Enable WiFi on a headless Raspberry Pi

Enabling WiFi on a headless Raspberry Pi is really simple. Here are the steps:

1. Take out the SD card from Raspberry Pi and insert into a computer/laptop using a SD card reader in write mode.
2. SD card will be named as "boot" on a drive on your computer.
3. Open a text editor and create a file named "wpa_suppplicant.conf" on the root of "boot" or directly on the SD card.
4. Add the below contents into the file and save it.

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

network={
    ssid="NETWORK-NAME"
    psk="NETWORK-PASSWORD"
}

Remember:

• country should have a two character country code of your country.
• ssid should be your Wifi Network Name in double quotes
• psk should be the your Wifi Password in double quotes.
• After saving the file check that the extension of the file is .conf and not .conf.txt. If so, then change it to .conf.

Now, eject the SD card and insert it in Raspberry Pi and it will automatically connect to the Wifi.

How to enable SSH on Raspberry Pi in five super easy and quick steps

 Following are the easy steps to enable SSH on Raspberry PI without any complications:

Step 1: Shutdown Raspberry Pi

Step 2: Take out the memory card and plug it in any computer using the card reader.

Step 3: Open /boot partition of the card

Step 4: Create an empty file named "ssh" on the boot partition without any extension.

Step 5: Unmount memory card and insert into Raspberry Pi and start it.

That's it !!

To connect to the raspberry pi using SSH, just use this command

 ssh <user>@<IP address of Raspberry pi>

How to enable Safemode for search engines on your home network using PiHole

If you are using Pi hole it is piece of cake to restrict any unsuitable content on your home network. In this blog, I will show how easy it is to restrict search engines search to Safe Content/Restricted Mode.

Following are the steps:

• Open Pihole admin console on the browser by opening https://<IP>/admin/index.php.

• Login into the console.

• Go to Local DNS -> CNAME Records

• Add server address for the search engine in Domain and its corresponding safe search server in Target Domain

• Click on Add

• You can see that the server and the corresponding safe search server is mapped in the list.

• Similarly do for all the search engines you want to add.

Names of the search engine domains and their corresponding safe servers:

Google: 

Domain: www.google.com

Target Domain: forcesafesearch.google.com

Bing:

Domain: www.bing.com

Target Domain: strict.bing.com

DuckDuckGo:

Domain: www.duckduckgo.com

Target Domain: safe.duckduckgo.com