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  • Author Author: fustini
  • Date Created: Date Created
  • Views 4761 views
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  • Comments 25 comments
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Cheap portable LCD for Raspberry Pi

fustini

I've been wanting a small portable display for the Pi.  Unfortunately, portable HDMI displays are quite expensive, and the DSI connector is not an option currently as far as I know.  Then I realized that there a large number of small composite LCDs available which are intended for use in vehicles for backup rearview cameras.  I bought this inexpensive LCD on Amazon, the 3.5 Inch TFT LCD Monitor for Car / Automobile by kingsmart for $21.48 (my order was sold by ePathDirect and fulfilled by Amazon):

imageimage

It arrived today, and I put the photos I took in a Picasa gallery.  I hooked it up to my bench power supply and simply connected it's yellow connector to the composite output on the Pi.  The monitor displayed the Pi's ouptut ok right at power on, through the boot process and beyond.  As I expected, the resolution is poor, especially for small text, given it is standard definition and connected with composite.  However, I'm intending to use this monitor to display tweets, so I can increase the font size as tweets are only 140 characters.  I think this monitor will also be handy for basic troubleshooting when ssh or serial won't suffice, and I don't want to bother with a regular sized monitor.

 

Anyone have any other ideas for inexpensive displays?

 

Cheers,

Drew

  • FYI - a very useful component is Adafruit's RCA male-male coupler which removes the need for a seperate RCA cable:

     

    http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/08/02/new-product-rca-coupler-male-to-male/

     

    I used it in my portable Raspberry Pi.

  • I picked up a fairly cheap 4.7" Color LCD with nice looking plastic surround, a decent amount of changable values via onscreen menu and 3 buttons on the rear of the unit (Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness, Hue etc..) and it has 2 RCA Composite inputs. It cost just £39.99 GBP (~$55 USD) with free next day delivery here in the UK from my main and favorite componants and misc parts supplier who had bought in 10 to see how they sold and sold out in an hour.

    It is designed for use inside a car and the plastic stand with strong ball joint holding it to the main unit has a sticky pad on the base to mount onto a car dash or console at various angles.

    The two seperate inputs are pretty cool, the unit has 3 leads, 2x RCA female (AV1 and AV2) and a center pin positive 4mm power connector which fits in the back of the display and has about 3ft of cable then 2 cable ends that you can either add connectors to or just connect to your choice of power supply. Its rated 12v but I dropped it right down to 5.5v and it still remained operating and turned on and off perfectly.

    AV1 is designed to have things like in-car DVD players and such plugged into it and AV2 is designed to have a reversing camera kit hooked up to it, so AV2 automatically comes on taking priority (which you can then switch back via one of the buttons on the rear) when it detects a signal on AV2 (in its designed purpose a rear camera system sending its output when the car is put into Reverse) on my bench I use AV1 for my Pi but its nice knowing I have a spare input for either a 2nd Pi or another input from something else.

    The image is not perfect but it is fine for most things and extremly handy for when my main PC and screen are busy or off and I need to do a quick diagnosis or change a setting or even for writting short amounts of code or text (not too much though as your eyes would start going funny looking at the thing for too long!) Its far better then I expected for the amount of money paid.

    I beleive that Adafruit are stocking similar displays in a range of sizes.

  • My Pi should arrive tomorrow. I bought a ~5 in. B/W analog TV from CVS for $17.  It has RCA inputs and pretty good resolution. It also has AM/FM and will run off car's lighter socket or D batteries for portable use. Anxious to try it with the Pi. I'll report back. It may still be possible to find some of these little TV's around. Maybe a color set would be neat!

  • in reply to fustini

    It works quite well... But there are some minor disadvantages...

    1. you have to concentrate your eyes to have the two displays properly over each other so you have a single image

    2. the border region is a little bit fuzzy.

    3. you must adjust the resolution to see the text in the shell.

    Overall it is not the perfect solution but looks very cool image and you can make adjustments on your pi without using a normal screen and an extra power supply for the screen.

  • in reply to jeffbiss

    Not sure if this happened to you, but screen looked all scratched up when it arrived.  I thought I'd somehow gotten a used one until I realized there was protective plastic over it and the screen itself was fine image