Almost a full year after it was first announced, the Raspberry Pi touchscreen has finally arrived — allowing hackers and hardware builders to use the 7-inch 800 x 480 touch LCD displays for their projects.
That said, the touchscreen costs $60, and that's more than the Raspberry Pi itself. Nevertheless, the price may be well worth it, if the touchscreen turns out to be exactly what builders need for their projects.
The screen itself uses a display serial interface (DSI), as well as a digital parallel interface (DPI), which needs a driver board in order to properly interface with the Raspberry Pi. The display will also need a power supply of its own, which can be then shared with the Raspberry Pi over USB.
The current version of the touchscreen will require some assembly as time goes on, but it will come fully assembled. Initially, the screen will be available from the Raspberry Pi's Swag Store, though more suppliers will start selling it in the near future. Compatible models include the Raspberry Pi 2 model B, Raspberry Pi B+ and Raspberry Pi model A+. The screen also requires users to have the latest version of Raspbian installed on their device.
Originally, it was thought that the creation of the touchscreen would only take around six months, however, it has been around a year since the screen was announced. The team behind it wanted to offer a display that has good color reproduction, high-quality pixels and a good viewing angle, all at an affordable price.
The display itself supports 800 x 480 resolution at 60 frames per second, with 24-bit color and a 70-degree viewing angle.
Not only that, but the team also had to find a manufacturer that could be counted on to build the display for a long period of time.
"We can't just buy a display that's used in your standard iDevice, because it is likely to be canceled when the iCompany decides to move to another manufacturer," said Gordon Hollingworth, director of software for the Raspberry Pi foundation, in an interview with PC World.
Via: PC World
