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My daughter got a Pi for Christmas. I have no HDMI monitor or TV available at the moment. Until we get one is there any way to use the Pi?

I have researched and tried various approaches to the headless setup. At one point I got it working by pluging the Pi into my router and finding it's IP address in the router admin, and from there logging in with PuTTY — but then I attempted to get in directly via ethernet from my laptop and to cut a long story short some file I changed in that procedure must have ended up locking me out and I have been unable to log in by any method since.

Since then I've wiped the SD card and tried installing Noobs and Raspian and using silentinstall but I really don't have a clue about Pi as of yet and some of the comments I've read on this stack exchange site have led me to believe that what I'm after is actually impossible. Is that the case and if so then why was I able to log in originally.

What I need to do is to get the Pi working without a HDMI monitor. Can I do this and if so what route should I proceed with? By "what route" I mean Raspbian vs NOOBS or Ethernet vs WI-FI vs serial TTL. I'm open to trying any setup strategy but for now ideally it would the simplest way of doing it.

Community
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byronyasgur
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1 Answers1

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Well, here's what I've done to use my Pi without a display.

First, make sure your Pi is connected via Ethernet to your Router, and has a keyboard connected. Power it on, and carefully type the following:

pi (enter)

raspberry (enter)

sudo apt-get install ssh -y (enter)

Now that your Pi has SSH installed, try locating your Pi with your router's dashboard or use Fing on your phone. Use that IP in Fing on port 22. Proceed with the following commands after login:

Login (if prompted):

Username: pi
Password: raspberry

sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo reboot now

You're all set!

If you intended to use a graphical OS execute the following:

Install VNC: 

 sudo apt-get install realvncserver

Install the graphical OS:

sudo apt-get install lightdm -y

Change boot options to graphical:

sudo raspi-config

Navigate to boot options >> graphical with or without autologin

Jake Dube
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Cody Bennett
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