How to Set Up a Raspberry Pi on CMU WiFi (UPDATED)

Last Tested in April 2019

Connecting a Raspberry Pi to Carnegie Mellon’s wireless or wired network is a total nightmare. Since I was a student in 2017, this page contains up-to-date instructions for connecting a device in the least convoluted way.

Based on what you have access to, follow one of the three instructions below.

1) A Raspberry Pi, a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, and SD card → Preferred Desktop Set Up Instructions

2) A Raspberry Pi whose MAC address is known or can be known from previous projects or set-ups, a device with network access and an SD card slot (like a laptop), and SD card → Preferred Headless Set Up Instructions

3) A Raspberry Pi whose MAC address is unknown, and SD card → Alternative Headless Set Up Instructions

Option 1: Preferred Desktop Set Up Instructions (easiest)

If you have a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, and SD card, you can boot your device and connect to the network with the GUI.

Ensure your device has an OS on in, or start by flashing Raspbian Desktop to your SD card.
Insert SD card. Connect mouse, keyboard, and monitor.
Boot up, and connect to CMU-Secure using the GUI (select the stadium seating Wi-Fi icon and use your CMU-Secure log-in credentials
If you need to enable SSH (remote shell access), open Preferences> Raspberry Pi Configuration > Interfaces tab > Select Enabled next to SSH > Click OK and close the window.

You’re done! Enjoy your RPi.

Option 2: Preferred Headless Set Up Instructions

If you don’t have a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, you can boot your device and connect to the network “headless” with this method long as you already have your devices’s MAC address.

Ensure your device has an OS on in, or start by flashing Raspbian to your SD card
Place your SD card in your computer, and enable SSH on the Pi by placing a file named ssh, without any extension, onto the boot partition of the SD card. You can do this by navigating to the Boot partition in Terminal and entering touch ssh
Insert SD card and boot up your Pi.
Visit getonline.cmu.edu on another device already with network access to register your Raspberry Pi on CMU-DEVICE. Make sure to pick a hostname you’ll remember.
SSH into your device from your primary computer using ssh pi@YOUR-HOSTNAME@wifi.local.cmu.edu with the password raspberry
Immediately change the default password by entering the passwd command, otherwise your device is essentially accessible to anyone on the internet.

You’re done! Enjoy your RPi! Connect to it from SSH using your new password with pi@YOUR-HOSTNAME@wifi.local.cmu.edu

Option 3: Alternative Headless Set Up Instructions

If you don’t have a mouse, keyboard, and monitor and don’t already have your device’s MAC address, you’re in for quite a process! Firstly you need your devices MAC address— there’s a few ways you can do this, but we’ll highlight just one, though it requires you to have access to a home (non-cmu and not starbucks/library/etc) wi-fi network.

Ensure your device has an OS on in, or start by flashing Raspbian to your SD card
Place your SD card in your computer, and enable SSH on the Pi by placing a file named ssh, without any extension, onto the boot partition of the SD card. You can do this by navigating to the Boot partition in Terminal and entering touch ssh
In Terminal, navigate to the SD card’s directory, most likely name Boot
```
cd /Volumes/boot
```
Create and open file wpa_supplicant.conf (this will replace the current RPi wifi config on next boot)
```
sudo nano wpa_supplicant.conf
```
On your laptop or desktop, go to steveedson.co.uk/tools/wpa and copy the wpa_supplicant text needed for your home wifi network.

Paste (ctrl+v) the text from the previous step into the file, it should look something similar to this

country=US
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
       ssid="SOMETHING"
       key_mgmt=NONE
    }

Save the file (ctrl+o) close it (ctrl+x)
Insert SD card and boot up your Pi.
Connect to the same home network as the Pi from a laptop or desktop, and scan the network for your Pi by using a command like arp -a in Terminal. When you spot your Pi copy down its MAC address (no need to note its IP though)
Visit getonline.cmu.edu on your laptop/desktop and register your Raspberry Pi on CMU-DEVICE with its MAC address. Make sure to pick a hostname you’ll remember.
Power down, and place your SD card back in your computer— now we have to tell it to auto-connect to CMU-DEVICE when you’re on campus again.
In Terminal, navigate to the SD card’s directory, most likely name Boot
```
cd /Volumes/boot
```
Edit the wpa_supplicant.conf (this will replace the current RPi wifi config on next boot)
```
sudo nano wpa_supplicant.conf
```

Delete its entire contents, and replace it with this

country=US
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
       ssid="CMU-DEVICE"
       key_mgmt=NONE

Save the file (ctrl+o) close it (ctrl+x)
Move your device to campus, Insert SD card and boot up your Pi.
Wait a few minutes, then SSH into your device from your primary computer using ssh pi@YOUR-HOSTNAME@wifi.local.cmu.edu with the password raspberry
Immediately change the default password by entering the passwd command, otherwise your device is essentially accessible to anyone on the internet.

You’re done! Enjoy your RPi! Connect to it from SSH using your new password with pi@YOUR-HOSTNAME@wifi.local.cmu.edu

Getting a raspberry Pi registered on CMU’s wifi is weirdly one of the most challenging parts of cmu— If you have questions about these instructions, or they are not working, feel free to comment below.