Using the VNC viewer

     Taking my laptop and new Raspberry Pi 3 to the living room and using the big screen TV was a bit of a hassle. The tutorials I was watching on You Tube used a program to see the terminal and use the RPi2 right on their desktop without having to hook it up to a keyboard, mouse or screen.  This is called using the RPi in headless mode.

     I searched around on You Tube to find out how to do that on the RPi3. It turns out there is a utility on the RPi3 already installed but you do need to hook it up with all the peripherals to set it up. The utility is the RealVNC software. There's some information here at RaspberryPi.org but it was very simple to do using the GUI (graphic user interface or Windows-like environment).



     I visited https://www.realvnc.com/en/ to sign up and download the RealVNC viewer. I ran the viewer on my laptop and signed in. I changed the RPi's preferences to allow VNC connections and rebooted the system. This screen can be found if you click on the raspberry on the upper left, select Preferences to open the next menu, then select Raspberry Pi Configuration. Select the second tab for Interfaces, then click the dot next to Enable on the line for VNC. There are other methods to connect to the RPi on this screen but I
m not using those now.

     I opened RealVNC, it came installed, on the RPi. It is found in the main menu, the raspberry in the upper left, in the Internet menu. I signed in and they were instantly recognized as linked together. Since I only have the viewer on my laptop, my laptop cannot be controlled by the RPi. You can also set it up on a tablet or phone for up to 5 devices but I just want to use the 2 for now.

     Now all that my RPi needs is a power cord connected to it to run and use from my laptop.  I run the VNC viewer and they are instantly connected. I felt so accomplished figuring this out. It's good for my ego even if it is a little thing. I've never done anything like this before and it's pretty awesome. I kept watching my videos and working on the RPi from the same screen. It is convenient and since the keyboard, mouse and HDMI are not being used, the RPi is running much cooler. It was not very hot before but now it doesn't even get warm.

     Next,  I want to figure out how to connect it via Ethernet cable directly to my laptop but that will be for another week.