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(There is a very good question about small screens in general here. Unfortunately, it's not quite specific enough for my needs)

One of the things I am going to need for a few of the projects I have in mind is a small screen that affixes directly on top of the RPi. Now, there is one that I can find that is confirmed to work (and work well), but it is a resistive touch screen, and it is out of stock.

I would much prefer a capacitive touch screen, mainly because are typically much thinner. Also, I believe I read somewhere that they use less power (Not that big a concern for my needs, though).

Also, I have a secondary question: Will the Pi work with both a screen like I linked above AND an HDMI monitor? I imagine it would work, but I think that might be a bit too much for the thing's GPU.

Community
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b4ux1t3
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    I'm really surprised nobody has made a decent capacitive screen with a res. They're commonplace for smartphones, so I'm surprised we're only getting these sub-HD screens – Alexander Feb 01 '14 at 21:28
  • The worst part is that I could swear I heard about one almost a year ago. Unfortunately I wasn't as in to the Pi back then, so it kinda just drifted off into the far reaches of memory. I've been fervently scouring the sites I follow, but a year's a long time online. – b4ux1t3 Feb 02 '14 at 08:41

2 Answers2

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The PiTFT is one of a great many small screens supported by the fbtft driver. If you don't like the PiTFT's resistive touch screen, you should be able to find an alternative with a capacitive screen.

For your secondary question, the answer is "it should":

An HDMI monitor will be connected through the GPU, while the "fbtft" driver bypasses the GPU and drives its screen directly through the CPU. Only one of the screens will be available in console mode (you should be able to pick which one by changing the kernel command line), while you can use them simultaneously in X.

Mark
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re: your secondary question, there are screens, that are connected via serial/i2c, leaving HDMI available for other needs, but these screens usually require additional software libraries to access them and, obviously, cannot be used as a console or main screen.

lenik
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