brampersandon / rpizero

Raspberry Pi Zero miscellany

Raspberry Pi Zero

SSH over USB configuration

To connect to the RPi Zero without a network cable:

1. Install Raspbian on a microSD card
2. Mount the /boot partition on the card
3. In config.txt, add dtoverlay=dwc2 on a new line
4. In cmdline.txt, add modules-load=dwc2,g_ether after rootwait

NOTE: These are space-delimited values

5. Unmount and eject the card, installing it in the Pi Zero
6. Connect a microUSB cable to the USB port (not the PWR IN port) on the Pi
7. Wait a minute or two for the Pi to boot.

• Notice a new USB Ethernet device in your network console.
• In order to SSH, you will need to have this device in a "Connected" state
• You may need to set the device to link-local mode in order for this to work

8. SSH into the device with ssh [email protected]

It's even cooler if you can share your WiFi connection over Ethernet. Share the WiFi connection, not the ethernet-over-USB connection, or you will be sad.

Software

Node.js

Download the latest armv6 release from the Node.js site.

Unzip with tar xvf $FILE_YOU_DOWNLOADED.

Add that directory's bin folder to your path.

websocketd

Download the latest arm release (not arm64) from GitHub

Use wget not curl -O, as RPi native curl seems to mess up the file in transit.

Unzip, and place websocketd somewhere in your PATH (I used /usr/bin because it's easy)

Fun things that can be used for telemetry

• /sys/class/net/usb0/statistics/tx_packets for network packets transmitted
• Check other /sys/class files for fun stuff (like LED controls, etc)

Bundled apps in this repo

• reporter/: an app that curls a URL of your choosing with deets
  • set host and port for URL in app.js
• nmon/: an app that can use websockets to visualize network stuff
  • run with http-server -p 9999 & websocketd --port=8080 python nmon.py
  • kill with killall node websocketd

Other links

http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/controlling-pwr-act-leds-raspberry-pi
https://learn.adafruit.com/turning-your-raspberry-pi-zero-into-a-usb-gadget?view=all