More specifically:

(http://www.panelook.com/upload/201511/MNT686762A_12516-Specification_A2_(1)_201511187301.pdf)

Supplies 5v on the CN3 pins (probably headless on the board, but 5v is there)

This guy says it’s good up to 1.5 amps (https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=67312)

I’ve confirmed that this is there and can indeed power the rpi - however, you if you need to power USB devices from the pi, it may not be enough.

-Earle

Depending on which controller board you actually end up with (sometimes ebay gives out different ones) - the controller itself may have a 5v output already on it that you can use.

Someone suggested this about a year ago, but I don’t think anyone has tried.

But BENJA in theory might work: https://benja.io/

I have an inexpensive Astromaster LT80 AZ - but the cheap tripod mount really is difficult to. Been wanting to upgrade, but haven’t managed to yet.

I like what you did with the power, nice and clean. FYI, a number of the LCD driver boards have 5v outputs and I’ve successfully powered an rpi3 from the output from the board itself.

(http://www.panelook.com/upload/201511/MNT686762A_12516-Specification_A2_(1)_201511187301.pdf)

Supplies 5v on the CN3 pins (probably headless on the board, but 5v is there)

This guy says it’s good up to 1.5 amps (https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=67312)

I wired it to a USB cable rather than directly to the GPIO

-Earle

This module is great - a couple items related to support for the ‘official 7" pi touchscreen’
I can probably code this up and submit a PR if you want - the on/off is easy to do because that is already in the helper. Brightness would need to get moved to the helper away from the CSS tricks.

It is interesting that controlling the brightness of a monitor itself over HDMI is surprisingly non-existent, but the 7" touchscreen h/w rev: 1.1 does indeed support direct brightness manipulation:

You can control the brightness of the backlight itself by:

echo X > /sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight/brightness

where X is a value between 0 and 255

And you can turn off the backlight with

echo 0 > /sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight/bl_power

and turn it back on with:

echo 1 > /sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight/bl_power

Earle

Hello-Lucy is unlikely to work well on an rpi though, correct? At least this is my understanding…

Just to followup on my CSS, the following should center the content pretty well on most setups - I can’t figure out why I have to manually set the height though, but if I don’t the border doesn’t draw around all the text.

This creates something like a “pop-up” in the middle of your screen for the content, which works pretty well for me.

.infoCenter {  
  position: fixed;
  left: 50%;
  top: 50%;
  transform: translate(-50%,-50%); // This centers the box
  width: 80vw; // set the width to about 80% of the screen
  height: 20vw; // set the height to about 20% of the screen
}

Well, adafruit has python sample code. You likely need the node FT232H module to use it from JS.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/FT232H

Does it actually work - I have no idea - that board is also apparently out of stock :-)

Sample python code below

# Import standard Python time library.
import time

# Import GPIO and FT232H modules.
import Adafruit_GPIO as GPIO
import Adafruit_GPIO.FT232H as FT232H

# Temporarily disable the built-in FTDI serial driver on Mac & Linux platforms.
FT232H.use_FT232H()

# Create an FT232H object that grabs the first available FT232H device found.
ft232h = FT232H.FT232H()

# Configure digital inputs and outputs using the setup function.
# Note that pin numbers 0 to 15 map to pins D0 to D7 then C0 to C7 on the board.
ft232h.setup(7, GPIO.IN)   # Make pin D7 a digital input.
ft232h.setup(8, GPIO.OUT)  # Make pin C0 a digital output.

# Loop turning the LED on and off and reading the input state.
print 'Press Ctrl-C to quit.'
while True:
	# Set pin C0 to a high level so the LED turns on.
	ft232h.output(8, GPIO.HIGH)
	# Sleep for 1 second.
	time.sleep(1)
	# Set pin C0 to a low level so the LED turns off.
	ft232h.output(8, GPIO.LOW)
	# Sleep for 1 second.
	time.sleep(1)
	# Read the input on pin D7 and print out if it's high or low.
	level = ft232h.input(7)
	if level == GPIO.LOW:
		print 'Pin D7 is LOW!'
	else:
		print 'Pin D7 is HIGH!'

You mean something like this:

https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264

I just did a google for “USB GPIO breakout board”

-Earle