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Raspberry Pi First Weekend Checklist

A finishable plan: boot, secure, update, and ship one useful service (not a pile of unfinished tutorials).

Goal for the weekend

By Sunday night you should have: a Pi that boots headless on your network, updates cleanly, has SSH keys (not password-only on the open internet), and runs one useful service you chose in advance.

Pick one track before you buy parts:

A — Print brain: Klipper host path (see site guide)
B — Workshop utility: file share / MQTT broker / Pi-hole-style DNS on a lab VLAN
C — Offline helper: tiny local model or docs search (start small)

BOM (minimum)

Raspberry Pi 4 (2GB+) or Pi 5 (4GB+ preferred for AI experiments)
Official or quality PSU (undervoltage ruins weekends)
Active cooler for Pi 5; case with airflow
microSD (or NVMe on Pi 5 if you already own the hat)
Ethernet cable if possible (Wi‑Fi is fine; Ethernet is calmer)

Gear notes: /gear

Saturday morning — image & first boot

Flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite (or Desktop if you need a GUI) with Raspberry Pi Imager
In Imager: set hostname, enable SSH, set user/password, configure Wi‑Fi or plan Ethernet
Boot; find the Pi on the LAN (`ping hostname.local` or router DHCP list)
`ssh user@pi-address`
`sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y` then reboot if kernel updated

hostname
ip a
sudo raspi-config   # locale, timezone, expand filesystem if needed

Saturday afternoon — harden the basics

Change default-ish passwords; create a non-root workflow you actually use
Add your SSH public key; test key login
Optional: disable password SSH only after key login works
`sudo apt install fail2ban` if the Pi will ever see the internet
Do not port-forward 22 to the world without a plan (use VPN/tailnet later)

mkdir -p ~/.ssh && chmod 700 ~/.ssh
# copy your id_ed25519.pub into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the Pi
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Sunday — ship one service

Track A — Print brain (outline)

Read the site Klipper/Pi guide before installing random scripts
Use a known-good install path (KIAUH or current docs)
Confirm MCU USB enumerates: `lsusb` / `ls /dev/serial/by-id`
Get a web UI loading on the LAN before tuning

Track B — MQTT workshop broker

sudo apt install -y mosquitto mosquitto-clients
sudo systemctl enable --now mosquitto
mosquitto_sub -h localhost -t 'lab/#' -v
# other terminal:
mosquitto_pub -h localhost -t 'lab/hello' -m 'pi-first-weekend'

Subscribe receives the publish
Bind to LAN only; add auth before any WAN exposure

Track C — Tiny offline helper

Install only one runtime (e.g. a small llama.cpp build or a docs search tool)
Prove a single query works offline
Stop before “and also Docker and also Home Assistant and also…”

Done checklist

Pi survives reboot and comes back on the network
You can SSH in without drama
One service does one useful thing
You wrote down hostname, IP, and what you installed in a note