Connecting via SSH

Relax. We'll talk through this in plain words — no textbook voice.

What you'll walk away with

Understand connecting via SSH, no intimidation required
Get comfortable running your own hardware wiring and code
Apply this concept right away in a real project

Let's think about it this way for a moment

SSH is a protocol you already covered in detail in the Linux tutorial — to connect to your Raspberry Pi over SSH, you first need to know the Pi's IP address (check your router's admin panel, or use hostname.local with mDNS resolution). Run ssh username@raspberrypi.local (or ssh username@ip-address), enter your password, and you're straight into the Pi's terminal.

Let's connect this to a real-world scenario

Setting up SSH key authentication (instead of a password) is more secure, following the same password/2FA concept from the Cybersecurity tutorial — generate a key pair with ssh-keygen, copy the public key over to the Pi with ssh-copy-id, and you can log in without a password (exactly the pattern from the Linux tutorial's SSH lesson).

Know your Pi's IP address / hostname.local
Connect with ssh username@raspberrypi.local (or its IP)
Set up SSH key authentication (following the pattern from the Linux tutorial)

Let's look at an example together

bash

# Find your Pi's IP (from router admin panel), then:
ssh pi@raspberrypi.local
# or
ssh pi@192.168.1.42

# Set up key-based auth (from your computer)
ssh-keygen -t ed25519
ssh-copy-id pi@raspberrypi.local
ssh pi@raspberrypi.local   # password မလို, key နဲ့ တန်းဝင်

You should see

A successful SSH connection changes your terminal prompt to something like pi@raspberrypi:~$.

5-Minute Try-It

If you already have an SSH key pair from the Linux tutorial (ssh-keygen), try copying the public key over to your Raspberry Pi with ssh-copy-id.

A quick word of caution

If you're going to port-forward your Pi and expose SSH to the internet, always follow the Cybersecurity tutorial's 'Linux Server Hardening' lesson (key-only auth, fail2ban) — a default password plus an open SSH port is an easy target for scan bots.

Easy traps

Getting a 'connection refused' error because SSH wasn't enabled in the Pi's raspi-config
Trying to connect via hostname.local without being on the same Wi-Fi network (mDNS requires being on the same network)

Try It Yourself

If you already have an SSH key pair from the Linux tutorial (ssh-keygen), try copying the public key over to your Raspberry Pi with ssh-copy-id.

You'll know it worked when: A successful SSH connection changes your terminal prompt to something like pi@raspberrypi:~$.