Official Raspberry Pi touch display review

This week saw the launch of the official Raspberry Pi display, so I thought I would write up a quick review to share some of my initial thoughts about the device.

Ever since the first version of the Pi there’s been a DSI connector on the board – and although there have been lots of devices that use either USB or the GPIO pins to provide simple touch screens, this is the first to use this official display connector.

I ordered the Pimoroni version of the display which came with a stand for £58 – consisting of 3 layers of laser cut plastic and a couple of feet to stand the screen on. Although this is much handier than just having the display on it’s own I anticipate a lot of Pi-suppliers out there are working on more more robust tablet style enclosures, as this version still leaves the fragile ribbon connectors exposed, along with the Pi itself. The Pimoroni stand is perfect for using the Pi with it’s display on a desk but I wouldn’t chuck it in a bag and take it outside quite yet.

In usual Pimoroni fashion it’s super easy to slot together the stand. Assembling the display itself is straightforward but perhaps a little trickier. The display has a driver board with 2 ribbon cables, and a further ribbon cable which attaches to the DSI port on the Raspberry Pi. I attached the thicker orange cable first, followed by the smaller one, then screwed the board to the back of the display and finally attached the DSI cable between the board and the Pi. I found it easier when I used a couple of plastic screws from my PiBow case to gently nudge the cable covers back into place after I’d slotted each ribbon in place.

You can opt to power the display via the GPIO (jumper cables are provided) or via a USB – it is a slightly tight fit where the Pimoroni stand supports jut out of the back of the display so you’ll need a USB cable with short plugs.

First impressions

The display itself has a robust metal backing and is solidly constructed from glass. It has a really high quality feel to it. There’s 10 point multi-touch which is capacitive (and I imagine will have lots of interesting programming type uses). The touch was responsive and quick running the Raspbian desktop. As the display doesn’t use the HDMI or video out ports you can add another HD or video display, and it shares the power supply with the Pi. Using the USB power option leaves the GPIO ports free to add Hats to.

Here’s how the desktop looks on the display:

The display worked fine out of the box but there is an update available for Raspbian which you’ll need to enable touch, and you’ll need a USB keyboard unless you’re booting directly into the desktop. You can install an onscreen keyboard with

sudo apt-get install matchbox-keyboard

and start it with

sudo matchbox-keyboard

To be honest I found this a bit small to practically use. An official Raspbian onscreen keyboard will be coming soon no-doubt but i’ll be sticking with my USB keyboard.

Drawbacks?

The resolution of the display is 800 x 480 (the screenshots above are native) which for some might be a little bit lacking, but given that you can add a full HD display at the same time I don’t regard this as a massive drawback. The Pi foundation had to find a compromise between cost and a full HD display would have been more expensive. Plus I think 4k displays on tiny devices are silly, and if you really want something like that you can pick up an Android tablet for not much more. Generally everything displays fine, although there are a few dialogue boxes where the buttons are off screen:

The viewing angle left to right is fine, but up/down was a bit sensitive. Generally though colours and contrast looks good out of the box.

I did notice the low power indicator (the rainbow coloured box) appear when I was using a USB Wifi module – and I’ve been running the Pi off the official power supply.

I was worried that the screen itself is also potentially scratchable (the Pimoroni instructions came with lots of warnings) – as it came with a plastic cover I’ve just left that on for now,  as the capacitive touch works fine with it in place. One drawback of the ribbon arrangement is that the DSI cable loops over where the micro SD card sits, so removing it is a bit fiddly.

TouchPi

This is version 1, and when more robust cases come on the market I think a lot of the initial issues like the positioning of cables and power will be solved, as will the software. Looking at how they’ve arranged the hardware I think it would be easy to design a touch pad case for the Pi (i’m really looking forward to see what rainbow inspired case Pimoroni come up with).

I think the exciting thing about the official display is how it changes the nature of the Pi – it feels like a neat self contained all in one computer. I don’t have to worry about SSH or networking, I can plug in a keyboard and start typing away with a GPIO board sitting in front of it.

Given the Pi’s purpose as an educational computer (rather than a mid-30s-bloke-who-likes-to-tinker machine) the official touch display gives the Pi a commonality with tablets and iPads that I think will appeal to young people – finally here’s an all in one machine that will play minecraft out of the box and hopefully inspire tinkering on a level impossible with any other tablet out there.

Update: I built a stand out of Lego, which handily fits quite neatly and includes space below for a Pimoroni black hack3r hat. Pimoroni has also pointed out the the display is actually upside down – the recent Raspbian update flips it over to improve the viewing angle.

#lego #raspberrypi (with official display) all in one computer stand

A photo posted by Pete Taylor (@kimondouk) on Sep 25, 2015 at 3:26am PDT