When using the Raspberry Pi, most of the time there is no monitor and keyboard/mouse available, and you may find that you cannot connect via WiFi or wired Ethernet. In these cases, there is still a way to connect, which is through the Raspberry Pi’s serial console connected to a computer without using a monitor, keyboard, network cable, or mouse. The following summarizes the steps needed to establish a connection with a headless Raspberry Pi using a USB to serial adapter and a modern computer.
Required Hardware
Raspberry Pi 5, an SD card with the system burned, USB to UART serial cable, Raspberry Pi power supply, and a computer.
This article takes the serial cable shown in the picture as an example; this cable interface is only suitable for the UART socket of the Raspberry Pi 5. (Purchase link: http://link.nxez.com/buy/rpi-usb-to-uart-cable)
Required Software
PuTTY (Download link: https://shumeipai.nxez.com/download)
Connecting with PuTTY on Windows
Connect the serial cable to the UART interface of the Raspberry Pi and the USB interface of the computer. Note that the Raspberry Pi still needs to be powered on when using the serial connection.
Software Connection
First, check in Device Manager what the COM port number of the USB you just plugged in is. For example, here it shows as COM9; the exact number needs to be checked based on your PC, similar to the image below:
Then, open PuTTY, configure the ‘Serial line’ to the USB COM port number, and set the ‘Speed’ to ‘115200’ baud rate (because this is the baud rate used by the Raspberry Pi), similar to the image below:
Click ‘Open’, and you will see a screen similar to the one below:
Enter your Raspberry Pi’s username and password, and you can operate the Raspberry Pi using Linux commands just like SSH.
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