Raspberry Pi computers don’t need a case, but it’s not a bad idea to put them in one to reduce the risk of breaking something. Plus some of them look nice… and others actually add functionality to Raspberry Pi’s cheap single-board computers.

Case in point: Banggood is selling a $16 Raspberry Pi Case with a small touchscreen display that fits into the top.

The display is nothing to write home about: it’s a 3.5 inch, 480 x 320 pixel TFT LCD resistive touchscreen that you can interact with using a stylus that ships with the case, or with your fingers (or fingernails… which tend to work better on resistive touch panels than fingertips).

But it’s still pretty nifty that a case this cheap includes a display at all.

The case also has a top cover that you can put in place if you’re not using the touchscreen. That option lets you put a small cooling fan inside the case — but you can’t use a fan and touchscreen at the same time, so you’d have to take the case apart and replace some components to switch between using a touchscreen and using a fan.

via CNX-Software and Scargill’s Tech Blog

 

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25 replies on “This $16 Raspberry Pi case has a 3.5 inch touchscreen on top”

  1. Wow!
    I currently use a Rpi to control my kiln and use a browser on my phone or computer to control it.
    With this I could control and monitor it directly!

  3. Banggood is absolute garbage. If you can find something similar elsewhere, I would highly recommend you do so. Is going to take three weeks it have this case delivered, longer if it comes from China.

    1. Who cares about your one experience with Banggood? Really, is that all you have to say?

  5. I think this would make a great control box for many projects. I’d like The I/O lines accessible through a molded cutout in the back. I’d also like a way to mount the case display forward

  6. One of the problems with this kind of hardware is it often requires using a special rpi image, as opposed to just being able to install the support files to an existing rpi.

    1. All newer pi images should have out the box support for a lot of the smaller low res (non-mipi) displays like the ili9331 etc. Should be alot of guides for setting them up easy enough but plug-and-play, nope…

      1. Still a cool case for a good price though 😀

        If only it didn’t take 2 months to get

  8. The price is nice but that resolution is kind of odd. Not very good for emulation, at least, unless you’re ok with fractional scaling. Are there any similarly cheap 320×240 or 640×480 screens in that size?

    1. 320×240 3.2″ for usual pis.
      640×480 2.8″ with pins in the center meant for zeroes.

  9. Does this mean the touchscreen is to be used as your one dedicated screen? Or can you use it in addition to a regular primary full screen monitor?

    1. Setting up a Raspberry Pi to use both SPI (gpio control) and HDMI at the same time is possible, but not straightforward. In detail, there is not currently a “Display Settings” menu where you can set Mirror / Extended display, or screen resolution & orientation. Destructions are available but often involve deep command line & config file adjustments that can break with software updates.

      1. Pretty sure a screen that size would require fbcp to copy the framebuffer over to the spi or i2c interface it’s using. At least that’s the cast with the dozen or so 4″ or smaller screens I dabble with.

  11. Looks cool, but I have 2 use cases for RPi.
    (1) Drives a HDTV (no case needed here), also acts as an always on server
    (2) Use the 40pin header for controlling circuits.

    It just isn’t practical for me.

    1. Well thanks for letting us know that it doesn’t fit what everyone wants 🤦🏼‍♂️

      1. What is your use case? That was the intent of the comment. I could have just said “Doesn’t do what I want” if that is all I wanted to say.

        1. Mainly that no on the entire internet could care less if you could use it or not

    2. I came here just to find out if this product is practical for you. Glad I got my answer.

    3. Move along then… useless commenter, it’s a reasonable deal on a mildly useful touchscreen.

Comments are closed.