This wiki provides instructions for setting up a Raspberry Pi, connecting it to WiFi, updating firmware, installing Python and libraries, and configuring settings. It also includes hardware setup instructions for the XBee module and software setup instructions for the computer, including installing the FTDI driver and XCTU software for configuring the XBee mesh network.

<aside> 💡 Tip: Click on the corresponding section header in the quick-jump wiki below to be automatically redirected to a desired section.

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Raspberry Pi Setup

Firmware Installation

• (If Raspberry Pi is not set up) Make sure the Raspberry Pi is running the Debian Lite version of the Raspberry Pi OS (Raspbian Lite. If no firmware is installed yet, or another version of Debian is installed, remove the SD card, use an SD USB adapter to connect the SD card to a computer, and refer to this guide to install the firmware onto the SD card. In the Raspberry Pi Imager, keep in mind to select the option “Raspberry Pi OS (other)” and then select “Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit)”. Complete the full installation from the link mentioned above. Follow through with the initial setup process of the Raspberry Pi.

WiFi Connection

• We need to connect our Raspberry Pi to the internet. With the recently-updated WiFi protocols implemented by UT, we have to take additional steps. With the Pi’s SD card still connected to the computer, create an empty file named “wpa-supplicant” in the boot folder of the SD card (this “boot” folder should contain other files such as bootcode.bin, loader.bin, start.elf, kernel.img, cmdline.txt, etc.). Edit the file (with notepad or any other desired/installed text editor), and paste the following text into the body of the file:

country=us
update_config=1
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant

network={
 ssid="utexas-iot"
 identity="KeittLab"
 password="16148665613613134566"
}

• Save the file and safely eject the SD card. After you plug the SD card back into the Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi should be able to connect to the internet on boot. Confirm this by pinging a random website: i.e. “ping google.com” to see if data packets are received properly. If you see “… bytes from…” every second (something that looks like the image below), your Raspberry Pi is properly connected to the internet. Press Ctrl+C (Windows) or Cmd+C (Mac) to stop the continuous ping.

Raspbian Update

• Run the following commands to update the Pi firmware to the latest version:

sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Python & Libraries Installation

• Run the following commands to install Python, as well as other libraries that can aid development and testing:

sudo apt-get install python3-pip

pip install numpy
pip install scipy
pip install datetime
pip install psutil
pip install pyxlsx
pip install serial
pip install pyserial
pip install digi
#pip install xbee (need to verify)
pip install digi-xbee

Settings Configuration