Raspberry Pi Setup

Let’s Kick Off the Raspberry Pi Adventure!

Why Start from Scratch?

Starting from scratch is like starting a video game on easy mode – it’s the best way to learn, have some fun, and maybe break a few things along the way - because let’s be real, that’s where the real learning happens!

I recently got my hands on the shiny new RPi 5 and thought, “Why not turn this setup into a fun experience to share with all of you?” So here we are, diving into the setup needed to kickstart your AI projects on the RPi.

What you will learn here:

1. Connect to your RPi using SSH or VNC
2. Install Docker
3. Install VSCode and relevant extensions
4. Connect to GitHub with SSH
5. Increase swap in your Device

1. Connect to your RPi using SSH or VNC

For a more detailed explanation you can use this link.

Make Your RPi Discoverable

• Head to RPi Configuration > Interfaces
• Turn on the switches for ssh and vnc

1.1. Setup RealVNC in RPi

If your RPi is headless (doesn’t have a physical montitor), this will allow you to connect from another device.¹, ²

sudo apt install realvnc-vnc-server

Once intalled just expose an IP address that you will be using to connect to it.

vncserver-virtual

1.2. Setup your other device used to connect to RPi

I am using an iPad for this, but the next steps shouldn’t be very different for other devices.

• You can use IP Scanner app to scan your local network devices. If you are connected to the same Network as your RPi, the IP number appears there.
• You can SSH into your RPi using Termius. This is done easily by creating a new connection and using the IP you got on the previous point as the Hostname.
• If you want remote acces to your desktop you have to make sure to first run vncserver-virtual on your RPI and this will give you an IP number. Use this to set a new connection within the RVNC Viewer in you iPad.

2. Install docker

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh get-docker.sh
sudo usermod -aG docker [user_name]

After executing this, make sure to reboot your RPi to make sure the installation is complete. You can test docker by executing the next commands.³

docker version
docker info
docker run hello-world

3. Install VSCode and relevant extensions

sudo apt install code

Relevant Extensions to install:

• Python, Pylance, and Python Debugger
• Docker
• Black Formatter
  • Set `Editor: Default Formatter’ as ‘Black Formatter’.
  • Go to Black-formatter: Args and set --line-length=79.
  • Set editor.formatOnSave to true.
• autoDocstring
  • You can choose the docstring format of your preference.
• GitLens
• Dev Containers
  • Include all the previous extensions by identifier within Dev Containers: Default Extensions so all your extensions will always be installed.
  • Update the dev.containers.defaultFeatures and include inside it all the settings you want to propagate to your containers. (e.g. all the black Formatter and autoDocstring settings)

4. Connect to GitHub with SSH

• Generate new ssh key, ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "[your_email@domain.com]"
• Start the agent in the background, eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
• Add your key to the agent, ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
• Copy your key by printing it in the terminal, cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
• Sign in to your GitHub account and go to Settings > Access > SSH and GPG > New SSH key. Paste the content of your key there.
• Test your connection, ssh -T git@github.com
• Now you can clone your repo, `git clone git@github.com:[username]/[repo_name]⁴

5. Increase swap

Working with VSCode and Docker together may be demanding for the RPi. While working on both I have found several problems where the VSCode window crashes and stops working. I found that a good solution to avoid is is by increasing the swap size. I am still testing this approach and I am not entirely aware of the full impact of doing this, so please do this with caution. This page shows how to increase the swap in a few steps.

References

1. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66875411/ ↩

2. https://help.realvnc.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002249917-VNC-Connect-and-Raspberry-Pi#transferring-files-to-and-from-your-raspberry-pi-0-6 ↩

3. https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/docker-tutorial/raspberry-pi-docker ↩

4. https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/connecting-to-github-with-ssh/generating-a-new-ssh-key-and-adding-it-to-the-ssh-agent ↩