My Raspberry Pi A+ only has one USB port so I can’t easily use my mouse, keyboard, and Wifi at the same time. So I’m going to do the following :

1. Set up Rasbian
2. Configure Wifi USB adapter
3. Try out SSH

Set up Rasbian

Getting up and running with Rasbian on the RPi is pretty well-documented. Pretty much followed the directions from the Raspberry Pi website (Rasbian Setup).

Formatting the microSD card using SD Card Formatter:

Wiping the microSD card using SD Card Formatter

Writing the Rasbian image to the disk using Win32 Disk Imager :

Writing Rasbian image using Win32 Disk Imager

Now for the fun part, booting up !

First Boot

And was greeted by the Raspberry Pi Software Configuration Tool (raspi-config) :

raspi-config

I just used the right-arrow key to go to “Finish” and reboot the RPi.

After logging in, I realized the keyboard was set up for the UK layout. This became obvious when I was trying to type a “#” sign using SHIFT-3. I got a “£” sign instead.

A quick hop to /etc/default/keyboard to fix this :

sudo nano /etc/default/keyboard

From there, I changed XKBLAYOUT="gb" to XKBLAYOUT="us"

Then restart the keyboard service :

service keyboard-setup restart

Configure Wifi USB adapter

Now that I can type properly, I edited my /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/wpa-supplicant/wpa-supplicant.conf files to enable the Wifi adapter using a static IP so I can find it easily when I try to connect to it :

sudo /etc/network/interfaces

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

# /etc/network/interfaces
 
auto wlan0
 
iface lo inet loopback
 
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
address 192.168.0.120
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

sudo /etc/wpa-supplicant/wpa-supplicant.conf

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

# /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
 
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
 
network={
  ssid="MY_SSID"
  psk="MY_PASSWORD"
}

Then I shut it down :

sudo shutdown -h now

Quickly swapped the keyboard with the Wifi adapter and restarted the RPi. Once up again, I tried pinging it with another device on the network. If this didn’t work for you, might need to trouble-shoot further.

Try out SSH

To enable SSH, I just ran

sudo raspi-config

went to 8-Advanced Options->A4 SSH and Enabled it.

From there, I was able to connect remotely from my laptop (also on the same Wifi network) using PuTTY, again with the same default login/password.