Change the Raspberry Pi name to make connecting to it easier Pro Preview

When connecting to the Raspberry PI you will see it on your phone with a default name of "PerfectPi". You can change this name to something that you would like. Actually, you should change the name to something else to learn how this name could be changed. With this tutorial, you will learn some pretty interesting hacks and a thing or two about file system

To access the full video please subscribe to FLLCasts.com

Subscribe

  • #727
  • 19 Feb 2018

TL. DR

Place the SD card in the computer, open the card with file explorer suitable for your operating system, locate the file /etc/hostname, open it and where you see the name "PerfectPi" or "raspberrypi" write the name that you want.

Mounting the SD Card when there is already an image on it.

There are different ways to mount and unmount the SD card depending on the operating system that you are using. We would do different tutorials for operating systems that are Windows, Linux, Mac OS.

Locating the file

After you mount the SD card you will see a new device shown in you computer explorer. This is "rootfs". You should open this device. And there is a folder called "etc" and in this folder, there is a file called "hostname". 

Most of the time, we would refer to files using their full paths. The full path of a file is the name of all the folders in which this file is and the name of the file itself. In this case for a file called "hostname" located in "etc" the name of the file is:

/etc/hostname

Feel like a hacker?

This is getting pretty technical. Do you feel like a hacker :). Open the file /etc/hostname. Open it with a text editor for your operating system. For Windows, this would be Notepad.

Changing the value of the raspberry name in the file

In the file, there is a single line

raspberrypi 

Change this line to 

MyNewName

Where "MyNewName" is the new name for your Raspberry Pi. Be creative. Find something useful.

Unmounting the SD Card

Don't forget to properly unmount (eject) the SD card before removing it from the computer. If you don't and if you just remove the SD card then the file will probably not be saved. 

Courses and lessons with this Tutorial

This Tutorial is used in the following courses and lessons

Image for Perfect STEM course. Module 1 - Smart Car with Raspberry PI
  • 118
  • 42:47
  • 136
Image for Configure Raspberry Pi name
  • 6
  • 0
  • 7
  • 3d_rotation 0