Adafruit's Raspberry Pi Lesson 5.

Using a Console Cable

Created by Simon Monk

Guide Contents Guide Contents Overview You Will Need

Part

2 3 4
4

Software Installation (Mac) Software Installation (Windows) Connect the Lead Test & Configure

5 7 10 12

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Overview
In this lesson you will learn how to remote control your Raspberry Pi with a console cable.

The great advantage of connecting this way is that it can even supply the power for your Pi and you do not need keyboard, mouse or display attached to the Pi to log into it. You will need to install terminal emulation software (ZOC) and also USB drivers for the Console Lead. ZOC is available for Mac and Windows and allows you to communicate through a serial port from your Mac or PC to another computer in this case the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi uses its built-in serial port to allow devices to connect to its console and issue commands just as if you were logged in. In the next lesson, we will look at another way of doing much the same thing but over a local network using something called SSH.

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You Will Need

To follow this lesson, you will need:

Part

Raspberry Pi

Adafruit Console Lead https://www.adafruit.com/products/954

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Software Installation (Mac)

Install ZOC for Mac, you can download it from here: http://www.emtec.com/zoc/index.html (http://adafru.it/aTT)

Now fetch the installer package for the USB drivers from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/osx-pl2303. (http://adafru.it/aWQ) If using Lion, try this driver here http://changux.co/osx-installer-to-pl2303-serial-usb-on-osxlio (http://adafru.it/aWR) Both downloads are standard Mac installers. Accept all defaults when prompted.

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Software Installation (Windows)

Download and install ZOC from here: http://www.emtec.com/zoc/index.html (http://adafru.it/aTT) The download is an installer program that you can save to the Desktop or some other convenient location and run to install ZOC. During installation, the ZOC installer will ask you a number of questions. Accept all the defaults, including the question below.

Install PL2303 Drivers from here: http://www.prolific.com.tw/US/ShowProduct.aspx? p_id=225&pcid=41 (http://adafru.it/aTV) This will save a zip file called PL2303_Prolific_DriverInstaller_v1_7_0.zip. Unzip this onto the desktop and within the folder run the installer called PL2303_Prolific_DriverInstaller_v1.7.0.exe.

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The driver is installed in such a way that when you later plug in the USB console lead, it will still launch the Found New Hardware wizard. If you allow the Wizard to search the Internet and install it should work.

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When it has finished installing the driver, you should get this message:

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Connect the Lead

The Console lead has four female connections that can be plugged directly onto the GPIO header of the Raspberry Pi.

For this experiment, the serial lead is going to power the Raspberry Pi. So, DO NOT attach the Pi's USB power adapter. If you would rather power the Pi from your USB power adapter then leave the Red lead from the Serial lead un attached. The important thing here is to only power it from one source, the USB power adaptor or the Console Lead BUT NOT BOTH. Attach the leads as shown below:

The connections are to the outside pin connections of the GPIO header. See Lesson 4, for more information about the header: http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-4-gpiosetup/the-gpio-connector (http://adafru.it/aTW)

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The The The The

red lead should be connected to 5V, black lead to GND, white lead to TXD. green lead to RXD.

Check the diagram below if you are not sure about the connections. But note that the connect is being viewed upside down, so rotate the diagram by 180 degrees to compare it with the photograph.

Now plug in the USB lead and you will see the Pi's power LED should light.

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Test & Configure

Start ZOC. The instructions below are for Mac, but its just the same as using ZOC on Windows, except the icons look a bit different. When ZOC starts it will open the quick connection profile below:

Cancel this and from the Options menu, select the option 'Edit Session Profile'. Click on 'Devices' on the left and then 'Serial/Direct'.

Change the baud rate to 115200 and click the scan button to find the serial port for the USB Console adapter. On a Mac, this will have a name something like /dev/cu.PL2303-00401124, on Windows it may just be called COM7 but it will probably be the only serial port in the list. Also change both RTS and DTR to be off. When its all changed, it should look like this:

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Now click Save and then click the Quick Connection icon and select Serial/Direct from the connection type.

Press Connect and the communication should start with a prompt from the Raspberry Pi for you to log on. For a new installation of Occidentalis or Wheezy, the default username is pi and the default password is raspberry.

If you are using Windows, it will look more like this:

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Thats it! You are connected and can use the command line to navigate around your Pi.

In the next session we will look at using SSH as another means of connecting to your Pi over your local network.

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Last Updated: 2013-01-25 03:00:21 PM EST

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