PiScreen TFT Raspberry Pi

PiScreen Quick Start Guide

Topics covered in the PiScreeen Quick Start Guide;

 

 

Installation Instructions

These can be found here

 

Connecting directly to the GPIO pins.

 

First, place the standoffs in the mounting holes of the Raspberry Pi, and tighten with nylon nuts.

PiScreen and PCB standoff

Connect PiScreen to the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi.
PiScreen can also be connected to Raspberry Pi B+ GPIO pins.

PiScreenGPIO
PiScreen and Raspberry Pi A & b

 

PiScreen and Raspberry Pi B+ & Pi 2
PiScreen and Raspberry Pi B+,  Pi 2 & Pi 3

 

 

 

PiScreen Backlight

The PiScreen back light can between switch on and off with the hardware switch or within software.   For the software feature to work the hardware switch should be in the on position.

 In Software;

# Turn off backlight
echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/*/bl_power
# Turn on backlight
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/*/bl_power

In Hardware;

The below image has the position of the switch highlighted.

PiScreen Backlight

 

 

PiScreen with an External Keyboard or Mouse

PiScreen will also work with with a keyboard and mouse. If you are having trouble accessing some windows, plug a keyboard or mouse into the USB port of your Raspberry Pi. No reboot necessary.

 

Playing a Video on PiScreen

First, you will need to install a video player that is able to play videos on a framebuffer.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get install -y mplayer2

mplayer takes a lot of different options when playing a video. The most important one is -vo fbdev2:/dev/fb1, this forces the video to be played on PiScreen.
Videos that are already scaled to 320x480 play best as the Pi struggles to convert on the fly.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo mplayer -vo fbdev2:/dev/fb1 test264.mp4

Display Images on PiScreen

FBI can be used to display images on PiScreen.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get install fbi

Then to display an image on PiScreen

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo fbi -noverbose -T 1 -a -d /dev/fb1 file

Blip, blop, bloop…