RPi4 Operating “Headless”, on-line magazine, etc.
One of the things I learned early on in playing with Raspberry Pi’s is the sheer convenience of operating them remotely using a program called “VNC” (for Virtual Network Computing/Computer), server edition on the Pi and a “VNC Viewer” on my laptop computer. My existing “Pis” are in a room in the back of the house we call our “Ham Shack”, and I routinely operate them from the comfort of our couch in the Living Room. 😉 I might also point out, once you are operating “headless”, that means you no longer have to have an HDMI display/monitor/television connected, nor a keyboard and mouse. You are literally operating your RPi across your network but using your remote display, keyboard and mouse – and the RPi doesn’t mind at all.
MagPi is an on-line magazine, operating under the auspices of Raspberrypi.org which is focused on all things Raspberry Pi and kind of fun to follow. You can buy or subscribe to it on-line, but it is also offered free for download in PDF form. (Which you can see by clicking on the link I included above).
OBTW, if you download a free copy of their MagPi Issue #86 in PDF form, you will find an article on page 64 entitled “VNC with Raspberry Pi”. Of course, that is a better description on setting up for remote control than I can give here in a blog. Have a peek! (There are several PDF readers, including Adobe Acrobat, available for just about any operating system – getting and installing a specific reader program is a bit outside the scope of this post – but google and duck-duck-go search engines are still your friend).
As far as the latest RPi4 with Raspbian “Buster” installed for an operating system, if you click on the Raspberry to get into the menu at the upper left, then select “Preferences | Raspberry Pi Configuration”, then in the associated window click on “Interfaces”, you will find you can enable both “SSH” and “VNC” (server edition) – if you enable both, then reboot, you will see the associate “V2” icon come up in the upper right of your screen. A left-click on that Icon will result in a window showing what IP address on your Wifi or LAN it is operating at – write that down and point your “VNC Viewer” at it. 😉 A right-click on that icon will give you access to “Options” and other selections. Check it out.
I am using an old, 2017, version of the RealVNC Viewer program on a Windows 10 computer, but there are other VNC Viewers available and I’m pretty sure they are all compatible with the server on RPi4. Also the program called “Putty” works well with the SSH server.
73, dave/W6TUX