Beginner’s Guide to Installing Node.js on a Raspberry Pi

The page walks through setting up a Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 with Raspbian, starting from writing the image to a microSD card and booting the hardware. It then covers basic configuration, Wi-Fi setup, updates, remote desktop access from Windows, and an optional Samba file share before installing Node.js from the NodeSource repository.

Reading notes

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• The guide targets Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3, and notes that the Pi 3 does not need a separate USB Wi-Fi adapter.
• It lists the hardware needed, including a microSD card, power supply, HDMI monitor, keyboard, mouse, and Wi-Fi adapter for the Pi 2.
• Raspbian is written to the microSD card with Win32 Disk Imager after unzipping the downloaded image.
• In raspi-config, the tutorial expands the filesystem, suggests changing the default password, and adjusts locale, timezone, and keyboard layout.
• The hostname can be shortened, and SSH can be enabled for remote terminal access.
• Wi-Fi is configured from the desktop network icon, and the connection is tested with ping.
• The system is updated with sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade.
• xrdp is installed for Windows remote desktop access, and samba is installed so the Raspberry Pi can be reached by hostname from Windows.
• An optional Samba share is created at /home/pi/share by editing smb.conf and creating an SMB user with smbpasswd.
• Node.js is installed by adding the NodeSource repository with a curl command and then running sudo apt-get install -y nodejs.
• The tutorial checks the installation with node -v and a short REPL test.