Create a Raspberry Pi tablet with a 7-inch LCD touch screen from Adafruit. Open with OpenJSCAD
Awhile back, I purchased an Adafruit Kippah board and a 7-inch LCD touchscreen, intending to use the RPi as a 5v computer to run my telescope. This was before the Pi Foundation Display was available.
The screen worked great, but it didn't have any attachment tabs or a way of holding the RPi in place. Along with this problem, most of the software used with astrophotography was just being ported to the RPi, so I decided to shelve the project.
In the meantime, I added a 3D printer to my list of hobbies and began learning OpenJSCAD. When several programs I use with my telescope became available for RPi, I decided to combine the two hobbies and make my pitablet.
This project uses OpenJSCAD, jscad-utils and jscad-raspberrypi.
You can open the project directly in OpenJSCAD here
The three parameters on the left allow you to select:
When creating a STL file, set the resolution to the highest your system will allow. It can take a long time to render on the highest resolutions, but you will get a smoother object.
The taper angle will move the picase as well as changing the angle of the tablet edges. This allows the picase to act as a kick stand. The default works pretty well. Angles greater than 22 degrees don't stand upright well.
Select the part you want, then update. Then select the export type from the dropdown next to the Generate STL
button, I use STL (ASCII), and press the Generate button.
Load the STL into your slicer. You may need to rotate the part to print well.
The
bottom
should be printed with supports.
The
top
and picase
can be printed without supports.
All three parts after printing and cleaning.
I printed these using ESun PETG filament.
Before you begin assembly, load the latest Raspbian Jessie with Pixel. You will need to configure using a HDMI monitor and keyboard/mouse. Once you have networking and ssh running, you can begin assembly. Once the Adafruit LCD is working, the HDMI port doesn't work anymore, and the case does not provide access to it.
Use raspbi-config
to:
If you have a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse, it's a good idea to get it connected now. I prefer this one over this, I find it easier to type on.
Follow the instructions on Adafruit. If you have issues using the touchscreen calibration script, use xinput-calibrator
.
sudo apt-get install xinput-calibrator
DISPLAY=:0.0 sudo xinput_calibrator
You need to place the settings into a calibration file. For Raspbian Jessie, use /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf
You will need create the xorg.conf.d
directory and place the config settings into a 99-calibration.conf
file.
sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf
sudo reboot
ISC © John Cole