back to article Stick your finger in another Pi: Titchy-puter now has touchscreen

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has given its seal of approval to a 7-inch touchscreen for its flagship microcomputer. The makers of the hobbyist quad-core ARM-powered system said the $60 screen will allow display and touch functions to be accessed from software. Drivers for the screen are included with the latest version of …

  1. Greg J Preece

    Such things have existed unofficially for a while. My roommate has one that is the size of the Pi itself, so it sits on top and becomes almost one wall of a case for the board. They're useful, and not exactly expensive.

    1. James Hughes 1

      Not correct. This is the first screen that uses the DSI port on the Pi, rather than HDMI or the GPIO's. So you get to retain all the GPIO's plus, you can actually connect a HDMI screen and one of these to get a full speed (60hz) dual display setup. (three, if you use the GPIO's with yet another panel, as you describe, which is much slower but possible)

  2. HarryBl

    Sold out...

  3. x 7

    Greg's right, my son imported one from the USA nine months or so ago. If memory is correct it came from the parent company of Farnell/CPC/Element14

  4. ZSn

    Pricey

    I know that this may be sacrilege (and I have a number of raspberry pi's myself) but after adding the screen, SD card, pi etc, it's no cheaper than a low end tablet (and the tablet usually has a better screen). The raspberry pi is more flexible, no argument there, but the screen is a bit overpriced...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Linux

      Re: Pricey

      " it's no cheaper than a low end tablet (and the tablet usually has a better screen"

      Does your tablet have four USB ports, three different screen outputs and 40 GPIO pins? Oh, and an ethernet port 8)

      I know what you mean but they are rather different beasts. I use one as a MythTV frontend for example and no tablet is going to touch it for that. Another one will soon be monitoring my office (sensors, Zoneminder etc etc).

      It also doesn't want to send *ahem* telemetry data to persons unknown.

      1. Salts

        Re: Pricey

        @gerdesj

        Do agree, low end tablet is just a low end tablet, RPi has much more to offer, you can build your own tablet with an RPi, also this is from Pi Foundation so the support should be fantastic. Kids today don't know they are born, had I had access to such stuff... :)

        1. Will Godfrey Silver badge

          Re: Pricey

          Yeppers.

          Also it's not a tablet, so why compare it with one?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Pricey

            "But it looks like one!"

  5. Tromos

    Poor resolution

    800x400 is what is stated in the article, a strange aspect ratio, but even worse, just not enough pixels these days. I would have hoped for at least 1280x800 which should have been achievable given the number of sub-£100 tablets sporting one of these.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Poor resolution

      "800x400 is what is stated in the article,"

      That would be 800x480: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/the-eagerly-awaited-raspberry-pi-display/

      /. managed an auth source, not sure why it wasn't linked here. The journo linked the store though which also has the spec.

      See above for comments about why a RPi is not a tablet.

      1. Tromos

        Re: Poor resolution (@gerdesj)

        Article still says 800x400, and the extra 80 doesn't change the inadequacy of the resolution. I'm not sure why you direct me to comments about why it isn't a tablet. I'm well aware of that fact, it would be a crappy tablet as it is far too thick and (comparatively) power hungry. I merely mentioned that many cheap tablets have better screens to make the point that a reasonable resolution touch screen can be had for not much money.

        1. James Hughes 1

          Re: Poor resolution (@gerdesj)

          The whys and wherefore's are all covered in Gordon's blog post - its down to safety of supply and cost.

    2. Nimby

      Re: Poor resolution

      The resolution does seem ... ridiculously poor. In a world where 5 inch phones now regularly exceed full 1080p reso natively, that RPi 7 inch screen is not something I would put my money into. Many years ago maybe, but not today.

      However that does bring up an interesting idea for a RPi case: A real 7in touch screen (with at least 1080p resolution) in a case with a battery. Just plug in your RPi board and instant tablet! That might be a fun waste of money. Instead of an iThing I could have a piThing, complete with official (alternative) fruity logo on the case. :D

      But definitely not with this paticular 7 inch blunder. The idea is great. The resolution ... not so much.

  6. Deadly Headshot

    First?

    There have already been loads of touchscreens made available for the Raspberry Pi! This is just the first to be branded by the Raspberry Pi Foundation!

    1. James Hughes 1

      Re: First?

      As above - the first to use the DSI connector. And its not just branded, the PCB etc were all developed by the Pi people, they just bought in the screen. Read the blog post for more information.

  7. g00se
    Linux

    DEs

    So what kind of desktop environments are going to be able to support touch well on these screens?

    1. ZSn

      Re: DEs

      Kodi?

      1. g00se

        Re: DEs

        Kodi is a dedicated media environment is it not? I'm talking about generic touch desktops. I suspect there could be Gnome variants but i know nothing of them as they'd probably drive me nuts on a desktop.

        1. Bob H

          Re: DEs

          I have an O2 Joggler which is a table top touch screen computer running an Atom processor on a lower resolution display. I have to say that the screen keyboard experience of Mint isn't fantastic and I don't think any of the distros are great for a desktop environment because the desktop flow doesn't match that experience.

    2. Known Hero

      Re: DEs

      Windows 10 :D hehhehehhe

    3. James Hughes 1

      Re: DEs

      I believe the touch screen works with X, so, all of them?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Foundation / Trading

    Isn't Gordon Hollingworth director of engineering for the commercial Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd company rather than the charitable Raspberry Pi Foundation?

    1. James Hughes 1

      Re: Foundation / Trading

      Yes, he is, but they are all in the same office. The charity side concentrates on teacher training and outreach and so on, the trading side on HW development. Note that the commercial HW side is a fully owned subsidiary of the charity, so all it's profits go to the charity.

  9. CaptainBanjax

    Awesome.

    Preordered.

    Just have to figure out how to port the driver to Ubuntu on the Pi 2 because...reasons.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like