Remote access to your Raspberry Pi

That’s it—I’ve finally decided to start my homelab: a place to experiment, break things, learn, and start all over again.

I had a Raspberry Pi 4B sitting in a box, so I figured, why not jump in?

Discovering What’s on the Pi

I plugged it into my monitor to see what was on it. Turns out I had installed Ubuntu MATE desktop a few years ago. It worked… sort of. I connected to Wi-Fi and started downloading a few things, but every time I opened Firefox, the system froze. After several restarts and failed attempts, I decided Ubuntu MATE wasn’t the right fit—especially with only 2 GB of RAM.

Choosing the Right OS

To save resources, I went with Raspberry Pi OS Lite instead of the full desktop version. It boots incredibly fast and gives me a clean terminal-only environment—perfect for setting up a lightweight home server for experimentation.

Setting Up Remote Access (SSH)

Of course, I didn’t want to plug the Pi into a monitor every time I wanted to use it. Remote access via SSH is the way to go, and luckily, it’s very straightforward:

On your Raspberry Pi, open the terminal and run:
```
 sudo raspi-config
```
Go to Interfacing Options → SSH → Enable → OK → Finish.
Find your Pi’s IP address:
```
 hostname -I
```
From another computer, connect using:
```
 ssh <username>@<ip-address>
```
The first time you connect, you’ll get a security warning—type yes to proceed. Enter your password when prompted.

You should now see the Raspberry Pi prompt:

<username>@<hostname> ~ $

And that’s it—you’re now connected remotely and ready to start experimenting with your homelab!

Remote access to your Raspberry Pi

Comments

Homelab

More from this blog

Deploying AWS Bedrock AgentCore Agents with Pulumi

Deploying AWS Bedrock Agents with Pulumi

How to Use Docker Compose Profiles

How to Solve dependencyFailedException on AWS Bedrock

Discovering What’s on the Pi

Choosing the Right OS

Setting Up Remote Access (SSH)

Command Palette

Comments

Homelab

More from this blog

Discovering What’s on the Pi

Choosing the Right OS

Setting Up Remote Access (SSH)