Raspberry Pi officially gets 7″ touchscreentouch

The British foundation behind the Raspberry Pi has announced a 7″ touchscreen for the small computer. The screen has a resolution of 800×480 pixels and supports touches with up to 10 fingers simultaneously.

The screen offers viewing angles of 70 degrees and the back is made of metal for extra strength. The foundation that develops the Raspberry Pi claims to have opted for an industrial LCD, because of the quality and better availability. To connect the Raspberry Pi to the touchscreen, the foundation provides a driver board that provides dsi-to-dpi conversion. This board can be attached to the back of the screen. The Raspberry Pi in turn can optionally be fixed to the driver board and the board must be connected to the Pi with the display connector for the image.

Power can be supplied to the screen via an additional power supply, USB or gpio jumpers from the Pi. It is also possible to add an extra screen via HDMI. The consumption of the screen is 2.25W and the dimensions are 194x110x20mm. The touchscreen functionality is based on Kivy, a Python-written library for developing nui apps. The screen can be used, among other things, to make tablets or remote controls based on the Pi.

The touchscreen for the Raspberry Pi has a suggested retail price of $60. Converted and including VAT, that is 65 euros. Incidentally, there were already third parties that marketed touchscreens for small computers.