You don’t need to connect to a external monitor when the Raspberry Pi is connected to a network. You can use Virtual Network Computing by installing tightvnc on your Raspberry Pi and using the pre installed “screen sharing” on your Mac.
First you need to install tightvnc on your Pi:
pi@raspberrypi ~ $sudo apt-get install tightvncserver
and run it
pi@raspberrypi ~ $tightvncserver
If you have a Mac you need to go to the “Finder” and select “Go > Connect to Server…” or use the Shortcut “CMD + K”
type in
vnc://192.168.1.127:5901
The ip adres can differ off course. Probably 192.168.1.x The number after the “:” differs from the port that you need to connect to and the session you have started “5901“. So “1” stands for the first session created with “tightvncserver”.
And you will need to fill in the username and password for connecting to the Pi’s desktop. The default is username: “pi” and password: “raspberry”
Autostart vncserver when Raspberry Pi boots
When you have correctly installed vnc server on your Raspberry Pi you can run an autoboot script to autostart the vnc session when Raspberry Pi boots up. The first step is to run the following command:
pi@raspberrypi ~ $sudo nano /etc/init.d/tightvnc
Then copy and paste the following code into this document:
#!/bin/sh ### BEGIN INIT INFO # Provides: tightvncserver # Required-Start: # Required-Stop: # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6 # Short-Description: start vnc server # Description: ### END INIT INFO case "$1" in start) su pi -c 'vncserver :1' echo "VNC Started" ;; stop) pkill Xtightvnc echo "VNC Terminated" ;; *) echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/tightvnc {start|stop}" exit 1 ;; esac
Enter ctrl+x and y to exit and save.
Set the permissions of the file to make it executable:
pi@raspberrypi ~ $sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/tightvnc
Update the rc.d file (which tracks which initialization scripts are in the /init.d/ folder):
pi@raspberrypi ~ $sudo update-rc.d tightvnc defaults
To test it, you need to reboot the Raspberry Pi:
pi@raspberrypi ~ $sudo reboot
Good luck!
Next up is http://www.derkbraakman.com/access-files-on-your-raspberry-pi-from-your-mac/