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Author Topic: Drivers for 2 Touch Screens and Rpi zero  (Read 3603 times)

Offline ladnar

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Drivers for 2 Touch Screens and Rpi zero
« on: June 21, 2019, 12:07:18 PM »
I am a Newbie with a problem. I bought these two touch screens (1) Kedei (SPI; stylus , capacitive?, 3.5"?) and MZDPI (capacitive, 2*20 header, 2.8"?), and they seem to have little diver support. I tried them both with Raspbian, with somewhat mixed results.

Now, I fried my 16GB (Raspbian) microSD card, but I have a 1GB spare, and figured it might be time to try to get a desktop/GUI booted up on piCore-9.0.img . I have booted into terminal, but I don't think I've tried the "startx" command? Maybe I have to dl some TCZs before I try to GUI?  I dunno?

So, assuming I flash it correctly--and that it will run on a little old 1GB uSD--I am back to the difficult position of not having decent drivers (plug-and-play) from the screen manufacturers. With Raspbian, I was able to get the touchscreens to light-up ("black-lit") with a blinking underscore cursor, but waited at least 30 mins and nothing further happened? At least I can be fairly certain the hardware works. Now, if I could just get it to talk to linux? I have looked though the piCore-9.0 filesystem, pretty thoroughly, to familiarize myself with its rough workings. I suppose, I am still pretty mystified, though!

OK, to summarize; (1) I need GUI, (2) I should find some TCZs and figure out how they work, (3) It would be nice to get the touchscreens working, and (4) I would like to SSH several (10-20 QTY) R-pi-zeros together, leaving one as the master processor and the others as slaves.

The screen labeled "MZDPI-VGA-ZERO VERSION:B MZP280V00BR" when web-searched comes up with a github page,
https://github.com/tianyoujian/MZDPI.git, and suggests a driver file called "Mzdpi-vga-4.9.x.zip" but it seems to suggest that I should be on-line to install it.

The Kedei screen, labeled "Raspberry Pi Displayer, kedei, 3.5 inch SPI_128M TFTLCD, 480*320 16 Bit ~60Hz" , wants a file called LCD_driver.zip or LCD_show_v6_1_3.tar.gz (or something similar?).

For the Kedei, I also tried a "pre-compiled" ("pre-installed OS") driver version of Raspbian, called "rpi_35_stretch_kernel_4_16_18-kedei-SPI_128M.rar", but I can't remember if I tried it, or fried my SD-card (and, thus, can't try it)?

Anyhoo, I hope somebody out there can point this newbie to a couple of "quick fixes". I'll work my end of the problem, but, lease, do take pity on me.

Offline Rich

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Re: Drivers for 2 Touch Screens and Rpi zero
« Reply #1 on: June 21, 2019, 12:25:52 PM »
Hi ladnar
Be sure to first read  IMPORTANT  and then  README  found here:
http://tinycorelinux.net/9.x/armv6/releases/RPi/

Take an hour to read this to learn about extensions, how persistence and backup work, and other topics unique to Tinycore:
http://tinycorelinux.net/corebook.pdf

For a GUI, you need  TC.tcz:
http://tinycorelinux.net/9.x/armv6/tcz/TC.tcz.info

Offline ladnar

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Re: Drivers for 2 Touch Screens and Rpi zero
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2020, 11:29:00 AM »
Update: I got the one touch screen working; the smaller one. The Kedei SPI is still a mystery to me. But I continue to try, occasionally.

TheMaster/Slave "bramblebush/bramblepi", cluster concept works with Raspbian, USB gadget mode. Though I have yet to successfully SSH, as I am a newbie, there, too. ifconfig shows the two slave Raspbians I booted, in the CLI of the master Raspbian running the ifconfig command.

Others have solved the g_ether problem for piCore. I am working on following their recipe. It would be nice to boot my bramble bush with one microSD master picore, and 1 microSD slave picore card; RAM resident, booting each of the 10 remaining boards.

There is also a remote boot", I think? rpi-boot? SSH-ed? maybe? Fed from the master to each slave board? I should research it more. It could prove useful.