Raspberry Pi: VNC Viewer

VNC Viewer:

As you already know the Raspberry Pi is a small, credit-card sized computer. Although it is a computer one of the biggest differences between it and a PC is that the PC is easier to use. You buys it with a  screen a keyboard and a trackpad/mouse. As you already might know the Raspberry Pi lacks these components which makes other computers easily accessible. Therefore, we needed a software program which would allow us to connect and access the command line wirelessly, but also to visually see the desktop of the Raspberry Pi.

We decided to use Real VNC to do this.  We chose this software because it is well documented on the internet and fairly straight-forward. Below are the steps to setup your own VNC Viewer on a Raspberry Pi:

1. First, download Real VNC Server using this command on the Pi's terminal 
• for some reason tightvncserver on images other than Occidentalis has an (almost) eternal gooey screen which you do not want. 

for Occidentalis image

                             

                                               or

for Raspbian or Debian

 


   2.  Second, download Real VNC Viewer from here (correct version for your operating system).


   3. Start VNC server by either typing in the following:

for Occidentalis

for Raspbian/Debian

 4.   Then to setup VNC Server on boot (RPi boot). Do this by following these directions:

Enters directory /home/pi/.config

Creates file "autostart"

Edits "autostart"-(works on all images)

Sets up VNC on boot

These commands first entered a directory that runs on boot and then created a file called "autostart". Inside that file it tells VNC to start on port 1. This allows us to plug the Pi in anywhere and view the "screen" with a known IP. 

Now press control-X and then Y to save changes. Then:

By setting up VNC Viewer on the Raspberry Pi and opening a few ports in my home network anybody in the world (with internet of course) can log onto and control the Raspberry Pi. This is especially useful for our project because it allows us to only buy one computer and run it at a set location, but have others edit it from anywhere. The next step on the Communications and Controls part of this project is to setup a wireless webcam video feed. Check out the next post for more do-it-yourself tips.

Now log onto VNC viewer by typing in the static IP of you Raspberry Pi:1 (ex. 10.0.1.201:1). The following is an example of the login screen and the view of the RPi through VNC. 

VNC Verification

Raspberry Pi over  VNC