The home hub will be running headless, as all interaction will be via the web interface, so RASPBIAN JESSIE LITE is the ideal starting point. Get the latest version raspbian-2017-07-05 from here:
http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/images/
Please note that the latest version of Raspbian, Stretch, is not compatible due to the hub’s dependence on the PHP Pear library for database access.
Then you can prepare your SD card. I have found that a 4GB card is perfectly adequate for storing 2 weeks of archive for about 10 sensors, and backs up in reasonable time.
The initial set-up needs to be done with a connected screen and keyboard, as SSH is disabled by default.
sudo raspi-config
- change default pi password
- change hostname to home-hub
- set locale and timezone
- enable ssh
- make minimum memory available to GPU
- reboot
You should now be able to connect the pi to your home network and access via SSH.
In the next post we will install samba, allowing us to manage our system from a client PC.