The Raspberry Pi came out back in 2012, and since then it has proven itself to be a very useful device. For example, you can set it up as a low-cost desktop computer, connect it to a hard drive and make it into a file storage server, set it up as a wireless extender or even as a VPN. There are countless things that you can do with it.

Today I’m going to show you how to set up the Raspberry Pi 3 for the first time. We are going to install the latest version of Raspbian Lite and we’re going to set up wireless connectivity.

Instructions

1. Download and install the latest version of Raspbian

The first thing that we need to do is to download the latest version of Raspbian Lite. Once downloaded, unzip the image using an application like WinRar. Then use Etcher to burn the image into an SD card.

2. Enable SSH

By default Raspbian has SSH disabled so to enable it in the Lite version, we will need to save a text file named ssh in the boot partition of the SD card.

3. Setup the Raspberry Pi

Now that we have the Raspbian image set on the SD card, we can now connect everything to the Pi. Connect the Pi to the router using an Ethernet cable, then insert the SD card and connect the power adapter.

Now we’ll need to check what IP address the Pi is getting. To make it simple, we can use the app called Fing to check the connected devices to the network. You can also access the router settings page to verify the Pi’s IP address.

4. SSH to Raspberry Pi and reset default password

once you know the Pi’s IP address, use PuTTY to SSH into the Raspberry Pi. You will need to enter the Pi’s IP in the Host Name (or IP address) field. Leave the Port set to 22 and then click on Open.

To log into the Pi for the first time, use the default username and password:

Username: pi

Password: raspberry

To reset the password, enter the command, sudo raspi-config then go into Change User password and enter the password that you would like for your Pi.

Before you leave this configuration page, you also want to set the Timezone, so go into Localisation Options > Change Timezone and then select your location. Once you are done, click Finish. The Raspberry Pi is going to reboot itself so give it a minute and then restart the session.

5. Set WiFi connectivity

To set up the Pi to connect via wireless, enter this command:

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Then paste the following at the bottom:

network={ ssid="Your_WiFi_name" psk="Your_WiFi_password" }

Replace Your_WiFi_name with your own network name and Your_WiFi_password with your wireless password.

When you are done, press Ctrl X to exit the configuration, then press Y and Enter to save the changes.

Reboot the Pi with the command, sudo reboot then unplug the Ethernet cable from the Pi, give it a minute and restart the session.

Note: When you are done with the setup, configure the router to always assign the same IP address to the Raspberry Pi. This will ensure that you don’t have any issues in the future connecting to it.

6. Update and upgrade all packages

Last but not least, we want to check and install all the latest packages. To do this, run the command, sudo apt-get update then when it’s done run, sudo apt-get upgrade Before the updates get installed, a prompt will come up stating the amount of storage needed for the updates. Press Y and then Enter to continue with the updates.

OK, so we cover the initial setup of the Raspberry Pi. On the next post, we will setup Samba which will allow us to manage the Pi’s folders and files from a Windows computer.