System setup:

• Windows 10
• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+

Preprequirements

• Official Raspbian is installed in the Raspberry
• Windows 10 OS and Raspberry have access to the same WiFi network

You might possibly use the Raspberry on your second screen via HDMI cable. Then to operate both your main computer and Raspberry you need two sets of keyboard and mouse, which is a headache. This is something I also did. By using the Raspberry this way, you can copy paste code snippets when googling on your computer. This is why we need VNC. By first installing VNC on your Raspberry, you can then remove the monitor from it and use only one keyboard and mouse to control the board.

VNC Setup

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a graphical desktop-sharing system that uses the Remote Frame Buffer protocol (RFB) to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard and mouse events from one computer to another, relaying the graphical-screen updates back in the other direction, over a network.

(Richardson, 1998)

There is multiple way to remote to other computers and RealVNC is used in this example. RealVNC software has two parts, server and viewer. Server is the computer the connection is made to, in this case, the raspberry Pi. Our viewer is the Windows computer.

Download the RealVNC Server and Viewer on your Raspberry Pi.

sudo apt install realvnc-vnc-server realvnc-vnc-viewer

Here the IP address of the Raspberry is shown, that is needed for connecting later on.

Now go to options and check what authentication is set. UNIX password uses the system credentials which normally are:

• user: pi
• password: raspberry

Now we need to enable the SSH and VNC. In some systems this is disabled by default.

Open the configuration from the terminal by typing:

 sudo raspi-config

Navigate into “Interfacing Options” and enable “SSH” and “VNC”

For me the “raspberry” password did not work somehow, so I needed to change the UNIX password from the terminal.

Main computer (Windows 10)

You can now disconnect the display from your Raspberry and move onto your main computer. You’ll only need the IP address of the board.

Download RealVNC Viewer on your computer.

Windows

Now connect to your Raspberry IP address so you can control it remotely.

Insert your credential here, in this case we set our Raspberry VNC credentials to UNIX, so the default value should be user: “pi”, password: “raspberry”.

The VNC connection works! Now onto the file sharing system.

Installing FileZilla

Download FileZilla (https://filezilla-project.org/)

FileZilla support FTP (File Transfer Protocol). We use SFTP (Simple File Transfer Protocol), which is unsecured file transfer protocol. If your WiFi is secure, this protocol will work just fine.

Open the FileZilla and type in your Raspberry Pi IP address with prefix “sftp://”.

Since we set the Raspberry credentials to Unix and changed the password to default, we can use the default values.

Now the files can be transferrer by drag and drop from Local site (your PC) to the Remote site (Raspberry)

There are multiple different ways to transfer and control files on your Raspberry Pi and this is the first one I tested. Please feel free to suggest better ways.

References

Richardson, T. S.-F. (1998). Virtual network computing. IEEE Internet Computing.