Personal Services: Raspberry Pi Zero Setup

Submitted by code_admin on Mon, 07/23/2018 - 11:02

Getting Personal Services working on a Raspberry Pi Zero

I will document here how I have got my Raspberry Pi Zero working with Personal services.
I want my Raspberry Pi Zero to work in the followin way:

  • Headless - not connected to a monitor or TV
  • Battery Powered
  • Connected to my WiFi network

Items I used in solution


Raspberry Pi Zero I wanted to get this set-up without doing any soldering
32Gb SD card (class 10) 32Gb is more than I needed, and I went for a class 10 card as it is higher quality and faster.
Pi compatible WiFi Adapter
MicroUSB to USB lead This is needed to connect the WiFi Adapter - I used the one I got when I subscribed to the raspberry pi magazine.
Mobile phone portable power pack One of those cheap power packs for giving a phone an emergency charge. It came with a microUSB adapter. I don't know how long it would last.

Preparing the SDCard

Using my main laptop I downloaded the latest version of Raspbian and installed it on the SD card.

Configuring Raspbian and connecting to WiFi Network

I did not want to do any soldiering on the Pi Zero which means it is impossible to connect to it with a TTL cable. This makes it hard to get a console to the Pi as my wifi network requires a password. To get round this I opted to use a spare Raspberry Pi 2 I had to set the SD card up.
The following steps achieved this.

  • Get Raspberry Pi 2 and remove any components it has plugged into it (USB plugs, HDMI connector, SD card
  • Plug in the SD card that we will use for the Pi Zero into the Pi 2
  • Plug the WiFi Adapter we will use for the Pi Zero into the Pi 2
  • Connect TTL cable to raspberry Pi
  • Connect other end of TTL cable to laptop USB port
  • Setup wifi password (sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf)
  • Setup pi host name and/or static ip address (/etc/hosts /etc/hostname)
  • Test it all works by rebooting the Pi 2 and connecting to it via SSH
  • Test again by removing the SD card and wifi adapter and plugging them into the Pi zero. I am now able to ssh to the pi zero

Setup Personal Services on Pi Zero

Now that we have an SSH access to the Pi Zero we can follow the standard Raspberry Pi install process. Click here for instructions.

RJM Article Type
Work Notes