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Upgraded display to 7" capacative touchscreen

Discussion in 'Mods and Upgrades' started by JohnShuba, Mar 16, 2017.

  1. JohnShuba

    JohnShuba New Member

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    I upgraded to a touchscreen that work a bit better that the one that comes with the Robo C2. I added a 7 inch 800 x 480 capacative touchscreen. The upgrade does not require any changes to the Robo C2 case just the removal of hardware and the addition of new hardware. The beauty for this is you can always restore the printer back to the way it came from the factory. You have to print a display mounting assembly that will mount to the existing display mount of the printer. To gain access to the display and cables pull off the printer front black bezel, start at the top and gently pull off.

    Try this at your own risk. I take no responsibility if you have any issue. It worked on my printer for me.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]



    What is required.

    1. Element14 7” touchscreen. https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-78156/l/raspberry-pi-7-touchscreen-display
    2. MCM SmartiPi Touch Case http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/SMARTICASE-SMTNL-/83-17628
    3. 12” to 18” 15 pin Raspberry Pi flat ribbon camera cable.
    4. 4 x M4x10 screws
    5. 4 x M4 lock washers
    6. 3D Print of the usb mount faceplate (see below)
    7. 3D Print of the mount assembly (see below)
    8. Need to create 4 longer wires with single pin connectors at each end. Got mine from old computer case.
    9. 2 pin connector (Need this for the Z-stop switch. You have to carefully remove the two wires and their pin connections from the factory display cable and place them in the two pin connector.

    I have made an image file to download; it took a lot of searching and couple of hours of loading. I would suggest getting a new SD drive 16GB and load the image to that SD card and replace you r SD in the printer with the new one. That will also give you a backup SD of the original image.

    Image Download:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B51PXhcn1zZPcnNiTFN1Qnk3RWc/view?usp=sharing

    Here are the part files I printed.

    USB mount faceplate. Pull the faceplate off of the MCM SmartiPi Touch Case and glue on the printed USB mount faceplate.

    STL File Download:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B51PXhcn1zZPVEotdlJaYUVmaU0/view?usp=sharing
    Step File Download:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B51PXhcn1zZPLWhtQ2E1bjdfckE/view?usp=sharing

    [​IMG]

    This images shows the back of the case with the USB mount faceplate "shown on the right" and the Display mount assembly screwed down. You will have to remove some material from the back of the case to fir in the USB mount faceplate and USB connector. I use a dremel with grinding tool to remove the material.

    [​IMG]

    Display mount assembly.
    STL File Downloads:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B51PXhcn1zZPaEtZMjh6Z3NqT2c/view?usp=sharing
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B51PXhcn1zZPZUhQOEV2aXgzc2s/view?usp=sharing
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B51PXhcn1zZPWFc5bzhZVlRxWEE/view?usp=sharing
    Step File Download:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B51PXhcn1zZPbGpWaXkyaUdsNVk/view?usp=sharing

    [​IMG]

    Three parts glue together.
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Good luck, I’m enjoying this upgrade.
     
    #1 JohnShuba, Mar 16, 2017
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2017
  2. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Sweet. We stole the design for the R1/R1+ but we reused the exact same LCD. Good to know that the larger one works!
     
    Geof and JohnShuba like this.
  3. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    I have the RoboOS working on a 4" IPS screen, just had to replace the LCD and touchscreen driver but the rest is working. But @JohnShuba this was an ambitious and very well done mod.
     
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  4. colton81

    colton81 Active Member

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    Im trying to get my adafruit 5" hdmi touchscreen to work ive redid the config.txt file on the sd card but touch wont work. Any idea how i can replace the drivers cant seem to locate them


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  5. colton81

    colton81 Active Member

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    I put the R2 OS on a sd card and it worked for the screen but the Z wizard wouldnt work on it so i wanted to try to get the C2 working


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  6. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    This is why I went to great lengths to match that LCD for the RoboOS boxes we built for the R1 series. Didnt want to have to figure that out.

    Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
     
  7. colton81

    colton81 Active Member

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    Yea idk what it could be the R2 OS it works perfect but for some reason the Z offset wizard doesnt work it just freezes up when i click it. The touchscreen half way works on the C2 OS but i can only click in one corner and it ends up clicking random buttons


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  8. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Sounds like drivers. I wanted to avoid the "drivers on Raspbian" fiasco and just matched the LCD. Easier ☺

    Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
     
  9. colton81

    colton81 Active Member

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    Thats what i was going to do but microcenter had the touchscreen on sale for open-box half off couldnt really pass that up. Ill post in the R2 forum if anyone has had issues with the Z offset not working. Im thinking its probably because im running the C2 marlin on the mainboard and its not communicating properly though


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  10. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    That C2 LCD is 7 bucks from BangGood so price is not a concern. A larger one would be nice ... the one we used for the barbot doesnt even need drivers (it helps for the touchscreen accuracy but not required) so you can look in that thread if you want one we know works on a pi.

    Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
     
  11. OutsourcedGuru

    OutsourcedGuru Active Member

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    Could you go to school on the image he provided?

    For example, you could use another Raspberry Pi 3, drop in a microSD with that image on it. Boot it, ignoring the fact that it can't see the RAMPS board... SSH into it via ethernet using the factory IP address settings I posted earlier and then check out what John loaded to get that to work. Note also that it sounds like he pulled some trickery with that 2-pin connector back to the Z stepper.
     
  12. colton81

    colton81 Active Member

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    Yea i found what he loaded but that didnt work for the screen i had. I ended up keeping the R2 OS on the pi it works perfectly now havent had any issues out of it. I found at one point where the screen drivers were at but i forgot now lol but the R2 definitely has the correct driver installed on it.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  13. OutsourcedGuru

    OutsourcedGuru Active Member

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    Alright.

    If you're into learning things, this page talks about loading drivers for screens. https://github.com/notro/fbtft/wiki
    The Raspi section goes into detail about the many different screens Adafruit sells, for example. I don't see the 7" there, unfortunately. FBTFT is one of the main drivers within this space.

    The basic mechanism for modifying the driver space for this would be modprobe. Review some of the examples from that link. Running that adjusts the file /proc/modules. The command lsmod lists what's there and is practically the equivalent of cat, tbh.

    Code:
    $ ssh pi@my-c2.local
    $ lsmod
    $ lsmod |grep tft
    fbtft                  26084  1 fb_ili9486
    syscopyarea             2945  1 fbtft
    sysfillrect             3443  1 fbtft
    sysimgblt               2069  1 fbtft
    fb_sys_fops             1309  1 fbtft
    $ sudo cat /proc/modules |grep tft
    fbtft 26084 1 fb_ili9486, Live 0x7f262000 (C)
    syscopyarea 2945 1 fbtft, Live 0x7f24b000
    sysfillrect 3443 1 fbtft, Live 0x7f10e000
    sysimgblt 2069 1 fbtft, Live 0x7f10a000
    fb_sys_fops 1309 1 fbtft, Live 0x7f106000
    So in my case that fb_ili9486 driver is the one that's been modprobe'd into the driver space. You might compare your two images to see which one uses what.
     
  14. EvanC2

    EvanC2 New Member

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    How did you attached the back ribbons and cables?
     

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