- provide wireless AP
- display for ssh session into Pi Zero
- keyboard

Left you see Pi Zero, powered by Lipo on pins 04 (5V) and 06 (GND), and Wifi USB dongle connected. That is minimal and all that is needed.
Right you see the Wireless access point screen of my Android smartphone. At bottom you see that two devices are connected. That is only needed once. After starting wireless AP and Pi Zero I don't know which IP addresses both will get. Therefore I connect to the wireless AP once with my laptop. On my laptop "ifconfig" tells me the IP address I got from wireless AP (192.168.43.240). Then I do a scan of the subnet by:
Code: Select all
$ nmap -sn 192.168.43.240/24
Starting Nmap 5.51 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2017-10-24 19:08 CEST
Nmap scan report for 192.168.43.1
Host is up (0.0019s latency).
Nmap scan report for 192.168.43.113
Host is up (0.0077s latency).
Nmap scan report for 192.168.43.240
Host is up (0.00039s latency).
Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (3 hosts up) scanned in 3.35 seconds
$
On the Pi Zero this is my WPA config file:
Code: Select all
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo cat /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
network={
ssid="HUAWEI Y360-U61_8621"
psk="secret"
}
network={
ssid="FRITZ!Box 6360 Cable"
psk="verysecret"
}
network={
ssid="MyESP32AP"
psk="testpassword"
}
pi@raspberrypi:~ $
Next I started a SSH client on Android (I use JuiceSSH) and connected to Pi Zero IP address, logged in as "pi" user and executed some commands:

So this is the most minimal setup.
Next I used my gstreamer debugging device (see this posting) and did the same. After login I started a gstreamer pipeline using v4l2 driver for the Raspberry camera and streamed to framebuffer device=/dev/fb2:

This is the result, streaming video on /dev/fb2 display:

Summary:
Whatever you want to do with Pi Zero, if you don't have a laptop, then your smartphone is sufficient.
AND of course the Pi Zero gets internet access through your smartphone as well.
Depending on your data tariff you may even install new packages on Pi Zero, ...
Hermann.