The IP configuration of new provisoined Raspberry Pi struggled me a long time. I need to connect to a monitor so I login to system and configure IP address. The problem was I don’t have monitor. I only have a laptop.
Last year, my old laptop dead. I connected the laptop monitor to a HDMI board to my Raspberry Pi. It’s not a low cost solution, it costed me more than $10. And the monitor, cables and board looks uglily.
Actually there is another solution to leveraging laptop keyboard and monitor. It’s serials port to console. Something similar like when you configure Cisco network switches. Following is how to do it. I achieve that on Raspberry Pi 2.
- You need to buy a USB to TTL device with chipset CP2102.
- Connect the pins to Raspberry Pi 2. Refer here for GPIO layout.
TXD > Pi RXD Pin #10 (GPIO 16)
RXD > Pi TXD Pin #08 (GPIO 15)
GND > Pi GND Pin #6 - Connect the USB to laptop. You will see a device in ‘Device Manager’ needs drivers.
- Download driver and install.
- Download Putty and install.
- Open Putty and “Serial”.
- “Serial line” is COM3 or COM4.
- “Speed” is 115200.
The USB to TTL I bought on Taobao (Chinese version of Aliexpress). It’s around $1.2 including shipping.
