Single gang mounting system for RaspberryPi with Touchscreen by kevinkahn

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

This set of parts allows the mounting of a Raspberry Pi 0 with an Adafruit 2.8" Touchscreen (model 2423 or 2298) into a single gang wall box with room for an Insteon micro on/off or dimmer. There are 2 versions - one meant to print outer face down and the other outer face up. To print the first of these without awful support that screw holes for mounting the faceplate are done as separate inserts. The space for the micro switch and a tiny hole in the faceplate allow one to use a small paper clip to do a power reset on the Pi so that it can be restarted if needed without cycling a circuit breaker. For a discussion of the software I am using with this and related items see: http://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/18026-soft-keypadlinc-like-console-from-raspberry-pi/ and http://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/19124-wall-mount-rpi-with-28-touchscreen/
Rev2: faceplateV9 is an improved faceplate with better thinning on the back for protrusions of the PiTFT. Printing the faceplate face down will yield a great smooth finish on the large flat part but in my experience pretty marginal side curves. Printing it face up, while a bit counter-intuitive yields pretty good flat part and great sides. Sanding out the flat part down to 800 grit or better will then yield a very nice result, particularly if, like me, you need to paint it to match commercial plates nearby (mine needed to be ivory).
Assembly notes:
After answering various questions in the UDI forum about how this gets assembled I thought it was worthwhile to summarize some of the info here. The Pi0 gets mounted to the display using a straight through header that needs to be soldered to it on the component side of the board. It then plugs directly into the bottom of the display. The power supply that this is designed for is a Hi-Link PM01 (e.g., https://www.amazon.com/Hi-link-HLK-PM01-Step-Down-Intelligent-Household/dp/B01B7G6LYE) available for $3 or less on Amazon, ebay, etc. It also uses a standard microswitch to allow power reset of the Linux system without pulling the breaker. The output of the power supply is wired through the microswitch with jumpers to the usb power port of the Pi0. I used a micro usb OTG adapter like this one: https://www.adafruit.com/products/2910 (also available on ebay etc.) with the power and ground jumpers soldered to the outside pins (power/+5 to pin1 and ground/-5 to pin4). This allows easier assembly than soldering power directly to the Pi0 board power pads. I also use a micro WiFi adapter in the Pi0 USB port. I used heat shrink over all exposed wires. An Insteon micro on/off or dimmer fits on the lower shelf if desired to control a local load. It should go without saying that this is NOT UL approved. Having said that the design does keep the 120v to below the horizontal bulkhead with the exception of the soldering of the 120v input to the power supply. This should physically separate the 120 and 5 volt parts of the design. Use at your own risk.