Using other HATs with the hyperpixel

Discussion Raspberry Pi
1

So right now I’m putting together parts for a project I’m working on. Which requires a small touchscreen.
I’ve got 3.5 hyperpixel touchscreen and it is by far the best touchscreen for its size I’ve seen but there’s one rather substantial problem.
It eats up the entire set of GPIO pins on the Pi. It’s not even that it just sits on them it seems to actually use all of them. This means you pretty much can’t do anything else with the pi unless its USB based.

So I’m wondering if there’s a way around this problem.

I have another touchscreen slated for another project of mine and it connects to the Pi via the HDMI and USB ports.
Anyone know if theres any way to achieve something similar with the hyperpixel screen?
If Pimoroni took it upon themselves to build some manner of conversion kit for their screen I’d be quite happy to pay 10 or 20 pounds for it.

2

I don’t think there is anyway around it other than using another display. A PiTFT maybe that also plugs into the GPIO, but doesn’t use all the pins / resources.
You pay a price for the performance of the Hyperpixel. Its how it gets the high FPS and the color depth etc.

3

That is a shame because the other one I’ve got is far too big for this project though its stats are much the same as the hyperpixels (though it is obviously a lot larger and doesn’t need drivers)
https://www.chalk-elec.com/?page_id=1280#!/14-HDMI-interface-LCD-with-capacitive-touchscreen/p/36248806/category=3094861

It’s pretty much killed half the potential additional elements to the project I was hoping to explore. Yet the screen is that good I’m not prepared to ditch it without reason.

4

One of these may work, if you want something small. Your hat will have to go between the Pi and PiTFT.
https://shop.pimoroni.com/?q=PiTFT

5

Yeah they may be a touch too small. Except the 3.5 one.
I’m just gonna have to work around it or accept not having certain functionalities.

6

You posted you had the 3.5 Hyperpixel so thats why I posted the link to the PiTFT. ;) I think 3.5 is the biggest one? I didn’t see anything bigger on the actual Adafruit Site. They have this 5 inch HDMI with touch, https://www.adafruit.com/product/2260 I had one and found it Ok. the HDMI going out the side was a bit of a pain with my setup. It was also a bit small for what I wanted so I replaced it with the official Pi foundation 7 inch touch screen.

7

Ohhh that is a good option.
Shame its a resistive touch screen though.

~EDIT~
One thing that annoys me with Adafruit is how inconsistently annoying it can be to find their stuff in the UK

Also turns out Pimoroni made a larger screen that pretty much does what I was hoping the hyperpixel could be made to do except its not a touch screen.


So you know. Pimoroni guys. There’s probably a market here. I’d buy a few. Sixty to ninety pounds? I’d consider that very reasonable.

8

Other than being a bit easier to damage I like the resistive touch over the capacitive touch. Pretty well any stylus will work. Thats lets you use a nice fine tip stylus, a bonus on the smaller screens. My fine tip stylus with a Teflon tip won’t work on a capacitive touch screen. =(
I’m in Canada, I’ve ordered direct from Adafuit and Pimoroni. And they both sell some of each other stuff. Thats saved me from having to do two separate orders a few times.

9

The Pi Foundation screen is 7 inches, and capacitive touch, https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-7-touchscreen-display-with-frame

10

Yeah 7 is waaay too big for my purposes.
It might be more sensible to try and procure a small screen that isn’t a touchscreen and simply using buttons instead. THanks for all the info though

11

The smaller the screen the trickier it is to use touch, with my knubby fingers it is anyway.
Would this work for you, https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/analog-2-axis-thumb-joystick-with-select-button-breakout-board

12

I could definitely see the potential.

To reveal a touch more about the project. I’ve won one of those pipboy kits thats coming out for the new fallout game. And having watching a video of one being put together I’m fairly convinced I can take one, stuff a pi in there and make it somewhat functional.
Mostly just to see how it turns out.

13

Wow, thats cool, that should be a fun project. Some head scratching along the way too probably, lol.
Please post pictures as you go.

14

Once you sort out how big a screen you need post back and between the two of us we should be able to find something that will work.

15

Theres plenty of buttons and knobs that should with a customised desktop environment be more than sufficient to actually navigate menus.
So I could ditch touchscreens altogether.

And I’m planning on using a USB microkeyboard for a lot of the input anyways.

16

Yeah, I have a mini wireless one with a small touchpad in it I use a lot when setting my headless Pi’s.
Anyway will be watching this thread to see how you get it all done.

17

I’ll probably be making a few threads to cover specific issues as they come up and once I’ve got a better overall idea of what I’m doing and how I’ll probably throw up a build log somewhere

18

There’s a projects section, https://forums.pimoroni.com/c/projects
I posted a few of mine in there. ;)

19

Check this out, https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-desktop-terminal-replica-fallout-4-74195
https://www.myminifactory.com/users/PowerUpProps