Recommended 2.8" TFT display

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1

I’m completing a BOM for my second Volumio setup, and this one needs to be really compact. The main challenge is the display – I have very limited height, so it must be smaller than 5 cm. The setup will be based on a Raspberry Pi 5, and I haven’t selected a DAC yet.

My questions:

  1. Are there any good SMALL displays with a more rectangular aspect ratio? Something like 4:1 instead of the usual 4:3?
  2. I’ve seen many discussions about issues when connecting popular size 2.8" displays to Volumio. Is there any “best choice” that is known to work well?

Here’s what I’ve found so far:

MIPI interface:

A bit too wide, but maybe after removing the outer frame it could fit. The PCB height is 47 mm, and I suspect the display itself is the same as in the SPI version below. If that’s the case, the dimensions should be fine. But what about touch functionality? Is it also transmitted via MIPI?

SPI interface:

Most likely the same display, but connected via GPIO. Here, I have the required dimensions without disassembling the metal frame, and the price is lower, so it seems like a good option. But what about compatibility? Will this interface work properly with Volumio?

2

The second will work, but you need to add settings to /boot/userconfig.txt and manual changes to touch display, but it occupies all the GPIO pins, no further options to add switches etc.
I would opt for the 1st which will most likely work out of the box, by just adding display_auto_detect=1 to /boot/userconfig.txt

3

Thanks. I’m also considering the MIPI version, but out of curiosity - does the second one electrically use all GPIO pins? Are they all actually in use by the display, or do you mean that there’s simply no physical space to connect anything else? (That would still be an issue, but a smaller one.)

4

And regarding my first question (small displays with more rectangular shape than 4:3), I found something nice, with perfect dimensions for my needs:

It has a hardware converter to HDMI and USB. What do you think, will it work?

5

Hard to tell, most likely not. can’t find much info on it.

6

So I bought this first one, unfortunately it is not easy task. I have it connected to MIPI port (tested both on my RPi 5), userconfig.txt is updated (line display_auto_detect=1 added into it, nothing more in this file), unfortunately display is totally dark. It is powered, I see blinking green led on backplane, but it is the only activity. Any advices what else I can check or configure here would be welcome.

7

Answering for myself, maybe someone else will have similar problem with this display: it seems that auto-detect here is not working at all (somebody told me, that autodetection is not possible via DSI interface), so display has to be configured manually. For my display working config looks as follow (userconfig.txt):

#for 2.8" TFT display:
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
#DSI1 Use
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-dsi-waveshare-panel,2_8_inch,rotation=270
#DSI0 Use
#dtoverlay=vc4-kms-dsi-waveshare-panel,2_8_inch,dsi0
8

You have 3 screens mentioned in this topic, Guess I need to guess to which screen you’re referring.
Normally a MIPI-DSI will work with the addition of display_auto_detect=1.
Have 2 of them, which only have display_auto_detect=1 in the userconfig.txt

9

I was writing about the first one – the one first mentioned in the initial post and the first one throughout the whole discussion, I thought it was clear enough. But anyway, my screen is working fine now. Thanks for the reply.