The very first step before using the Raspberry Pi is to flash an operating system on the SD card you
have and do some configuration.
In this lesson, I will show you how you can easily install the Raspberry Pi OS on your micro SD card,
but also how to set up the Wi-Fi and an SSH connection so we can get access to the Pi.
And first of all, you can go to the Raspberry Pi Dotcom website here okay.
And you will click on software.
So slash software in the URL.
You can easily find this page we are going to download.
So we are going to install Raspberry Pi OS.
But to install that on the SD card we are going to download the Raspberry Pi Imager software.
Okay so here I am on windows I'm going to click on download for windows.
If you are on macOS or ubuntu you're going to click on those buttons here.
So download for windows.
Let's wait a bit so that it's downloaded.
And now we can install it.
So let's install it.
So you might have a pop up.
You click on yes.
And then let's install.
Okay.
And when it's done you can just run it.
So or not.
And then if you just search on the bar here search Raspberry Pi Imager, you can easily find it.
The first time I have to press.
Yes, I have a pop up so that I can allow the software to run with the correct permissions.
Okay.
And that's the Raspberry Pi imager.
So I have installed the 1.8.5 here.
You don't necessarily need to have the exact same version, but make sure that you have at least 1.8
now.
And before you do anything with the SD card, make sure first that your computer here is connected to
the Wi-Fi network.
You want to use for your Raspberry Pi.
So here what I've done is I have set my smartphone as a hotspot.
Okay.
And I have named the network your Wi-Fi network to make it easier for the course.
So this is the network that I'm using for this computer and that I'm going to set also for the Raspberry
Pi.
Okay.
Very important to have the same, because if your Raspberry Pi is not in the same network as your computer,
you simply won't be able to find it.
Okay.
So first make sure that this is the Wi-Fi network you want to use for the Raspberry Pi and connect your
computer to it.
Then go back to the Raspberry Pi Imager, and what you can do now is to insert the SD card into your
computer.
So micro SD card.
Maybe you need an adapter, maybe you need an SD card adapter or a USB adapter.
But put your SD card into your computer.
What we will do now is click on Raspberry Pi device, choose device here and you will choose.
So here I am using the Raspberry Pi five.
But if you were to use the Raspberry Pi four then you would click on that one okay.
And you can see you have other versions as well.
So I'm going to click on Raspberry Pi five because I'm installing Raspberry Pi OS on the five.
Okay.
Then you choose an operating system and we are going to choose simply the first one.
So Raspberry Pi OS.
We're going to take the 64 bit here.
That's Debian Bookworm okay that I'm installing here.
So let's click on that one.
And then the storage is going to be the.
So you can see here the SD card.
So here I have 16GB the SD card that you have just mounted on your computer.
All right.
Once you have those three settings you can click on next.
And here before you click on yes would you like to apply customization settings.
You're going to click on Edit Settings.
And well let's go through all the settings that we need.
So first I don't know if those maybe are not checked.
So you can check set hostname.
Um maybe just put a Raspberry Pi okay.
So we have this that we can easily find on the network.
And a quick note is that if you are installing Raspberry Pi OS on a few Raspberry Pi boards.
Maybe choose a different hostname for each board.
But as for now, we just have one.
Let's just keep it simple.
We name it Raspberry Pi.
Okay, then you're going to set a username and a password.
This is very important.
This is the well this is the user you are going to use to connect to the Raspberry Pi.
So the username is going to be pi by default.
You can just write this one.
And then the password.
Let's just write a custom password here and make sure that.
So make sure that you write the correct password.
Because if you make a typo here and then you try to connect to the Raspberry Pi, well if the password
doesn't match, you will need to reinstall the OS again.
Then you can click on configure the Wi-Fi.
And you can see here it has automatically detected your Wi-Fi network.
So that's the one that I'm connected to here okay.
And this is the one we're going to use for the Raspberry Pi and for the password.
I'm just gonna write the password just in case.
Okay.
For this Wi-Fi network.
So make sure that you have the correct password, okay?
You can also show the password.
So I have also named my password.
Your password to make it easier.
All right.
So very important here so that the Raspberry Pi can connect to the Wi-Fi network.
And then you can go down and set local settings okay with the time zone.
And if you have a keyboard layout that's different from a Qwerty.
So US keyboard you can also check it here.
Okay.
And once you have set all of that you can go to services.
And if it's disabled you enable SSH with password authentication.
That's all you need to do.
And then on options we don't have anything else to do.
You can just keep those options.
Okay.
So to recap we have those four settings here with the hostname the username password the Wi-Fi and the
locale plus the SSH.
Okay.
Those are the important settings.
Then we click on save and then we click on yes to apply those custom settings.
And you can see that, well all existing data will be erased okay.
So everything that's on your SD card will be erased and replaced by the operating system.
So make sure you don't have any file that's important that you want to keep.
Okay.
So back up your SD card if you ever had some stuff on it.
And then you can click on yes.
This is going to write the OS on the SD card and also to verify it.
So it's going to take a few minutes.
You can take a coffee break and come back for the following of the installation.
So the writing is completed.
But now it's going to also verify.
So you have to wait a bit more.
All right.
And now the Raspberry Pi OS has been successfully flashed onto your SD card.
So you can see you can click on, well continue.
And you can remove the SD card from your computer.
In the next lesson we are going to use this SD card and boot the Raspberry Pi for the first time.