty much all the time, but it all just comes down to preference.
It’s important to mention that Raspbian now has a VNC server package pre-installed. You can still do this tutorial if you wish otherwise go into the Raspberry Pi configuration and turn it on. Once you have turned it on, simply connect using the same steps as described in this guide.
Equipment
To complete this Raspberry Pi remote desktop tutorial, you will need the following pieces of equipment.
Recommended
Raspberry Pi
Micro SD Card (16gb+ is recommended)
Ethernet Cord or Wifi dongle
Optional
Raspberry Pi Case
USB Keyboard
USB Mouse
Video
If you want to see how this is all done, then be sure to check out my video below. I go through all the steps from start to finish on getting this setup correctly in no time at all.
If you do like the video and would love to see more, then please make sure you subscribe.
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Installing the Raspberry Pi VNC Server
As in all of my tutorials, you will need to have Raspbian pre-installed onto your Raspberry Pi. If you haven’t already done this, then you can find out how to do it all in my guide to installing Raspbian.
Now installing the VNC server software package onto your Raspberry Pi is actually incredibly easy and only requires entering a couple of commands.
1. Before we get started first make sure your Pi is up to date by running the following commands:
2. Once those two commands have finished running, enter the following to install the tightvncserver.
Generate Keys Vnc Raspberry Pictures
3. Now, set up and run the VNC server, this is pretty easy to do. Simply run the following command:
4. You will now need to set up a password for when you go to connect to the Pi remotely via the VNC client. It is important to remember the password will be truncated to eight characters so try and choose a password that works best for you that is no longer than eight characters long.
5. It will next ask you to verify the password, enter it again.
6. Next, it will ask if you want a separate view only password, simply enter “n” for this.
7. Once that is all done, the server will be up and running. The following command will need to be run every time the Pi reboots, or for some reason, the process is stopped.
The Raspberry Pi VNC server should now be up and running correctly. If you want to have the software startup automatically at boot up then simply follow the next couple of steps, otherwise we’re ready to setup the client side of things.
Start the VNC Server Automatically
Having to run the command above is not ideal so you might want to have it start automatically whenever your Pi is booted up.
The following steps are pretty straightforward and will take you through the steps of having the server startup on port 1 at boot up.
1. First, open up the rc.local file by entering the following command.
2. Now enter the following before the exit 0 line.
3. Save and exit by pressing ctrl + x then y.
4. Restart the Pi by running the following command.
5. You can confirm that it is running by running the following command.
6. It should say “A VNC server is already running at :1”
7. If you need to kill the server simply enter the following command (Change 1 if you’re using a different port):
Once you’re done, you can proceed to set up the client on your other computer, tablet or whatever device you plan on using.
Setting up the VNC client on your PC
Installing and setting up a VNC client on your computer is incredibly easy. There are quite a few different VNC software packages out there, but in this tutorial, I am going to be using RealVNC.
1. To begin head over to the RealVNC website and download the VNC viewer client relevant to your operating system.
2. Once downloaded, simply open it up. (If you want server software as well you will need to download the full software package.)
Generate Keys Vnc Raspberry Pi Download
3. Enter your IP address with the port 1 in the field that says VNC server. For example, mine is, 192.168.1.108:1
4. Now simply press connect.
5. It should then give you a warning message, simply press continue on this.
6. Then it will ask you for the password you set for it earlier. Simply enter the password that we set earlier.
7. The VNC window should load, and you will now have remote access to your Raspberry Pi.
This process is all you need to do to have Raspberry Pi remote desktop up and running. If you do come across any issues, I have small troubleshooting section below otherwise be sure to leave a comment.
Troubleshooting
Mac Vnc Raspberry Pi
- I can’t connect! – Be sure to double check the IP you entered and make sure it is the same as the Pis. Also be sure to make sure that the VNC server software is running. Most routers also dynamically give out IP’s, so it is possible the IP will change over time. To fix this setup a fixed IP or check the IP whenever you go to connect.
- I want access outside my local network – This will open security issues, but you’re able to do this by setting up port forwarding. Remember the VNC server is running on port 1.
- I want a different/larger sized screen on my VNC client – When you go to start the VNCserver, you can add an extra command called geometry and then the screen size width and high you want (This is in pixels). The command is:
I hope that you have been able to setup your Raspberry Pi VNC server correctly and that you’re able to remove desktop to your Pi easily.
If you’re still having trouble or that I have missed something, then please feel free to drop a comment below. If you’re looking for more, then be sure to check out some of my latest DIY raspberry pi projects.