It is annoying to have to plug in a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to the Raspberry Pi. It is also annoying to not be able to access the files or the RPi from elsewhere. SSH and GitHub can help here.

SSH allows a Pi to be used remotely. To SSH, first you need the IP address. you can hostname -I on your Pi to get the IP address. Although it may show a long string of numbers, the IP address should be four numbers separated by periods. For example, 173.2.20.192 could be an IP address. Once you have the IP address, use the command ssh <username>@<IP adress> to connect. The default username is pi. ssh pi@173.2.20.192 could connect to a pi. The first time you connect, it will give you a prompt. Type yes to continue. Then it will ask for you password on the pi. The default password is raspberry. If you want a graphical application like Idle or Scratch, use ssh -Y <username>@<IP address>. When you are finished, type exit to quit the SSH session.

Github will allow the Pi to push its files to the cloud and allow other devices to later access them. sudo apt install git to get git, so you can use GitHub. On your pi (or while using SSH) you need to identify who you are.

git config --global user.name "<Your name>"
git config --global user.email "<Your email>"

Then, make sure you are inside the directory you want on GitHub. Use git init to make it a git repository. ls -a to check that there is a .git folder in your directory. To add your files to the repository, git add -A to add all the files. Then use git commit -m"<commit message>" to commit the files. Now, make or login to Your GitHub account. make a new repository and give your it a name. Now your repository exists. It will bring you to a setup screen. It will give you commands to use under the ‘push an existing repository’ section. They will look like this.

git remote add origin (...)
git push -u origin master

Now if you look on Github, the files in your folder should now be online. You can now use these commands to add your files to GitHub.

git add -A
git commit -m"<commit message>"
git push

Now you can remotely use a Raspberry Pi with SSH and access a folder of your pi from GitHub.

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