20 ms·

Raspberry Pi touch display

401 points by benn_88 11y ago

veli_joza 11y ago
Even though most people will use RPi as headless server or connect it to TV, it is good to have a decent "default" display option that works out of the box. The display looks very elegant in provided photos. It should be a great choice for hobby projects.
- netcan 11y ago
  I'm not sure "most people will use it with X" makes sense as way of thinking about RPi. It's for tinkering and learning and plugging into your projects. As a starting point, 7” Touchscreen seems like a pretty good way to go for versatility. I like how this lets people just tape a RPi to a screen to make a tablet. Nice first step for young tinkerers. Step 2, lasers.
nakedrobot2 11y ago
this seems expensive, considering you can buy a whole android tablet for this price.
- GordonS 11y ago
  "When looking for a device, we needed to look for what are termed ‘Industrial’ LCD displays. These tend to have better-quality metrics and guaranteed availability" This explains the $60 price, which I personally find to be great value.
  - steckerbrett 11y ago
    A Retina iPad display is cheaper, takes DisplayPort in, and is significantly higher resolution. I don't think anybody has reverse engineered the digitizer but I doubt that matters for a lot of applications.
    - bildung 11y ago
      And likely not available anymore a year from now.
      - steckerbrett 11y ago
        I can still source original 2007 iPhone parts, I think it'll be safe for the foreseeable future, even if it is just salvage.
        bildung 11y ago
        For a personal project, I would absolutely go your route. But as a business, the foundation has to hedge against non-availability of the panel, because switching to another panel would go along with additional development costs.
        steckerbrett 11y ago
        Sure, but this is surely pitched to people building things rather than companies. I don't think anybody in their right mind would integrate something so expensive into their product, and a Raspberry Pi while cute is really not useful inside something commercial.
  - kubiiii 11y ago
    A budget android tablet can cost slightly less than $60, and comes with the touch display, the processing power ( more than a raspberry's), the memory (more than a raspberry's), embedded wifi, bluetooth, sometimes GPS, two cameras. Don't get me wrong, i love the pi, and the problem is not the price tag of the pi + accessories but the unsustainable pricetag of entry level android tablets. Plus the pi comes with its GPIO, raspbian, and is more suited than an aout of the box android tablet for most projects.
    - rahimnathwani 11y ago
      "the unsustainable pricetag of entry level android tablets" Why unsustainable?
      - kubiiii 11y ago
        Well for most of us €30 (the cheapest I found here in france) for a tablet makes it a disposable device (this is different in developping countries). There is a recycling tax here that is as low as ~5 cts for a tablet or a comparable electronic device. The burden of recycling is on the developping countries we send our used gear to. Not to mention the use of raw materials. Can't say that this does not apply to higher end device that tend to be unrepairable but their lifespan is longer.
        randyrand 11y ago
        I think we can sustain making cheap tablets for many millenia to come. Call me optimistic.
  - userbinator 11y ago
    Look up the Innolux AT070TN90/92. It's been in production since 2009 and will be until at least 2023. There are people using it with the RPi, and no, it does not cost anywhere near $60. http://www.buydisplay.com/default/7-inch-lcd-screen-tft-display-module-wvga-800x480-at070tn90-at070tn92 http://www.buydisplay.com/default/7-inch-lcd-screen-tft-disp... First one to do a teardown can tell us what panel it contains. I'm almost willing to bet it's that one, as the specs are close.
    - Renaud 11y ago
      Quite cheap but to compare, you also need to add the cost of the touchscreen and the board to drive all this, and your result would probably not pass EMC requirements (for a hobby project, you wouldn't care). Still cheaper to source these parts yourself, you are right, but the official screen isn't meant to be the cheapest, it's meant to be cheap enough to be affordable, to workout-of-the-box, to be reliable, of good quality and have some guaranteed availability. You can work with other screens and build and write your own interface if that's part of the pleasure you get from hacking on these devices, but for people who have other goals, being able to get an affordable screen that just works allows them to spend their time on other parts of their project. It's good to have choice.
      - makomk 11y ago
        They provide a model with a touchscreen for an extra $7. However, you can't work with other screens and build and write your own interface because on the Pi, all the display modesetting is handled by the closed-source binary blob running on the undocumented parts of the GPU, and the RPi Foundation won't enable DSI connector support in it for anything other than the official screen they sell. It's a fairly common hobbyist thing to do on more open boards, it's just not possible on the Pi.
  - rasz_pl 11y ago
    except it is NOT industrial display, this is just an off the shelf old cellphone LCD with parallel intercase + DSI2parallel converter board
    - userbinator 11y ago
      What cellphone (smartphone?) has a 7" 800x480 TFT with such a thick metal bezel...?
- joeblau 11y ago
  I was thinking the exact same thing. In 2006, this company called BugLabs made this device called a Bugbox[1] which was a modular CPU that you could attach components to. It had GPS, basic touch screen, Wi-Fi and a few other features plus it was programable. I started to write an app for it and in Jan 2007, the iPhone was announced. It had more hardware sensor components at a similar price with significantly higher build quality. I loved the Bugbox concept, but it wasn't pragmatic and that's the sense I'm feeling from this. [1] - http://gizmodo.com/5364703/bug-labs-releases-wi-fi-base-at-last http://gizmodo.com/5364703/bug-labs-releases-wi-fi-base-at-l...
andyjohnson0 11y ago
Doesn't seen to be in stock yet at RS or Farnell in the UK.
- whiskers 11y ago
  We have stock and ship from the UK to most worldwide destinations: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-7-touchscreen-display-with-frame https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-7-touchscree... We sell it with our own stand solution (in six colours!) that is manufactured by us in our workshop in Sheffield, UK.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
    Vote of confidence here from a longtime Pimoroni customer. Really great company to do business with. Keep up the good work!
    - whiskers 11y ago
      Thank you very much! We work hard to provide great customer service and stock the best range of Maker and Raspberry Pi products available in the UK/EU.
    - jsingleton 11y ago
      Seconded. I've got lots of stuff from them. They also run the official swag store. You can order the display on there. http://swag.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-7-inch-touchscreen-display http://swag.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-7-inch-tou... I ordered a Sense HAT from them recently and it arrived in a couple of days. It's pretty fun BTW, my thoughts are here: https://unop.uk/dev/raspberry-pi-sense-hat https://unop.uk/dev/raspberry-pi-sense-hat
  - mike-cardwell 11y ago
    £58... Even if you take the VAT off that it's still £48... $60 is only £39. Why is it so much more expensive in the UK, when it's fricking made here?
dang 11y ago
Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10184508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10184508.
agumonkey 11y ago
HN hug => https://archive.is/GBqGR https://archive.is/GBqGR included video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HvWXQsBeHk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HvWXQsBeHk
callum85 11y ago
This is disappointing. This screen is 7" at 800x480, so its sharpness is about 133 PPI (pixels per inch). For comparison, my original Android G1 (several years ago) was 180 PPI, and it looked shit. This is $60 plus taxes and shipping. I just found a 7-inch tablet for £28 ($43.10) on Amazon (plus a camera and RAM and stuff). Including taxes and shipping. Why is this so expensive?
- TeamMCS 11y ago
  This seems so common with prototype parts. I'm not sure what the difficulty is building a sheild which you can just drop on a commodity component. Mass producing a PCB is 'fairly' simple these days assuming the quantity is sufficient. Anyone have any insights into the cost?
- leoedin 11y ago
  It's expensive because the economies of building electronics are weird. As they said in their announcement, a big challenge is getting a display which is guaranteed to be available for a long period of time. That means not buying the bleeding edge, but something designed for lower volume markets. If you want something that's available for a long time, the likelihood is that it's already been available for a while. If you want the bleeding edge, it means they'll stop making it and start making the new bleeding edge in 18 months (with subtly different connectors, sizes, drivers etc) The vast majority of the cost of this display is driven by factors unrelated to the technology level. Labour to build it, logistical costs, EMC qualification etc. That's the case for almost all cheap consumer electronics.
- sangnoir 11y ago
  >I just found a 7-inch tablet for £28 ($43.10) on Amazon (plus a camera and RAM and stuff). Including taxes and shipping. Why is this so expensive? Sales volumes determine economies of scale, it is likely the £28 tablet was made in quantities much larger than the pi screen (I'd guess at least 2 orders of magnitude). Also, not all screens are equal. It's not just resolution: there's colour reproduction, viewing angles, brightness, contrast and response time. On the non-technical side mentioned on the blog, they mentioned they wanted a manufacture who would make the panel for a long time. I would bet a dollar that Pi screen beats the £28-tablet display on all the above parameters
bengale 11y ago
Anyone know about using it with Windows 10 IoT?
- jsingleton 11y ago
  I've not got the screen (it's only just come out) but I assume it should work. It uses a standard interface. I tried out Win 10 IoT a bit. You can find my thoughts in this post and the others linked from it. https://unop.uk/dev/windows-10-iot-core-on-a-raspberry-pi-2 https://unop.uk/dev/windows-10-iot-core-on-a-raspberry-pi-2
- kingosticks 11y ago
  https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/the-eagerly-awaited-raspberry-pi-display/#comment-1241973 https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/the-eagerly-awaited-raspber...
- newoldguy2 11y ago
  It should work with Windows 10 IoT but does require a quite recent version of the firmware to support it. I'm not sure what the current firmware version is Gordon
tudorw 11y ago
Before shooting this down as expensive can we stick to comparing like with like, the device is intended to have a long life span so educators can build quality teaching resources based on the platform.
- rwmj 11y ago
  Expensive? $60 seems really cheap.
  - dagw 11y ago
    There are a ton of Chinese brands that sell rasperryPi compatible touch screens (of very varying quality) at half the price. That being said if I actually needed a touch screen for a rasperryPi I wouldn't hesitate to spend $60 on an official screen and save myself a lot of potential hassle.
    - noonespecial 11y ago
      You are very right with this. I've bought plenty of both. What it comes down to is that if you just want one to make a cool project or experiment with, buy the official one. The extra $ is worth it and then some on saved hassle. If you need to rig up half a dozen, or its something you want to build over and over, it starts to become worth it deal with the hassle of learning the quirks of the chinese parts.
    - Yaggo 11y ago
      The most of cheap "rasperryPi compatible touch screens" use SPI interface (GPIO) which has very limited data rate, only suitable for 320x240 / low FPS graphics without any kind of HW acceleration. HDMI compatible touch screen are typically more expensive than $60. The official RPi display is great because it uses the onboard display connector (which has been useless this far).
      - userbinator 11y ago
        typically more expensive than $60 No, you can certainly get them for less than that: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Tontec-7-Raspberry-Pi-LCD-Touch-Screen-Display-TFT-Monitor-AT070TN90-with-Touchscreen-Kit-HDMI-VGA/1692887583.html http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Tontec-7-Raspberry-Pi-LCD-Tou...
elcct 11y ago
Uh, I'd rather see them adding a fast interface to connect SSD drive
- csmattryder 11y ago
  Your best bet is probably going for a Banana Pi board - they come with SATA to attach SSDs to. It's a close contender to the RaPi, but the software support isn't 100% though. I've got one myself as an attempted NAS device. It worked 'ok', wouldn't advise it as full-time thing though, these things don't provide the AC nor CPU power to perform such tasks.
  - elcct 11y ago
    But does it have a real SATA or is it just SATA over USB?
yuumei 11y ago
Looks like there are a few ICs on the adapter board. I wonder if that means other screens could be hacked in and if the DSI connection is going to be a binary blob.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  binary blob all the way straight from RPI foundation: "No there is no software support for direct DSI displays."
antouank 11y ago
Could you possibly buy only the connecting PCB module, and use a touch screen from a bricked mobile phone or tablet? Many of those lying around...
- analog31 11y ago
  The trouble with recycling parts like that, is that the more mass-produced something is, the more likely to have idiosyncratic connectors and signal formats that mere mortals can't find out how to hook up and program.
  - antouank 11y ago
    I see. So the PCB part does this "adapter" work to make the screen "talk" with the R-Pi, right? Screens for mobile devices, don't they have any standards someone can use to build a similar PCB?
  - userbinator 11y ago
    Actually, unless you're deliberately looking at the companies who like to invent their own proprietariness, they're more likely to have standard connectors and protocols; consider laptop displays, for example. The ones designing the laptop want to be able to use displays from different manufacturers, and the display manufacturers want their products usable in as many laptops as possible. This leads to standards, both normative and de-facto, and there being only a small number of variations. I'm not as familiar with mobile device displays but given that standards like MIPI DSI exist, I suspect it's a similar situation.
  - Vexs 11y ago
    Monitors are actually really easy to hook up, most of the time you just need to adjust the pinout and timings of the controller chip.
mike-cardwell 11y ago
I can't see an on/off button
- whiskers 11y ago
  Neither does the Raspberry Pi - the user base is pretty used to halting and pulling the power. The display driver board backpowers the Pi itself so there is no change of process for existing users there.
  - mike-cardwell 11y ago
    There are a lot of use cases where you want a machine to be running constantly but don't want the screen to be on constantly. I can't put one of these in my bedroom unless I can easily and instantly switch the monitor on/off. [edit] I have an existing PiTFT which also doesn't have a power button. I can turn it on/off programatically, but still a power button would be highly useful. [edit2] Can this screen be turned off programatically without turning the Pi off at the same time, if the screen is powering the Pi? [edit3] Hang on. Is it even possible to turn the screen on/off programatically from the Pi if the Pi is powered separately?
    - visualpipe 11y ago
      You can by a USB cable with switch on it.
      - mike-cardwell 11y ago
        Whilst that would work, it's less than ideal. I'd need to power the monitor and Pi separately at that point. If turning the screen off prevents that pass-through power capability, that is a poorly thought out design.
    - whiskers 11y ago
      I've just confirmed with the foundation that the display will be controllable from software but the current Raspbian image doesn't have it yet - this will allow you to turn off the screen and backlight while leaving the Pi running. So your use case will be possible!
mrmondo 11y ago
Was excited until I saw the resolution - 800x600 will struggle to view most websites, given the resolution it seems rather expensive for $60.
- jonknee 11y ago
  It will view most websites just fine considering the amount of mobile traffic out there. It won't be super sharp like pixel doubled smartphones, but it will render them just fine.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
omnibrain 11y ago
I'm dreaming of general availability of touch enabled e-paper/e-ink displays. Not just for the Raspberry Pi, but especially with it I would be one step closer to my always-on home dashboard.
- hartror 11y ago
  Me too, I idly look up prices now and again and have considered retiring my kindle touch.
- CodingGuy 11y ago
  That would be great!
- robgibbons 11y ago
  I would personally pay a lot for an e-paper based laptop specifically for text editing. For writers, or programmers, I don't think you can beat e-paper. No eye-strain, outstanding battery life, perfect visibility in direct sunlight...
  - niutech 11y ago
    Grab a Kindle and use it as a notepad [1] or as an external screen [2]. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Notepad/dp/B004LSLN0I http://www.amazon.com/Notepad/dp/B004LSLN0I [2] http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150434 http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150434
  - masklinn 11y ago
    Pixel Qi tried and failed, though you can still buy 3Qi panels (IIRC 7" or 10") from tripuso (who bought the rights when Pixel Qi folded) and swap the display of a corresponding-size notebook.
    - Vexs 11y ago
      Nice! I've never heard of those. Pretty expensive for a 10" monitor though, found them on aliexpress/alibaba for ~100$. Adafruit stocks them too for 180$, but with a driver board included.
jsingleton 11y ago
Anyone know if the mouse signals from the touch input go over the DSI connection? Or if you need to plug in a USB cable? It's not clear from the post.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- whiskers 11y ago
  They go over the DSI connector.
IlPeach 11y ago
Although the resolution might not be the best, this looks like a nice monitor for a POS system!
jokoon 11y ago
I wish someday they will make their own raspberry terminals.
rhapsodyv 11y ago
One thing I miss in default raspberry pi is battery support. Today I just use the filesystem in RO.
- throwaway7767 11y ago
  > One thing I miss in default raspberry pi is battery support. Today I just use the filesystem in RO. It would be easy to put a battery + charging circuit in front. If you still want to power it through USB you could get increased efficiency by bypassing the DC-DC converter (just cut the trace from it and solder the output from your own PSU there). If the RPi itself had a charging circuit, they would have to decide for the end-users what kind of battery chemistry, charge rate etc. it should support, and they would not be able to please everyone as these things are used for so many different purposes.
askinakhan 11y ago
How about we use the touch display with the raspberry Pi and a windup mechanism to charge an added battery pack then start a charity to distribute these to developing countries.
HNcow 11y ago
A lot of people are comparing this to just buying an Android tablet and saying it doesn't make sense. You're probably right :)! The Pi has so many more use cases outside of just typical Android use however that this product does make sense for. My example is that you can rig the Pi to work with your own Receiver as a wifi flac player with this device: https://www.hifiberry.com/ https://www.hifiberry.com/. You have to control it over wi-fi, but having a console that I can go up to and interact with will be awesome. Also will be great for people like my Father-in-law, I wanted to build him a device that has all 60s/70s/80s rock for christmas, but I didn't want to have to set-up a wifi router and get a device for him just to control it.
dharma1 11y ago
Does anyone know why Android devices don't video inputs, or even aftermarket way of getting video in cheaply? They would be super useful as small screens for various applications
- Pengwin 11y ago
  My guess is that the entire display circuit is tightly coupled with the SoC, and it would cost a bit more to get something into the circuit that accepted, decoded, and displayed a digital signal on top of the current SoC talking directly to thee display.
- malexw 11y ago
  When I used to work on those devices, the arguments went something like this: "Adding video input means we need an additional connector on the device, which the Industrial Design guys hate." "We could multiplex the signal, but then we need some kind of proprietary connector and the additional cost of that circuitry." "How many customers want to record video from an external source anyway? It's not worth adding $5 to the MSRP for a feature that isn't going to get used."
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Hopefully we will see less of those arguments as USB-C gets more available.
    - dharma1 11y ago
      usb-c should do video out, but how about video in?
      - digi_owl 11y ago
        The wires themselves are agnostic, its all a matter of protocol choice.
microman 11y ago
I use RPis for bespoke installations for clients. One of the problems has been offering an easy way to make adjustments to the apps the RPi is running without a keyboard/mouse/monitor setup or having to SSH in. This is a great way to offer the ability to make changes. Looking forward to trying one out
- err4nt 11y ago
  What kinds of installations do you use these in for clients? Automation? Communication? As a small server? I have a RPi sitting here and I'm not sure what to do with it!
  - elcct 11y ago
    I once created password less WiFi hot spot and served weird texts instead of websites. For example if someone went to google.com, a person received "No Google for you today" message instead...
    - dalanmiller 11y ago
      Haha, this is great. Do you still have it going? How did you make it work?
  - microman 11y ago
    Promotional quiz games where there are two buttons wired up to the RPi which is serving a web-based game, tweet-powered devices (RPi listens to the Twitter stream and activates a power switch when a certain hashtag is used) etc.
- ytjohn 11y ago
  For my headless Pis, I attach a BT TTL serial port to the rx/tx pins. They run about $15 or less. This lets me pair to the serial port from my laptop, watch it boot the kernel, login and do whatever cli commands I need. I can also use BlueTerm on my android phone to do the same thing (though make sure you get the hacker keyboard if you go this route). Here's pretty much the article I followed, though I bumped my console up to 115200. http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/a-cheap-bluetooth-serial-port-for-your-raspberry-pi http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/a-cheap-bluetooth-serial...
stuaxo 11y ago
Seeing that made me feel really nostalgic for gnome 2 and the simple interface it had.
mentos 11y ago
Anyone use an e-ink display for programming? Not sure how well Visual Studio would perform on one?
albertogplus 11y ago
down, version in cache of google: http://goo.gl/YILqaS http://goo.gl/YILqaS
rasz_pl 11y ago
2 years and instead of adapting one of PLENTY DSI screens they opt for convoluted DSI to parallel conversion, with 10 year old resolution to boot, color me not impressed :( This is just like when they released camera module. Instead of opening MIPI interface to the developers they shipped binary blob locked to one particular camera module from one vendor, because fuck you thats why (well, actually one of rpi/broadcom engineers said something like "people wouldnt be able to figure out how to color correct/debayer because its trade secret of camera module manufacturers, so why bother")
roel_v 11y ago
Is there a high quality, good looking wall mount available? So that I can use something like as the control panel for my home automation setup?
digi_owl 11y ago
Hmm, a back case, a battery, and we have a "vivaldi"...
teekert 11y ago
Wow, I wanted to use that top image on my site and found out it was 1.8MB and more than 4700 pix wide! Nice way to increase the server load ;) (https://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/front-centred.jpg https://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/front...)

401 points by benn_88 11y ago

Even though most people will use RPi as headless server or connect it to TV, it is good to have a decent "default" display option that works out of the box. The display looks very elegant in provided photos. It should be a great choice for hobby projects.

netcan 11y ago
I'm not sure "most people will use it with X" makes sense as way of thinking about RPi. It's for tinkering and learning and plugging into your projects. As a starting point, 7” Touchscreen seems like a pretty good way to go for versatility. I like how this lets people just tape a RPi to a screen to make a tablet. Nice first step for young tinkerers. Step 2, lasers.

nakedrobot2 11y ago

this seems expensive, considering you can buy a whole android tablet for this price.

GordonS 11y ago
"When looking for a device, we needed to look for what are termed ‘Industrial’ LCD displays. These tend to have better-quality metrics and guaranteed availability" This explains the $60 price, which I personally find to be great value.
- steckerbrett 11y ago
  A Retina iPad display is cheaper, takes DisplayPort in, and is significantly higher resolution. I don't think anybody has reverse engineered the digitizer but I doubt that matters for a lot of applications.
  - bildung 11y ago
    And likely not available anymore a year from now.
    - steckerbrett 11y ago
      I can still source original 2007 iPhone parts, I think it'll be safe for the foreseeable future, even if it is just salvage.
      - bildung 11y ago
        For a personal project, I would absolutely go your route. But as a business, the foundation has to hedge against non-availability of the panel, because switching to another panel would go along with additional development costs.
        steckerbrett 11y ago
        Sure, but this is surely pitched to people building things rather than companies. I don't think anybody in their right mind would integrate something so expensive into their product, and a Raspberry Pi while cute is really not useful inside something commercial.
- kubiiii 11y ago
  A budget android tablet can cost slightly less than $60, and comes with the touch display, the processing power ( more than a raspberry's), the memory (more than a raspberry's), embedded wifi, bluetooth, sometimes GPS, two cameras. Don't get me wrong, i love the pi, and the problem is not the price tag of the pi + accessories but the unsustainable pricetag of entry level android tablets. Plus the pi comes with its GPIO, raspbian, and is more suited than an aout of the box android tablet for most projects.
  - rahimnathwani 11y ago
    "the unsustainable pricetag of entry level android tablets" Why unsustainable?
    - kubiiii 11y ago
      Well for most of us €30 (the cheapest I found here in france) for a tablet makes it a disposable device (this is different in developping countries). There is a recycling tax here that is as low as ~5 cts for a tablet or a comparable electronic device. The burden of recycling is on the developping countries we send our used gear to. Not to mention the use of raw materials. Can't say that this does not apply to higher end device that tend to be unrepairable but their lifespan is longer.
      - randyrand 11y ago
        I think we can sustain making cheap tablets for many millenia to come. Call me optimistic.
- userbinator 11y ago
  Look up the Innolux AT070TN90/92. It's been in production since 2009 and will be until at least 2023. There are people using it with the RPi, and no, it does not cost anywhere near $60. http://www.buydisplay.com/default/7-inch-lcd-screen-tft-display-module-wvga-800x480-at070tn90-at070tn92 http://www.buydisplay.com/default/7-inch-lcd-screen-tft-disp... First one to do a teardown can tell us what panel it contains. I'm almost willing to bet it's that one, as the specs are close.
  - Renaud 11y ago
    Quite cheap but to compare, you also need to add the cost of the touchscreen and the board to drive all this, and your result would probably not pass EMC requirements (for a hobby project, you wouldn't care). Still cheaper to source these parts yourself, you are right, but the official screen isn't meant to be the cheapest, it's meant to be cheap enough to be affordable, to workout-of-the-box, to be reliable, of good quality and have some guaranteed availability. You can work with other screens and build and write your own interface if that's part of the pleasure you get from hacking on these devices, but for people who have other goals, being able to get an affordable screen that just works allows them to spend their time on other parts of their project. It's good to have choice.
    - makomk 11y ago
      They provide a model with a touchscreen for an extra $7. However, you can't work with other screens and build and write your own interface because on the Pi, all the display modesetting is handled by the closed-source binary blob running on the undocumented parts of the GPU, and the RPi Foundation won't enable DSI connector support in it for anything other than the official screen they sell. It's a fairly common hobbyist thing to do on more open boards, it's just not possible on the Pi.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  except it is NOT industrial display, this is just an off the shelf old cellphone LCD with parallel intercase + DSI2parallel converter board
  - userbinator 11y ago
    What cellphone (smartphone?) has a 7" 800x480 TFT with such a thick metal bezel...?
joeblau 11y ago
I was thinking the exact same thing. In 2006, this company called BugLabs made this device called a Bugbox[1] which was a modular CPU that you could attach components to. It had GPS, basic touch screen, Wi-Fi and a few other features plus it was programable. I started to write an app for it and in Jan 2007, the iPhone was announced. It had more hardware sensor components at a similar price with significantly higher build quality. I loved the Bugbox concept, but it wasn't pragmatic and that's the sense I'm feeling from this. [1] - http://gizmodo.com/5364703/bug-labs-releases-wi-fi-base-at-last http://gizmodo.com/5364703/bug-labs-releases-wi-fi-base-at-l...

andyjohnson0 11y ago

Doesn't seen to be in stock yet at RS or Farnell in the UK.

whiskers 11y ago
We have stock and ship from the UK to most worldwide destinations: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-7-touchscreen-display-with-frame https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-7-touchscree... We sell it with our own stand solution (in six colours!) that is manufactured by us in our workshop in Sheffield, UK.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
  Vote of confidence here from a longtime Pimoroni customer. Really great company to do business with. Keep up the good work!
  - whiskers 11y ago
    Thank you very much! We work hard to provide great customer service and stock the best range of Maker and Raspberry Pi products available in the UK/EU.
  - jsingleton 11y ago
    Seconded. I've got lots of stuff from them. They also run the official swag store. You can order the display on there. http://swag.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-7-inch-touchscreen-display http://swag.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-7-inch-tou... I ordered a Sense HAT from them recently and it arrived in a couple of days. It's pretty fun BTW, my thoughts are here: https://unop.uk/dev/raspberry-pi-sense-hat https://unop.uk/dev/raspberry-pi-sense-hat
- mike-cardwell 11y ago
  £58... Even if you take the VAT off that it's still £48... $60 is only £39. Why is it so much more expensive in the UK, when it's fricking made here?

dang 11y ago

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10184508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10184508.

agumonkey 11y ago

HN hug => https://archive.is/GBqGR https://archive.is/GBqGR included video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HvWXQsBeHk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HvWXQsBeHk

callum85 11y ago

This is disappointing. This screen is 7" at 800x480, so its sharpness is about 133 PPI (pixels per inch). For comparison, my original Android G1 (several years ago) was 180 PPI, and it looked shit. This is $60 plus taxes and shipping. I just found a 7-inch tablet for £28 ($43.10) on Amazon (plus a camera and RAM and stuff). Including taxes and shipping. Why is this so expensive?

TeamMCS 11y ago
This seems so common with prototype parts. I'm not sure what the difficulty is building a sheild which you can just drop on a commodity component. Mass producing a PCB is 'fairly' simple these days assuming the quantity is sufficient. Anyone have any insights into the cost?
leoedin 11y ago
It's expensive because the economies of building electronics are weird. As they said in their announcement, a big challenge is getting a display which is guaranteed to be available for a long period of time. That means not buying the bleeding edge, but something designed for lower volume markets. If you want something that's available for a long time, the likelihood is that it's already been available for a while. If you want the bleeding edge, it means they'll stop making it and start making the new bleeding edge in 18 months (with subtly different connectors, sizes, drivers etc) The vast majority of the cost of this display is driven by factors unrelated to the technology level. Labour to build it, logistical costs, EMC qualification etc. That's the case for almost all cheap consumer electronics.
sangnoir 11y ago
>I just found a 7-inch tablet for £28 ($43.10) on Amazon (plus a camera and RAM and stuff). Including taxes and shipping. Why is this so expensive? Sales volumes determine economies of scale, it is likely the £28 tablet was made in quantities much larger than the pi screen (I'd guess at least 2 orders of magnitude). Also, not all screens are equal. It's not just resolution: there's colour reproduction, viewing angles, brightness, contrast and response time. On the non-technical side mentioned on the blog, they mentioned they wanted a manufacture who would make the panel for a long time. I would bet a dollar that Pi screen beats the £28-tablet display on all the above parameters

bengale 11y ago

Anyone know about using it with Windows 10 IoT?

jsingleton 11y ago
I've not got the screen (it's only just come out) but I assume it should work. It uses a standard interface. I tried out Win 10 IoT a bit. You can find my thoughts in this post and the others linked from it. https://unop.uk/dev/windows-10-iot-core-on-a-raspberry-pi-2 https://unop.uk/dev/windows-10-iot-core-on-a-raspberry-pi-2
kingosticks 11y ago
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/the-eagerly-awaited-raspberry-pi-display/#comment-1241973 https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/the-eagerly-awaited-raspber...
newoldguy2 11y ago
It should work with Windows 10 IoT but does require a quite recent version of the firmware to support it. I'm not sure what the current firmware version is Gordon

tudorw 11y ago

Before shooting this down as expensive can we stick to comparing like with like, the device is intended to have a long life span so educators can build quality teaching resources based on the platform.

rwmj 11y ago
Expensive? $60 seems really cheap.
- dagw 11y ago
  There are a ton of Chinese brands that sell rasperryPi compatible touch screens (of very varying quality) at half the price. That being said if I actually needed a touch screen for a rasperryPi I wouldn't hesitate to spend $60 on an official screen and save myself a lot of potential hassle.
  - noonespecial 11y ago
    You are very right with this. I've bought plenty of both. What it comes down to is that if you just want one to make a cool project or experiment with, buy the official one. The extra $ is worth it and then some on saved hassle. If you need to rig up half a dozen, or its something you want to build over and over, it starts to become worth it deal with the hassle of learning the quirks of the chinese parts.
  - Yaggo 11y ago
    The most of cheap "rasperryPi compatible touch screens" use SPI interface (GPIO) which has very limited data rate, only suitable for 320x240 / low FPS graphics without any kind of HW acceleration. HDMI compatible touch screen are typically more expensive than $60. The official RPi display is great because it uses the onboard display connector (which has been useless this far).
    - userbinator 11y ago
      typically more expensive than $60 No, you can certainly get them for less than that: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Tontec-7-Raspberry-Pi-LCD-Touch-Screen-Display-TFT-Monitor-AT070TN90-with-Touchscreen-Kit-HDMI-VGA/1692887583.html http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Tontec-7-Raspberry-Pi-LCD-Tou...

elcct 11y ago

Uh, I'd rather see them adding a fast interface to connect SSD drive

csmattryder 11y ago
Your best bet is probably going for a Banana Pi board - they come with SATA to attach SSDs to. It's a close contender to the RaPi, but the software support isn't 100% though. I've got one myself as an attempted NAS device. It worked 'ok', wouldn't advise it as full-time thing though, these things don't provide the AC nor CPU power to perform such tasks.
- elcct 11y ago
  But does it have a real SATA or is it just SATA over USB?

yuumei 11y ago

Looks like there are a few ICs on the adapter board. I wonder if that means other screens could be hacked in and if the DSI connection is going to be a binary blob.

rasz_pl 11y ago
binary blob all the way straight from RPI foundation: "No there is no software support for direct DSI displays."

antouank 11y ago

Could you possibly buy only the connecting PCB module, and use a touch screen from a bricked mobile phone or tablet? Many of those lying around...

analog31 11y ago
The trouble with recycling parts like that, is that the more mass-produced something is, the more likely to have idiosyncratic connectors and signal formats that mere mortals can't find out how to hook up and program.
- antouank 11y ago
  I see. So the PCB part does this "adapter" work to make the screen "talk" with the R-Pi, right? Screens for mobile devices, don't they have any standards someone can use to build a similar PCB?
- userbinator 11y ago
  Actually, unless you're deliberately looking at the companies who like to invent their own proprietariness, they're more likely to have standard connectors and protocols; consider laptop displays, for example. The ones designing the laptop want to be able to use displays from different manufacturers, and the display manufacturers want their products usable in as many laptops as possible. This leads to standards, both normative and de-facto, and there being only a small number of variations. I'm not as familiar with mobile device displays but given that standards like MIPI DSI exist, I suspect it's a similar situation.
- Vexs 11y ago
  Monitors are actually really easy to hook up, most of the time you just need to adjust the pinout and timings of the controller chip.

mike-cardwell 11y ago

I can't see an on/off button

whiskers 11y ago
Neither does the Raspberry Pi - the user base is pretty used to halting and pulling the power. The display driver board backpowers the Pi itself so there is no change of process for existing users there.
- mike-cardwell 11y ago
  There are a lot of use cases where you want a machine to be running constantly but don't want the screen to be on constantly. I can't put one of these in my bedroom unless I can easily and instantly switch the monitor on/off. [edit] I have an existing PiTFT which also doesn't have a power button. I can turn it on/off programatically, but still a power button would be highly useful. [edit2] Can this screen be turned off programatically without turning the Pi off at the same time, if the screen is powering the Pi? [edit3] Hang on. Is it even possible to turn the screen on/off programatically from the Pi if the Pi is powered separately?
  - visualpipe 11y ago
    You can by a USB cable with switch on it.
    - mike-cardwell 11y ago
      Whilst that would work, it's less than ideal. I'd need to power the monitor and Pi separately at that point. If turning the screen off prevents that pass-through power capability, that is a poorly thought out design.
  - whiskers 11y ago
    I've just confirmed with the foundation that the display will be controllable from software but the current Raspbian image doesn't have it yet - this will allow you to turn off the screen and backlight while leaving the Pi running. So your use case will be possible!

mrmondo 11y ago

Was excited until I saw the resolution - 800x600 will struggle to view most websites, given the resolution it seems rather expensive for $60.

jonknee 11y ago
It will view most websites just fine considering the amount of mobile traffic out there. It won't be super sharp like pixel doubled smartphones, but it will render them just fine.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

omnibrain 11y ago

I'm dreaming of general availability of touch enabled e-paper/e-ink displays. Not just for the Raspberry Pi, but especially with it I would be one step closer to my always-on home dashboard.

hartror 11y ago
Me too, I idly look up prices now and again and have considered retiring my kindle touch.
CodingGuy 11y ago
That would be great!
robgibbons 11y ago
I would personally pay a lot for an e-paper based laptop specifically for text editing. For writers, or programmers, I don't think you can beat e-paper. No eye-strain, outstanding battery life, perfect visibility in direct sunlight...
- niutech 11y ago
  Grab a Kindle and use it as a notepad [1] or as an external screen [2]. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Notepad/dp/B004LSLN0I http://www.amazon.com/Notepad/dp/B004LSLN0I [2] http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150434 http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150434
- masklinn 11y ago
  Pixel Qi tried and failed, though you can still buy 3Qi panels (IIRC 7" or 10") from tripuso (who bought the rights when Pixel Qi folded) and swap the display of a corresponding-size notebook.
  - Vexs 11y ago
    Nice! I've never heard of those. Pretty expensive for a 10" monitor though, found them on aliexpress/alibaba for ~100$. Adafruit stocks them too for 180$, but with a driver board included.

jsingleton 11y ago

Anyone know if the mouse signals from the touch input go over the DSI connection? Or if you need to plug in a USB cable? It's not clear from the post.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
whiskers 11y ago
They go over the DSI connector.

IlPeach 11y ago

Although the resolution might not be the best, this looks like a nice monitor for a POS system!

jokoon 11y ago

I wish someday they will make their own raspberry terminals.

rhapsodyv 11y ago

One thing I miss in default raspberry pi is battery support. Today I just use the filesystem in RO.

throwaway7767 11y ago
> One thing I miss in default raspberry pi is battery support. Today I just use the filesystem in RO. It would be easy to put a battery + charging circuit in front. If you still want to power it through USB you could get increased efficiency by bypassing the DC-DC converter (just cut the trace from it and solder the output from your own PSU there). If the RPi itself had a charging circuit, they would have to decide for the end-users what kind of battery chemistry, charge rate etc. it should support, and they would not be able to please everyone as these things are used for so many different purposes.

askinakhan 11y ago

How about we use the touch display with the raspberry Pi and a windup mechanism to charge an added battery pack then start a charity to distribute these to developing countries.

HNcow 11y ago

A lot of people are comparing this to just buying an Android tablet and saying it doesn't make sense. You're probably right :)! The Pi has so many more use cases outside of just typical Android use however that this product does make sense for. My example is that you can rig the Pi to work with your own Receiver as a wifi flac player with this device: https://www.hifiberry.com/ https://www.hifiberry.com/. You have to control it over wi-fi, but having a console that I can go up to and interact with will be awesome. Also will be great for people like my Father-in-law, I wanted to build him a device that has all 60s/70s/80s rock for christmas, but I didn't want to have to set-up a wifi router and get a device for him just to control it.

dharma1 11y ago

Does anyone know why Android devices don't video inputs, or even aftermarket way of getting video in cheaply? They would be super useful as small screens for various applications

Pengwin 11y ago
My guess is that the entire display circuit is tightly coupled with the SoC, and it would cost a bit more to get something into the circuit that accepted, decoded, and displayed a digital signal on top of the current SoC talking directly to thee display.
malexw 11y ago
When I used to work on those devices, the arguments went something like this: "Adding video input means we need an additional connector on the device, which the Industrial Design guys hate." "We could multiplex the signal, but then we need some kind of proprietary connector and the additional cost of that circuitry." "How many customers want to record video from an external source anyway? It's not worth adding $5 to the MSRP for a feature that isn't going to get used."
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Hopefully we will see less of those arguments as USB-C gets more available.
  - dharma1 11y ago
    usb-c should do video out, but how about video in?
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      The wires themselves are agnostic, its all a matter of protocol choice.

microman 11y ago

I use RPis for bespoke installations for clients. One of the problems has been offering an easy way to make adjustments to the apps the RPi is running without a keyboard/mouse/monitor setup or having to SSH in. This is a great way to offer the ability to make changes. Looking forward to trying one out

err4nt 11y ago
What kinds of installations do you use these in for clients? Automation? Communication? As a small server? I have a RPi sitting here and I'm not sure what to do with it!
- elcct 11y ago
  I once created password less WiFi hot spot and served weird texts instead of websites. For example if someone went to google.com, a person received "No Google for you today" message instead...
  - dalanmiller 11y ago
    Haha, this is great. Do you still have it going? How did you make it work?
- microman 11y ago
  Promotional quiz games where there are two buttons wired up to the RPi which is serving a web-based game, tweet-powered devices (RPi listens to the Twitter stream and activates a power switch when a certain hashtag is used) etc.
ytjohn 11y ago
For my headless Pis, I attach a BT TTL serial port to the rx/tx pins. They run about $15 or less. This lets me pair to the serial port from my laptop, watch it boot the kernel, login and do whatever cli commands I need. I can also use BlueTerm on my android phone to do the same thing (though make sure you get the hacker keyboard if you go this route). Here's pretty much the article I followed, though I bumped my console up to 115200. http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/a-cheap-bluetooth-serial-port-for-your-raspberry-pi http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/a-cheap-bluetooth-serial...

stuaxo 11y ago

Seeing that made me feel really nostalgic for gnome 2 and the simple interface it had.

mentos 11y ago

Anyone use an e-ink display for programming? Not sure how well Visual Studio would perform on one?

albertogplus 11y ago

down, version in cache of google: http://goo.gl/YILqaS http://goo.gl/YILqaS

rasz_pl 11y ago

2 years and instead of adapting one of PLENTY DSI screens they opt for convoluted DSI to parallel conversion, with 10 year old resolution to boot, color me not impressed :( This is just like when they released camera module. Instead of opening MIPI interface to the developers they shipped binary blob locked to one particular camera module from one vendor, because fuck you thats why (well, actually one of rpi/broadcom engineers said something like "people wouldnt be able to figure out how to color correct/debayer because its trade secret of camera module manufacturers, so why bother")

roel_v 11y ago

Is there a high quality, good looking wall mount available? So that I can use something like as the control panel for my home automation setup?

digi_owl 11y ago

Hmm, a back case, a battery, and we have a "vivaldi"...

teekert 11y ago

Wow, I wanted to use that top image on my site and found out it was 1.8MB and more than 4700 pix wide! Nice way to increase the server load ;) (https://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/front-centred.jpg https://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/front...)