Raspberry Pints (Raspberry Pi) Users, What are you using as a display?

[Kalvaroo]

I just decided to tinker with a raspberry pi and started ordering what I need for a raspberry pints draft list.

What make/model/size monitor are you using and how many drafts are you displaying?

I'm looking to display 3 - 5 drafts. I also have a single outlet available behind my kegerator and would like to keep cords to a minimum. I just read that a USB powered monitor would work, but can't seem to find one that has extra USB ports and/or HDMI input. Does anyone have one set up in a USB powered config? Pictures welcome... As well as any tips or tricks. Thanks...

 

[BlueWater84]

I'm using a 23.8" ASUS VN248H-P I picked up from Newegg on sale. It does not have powered USB and is probably larger than you would need (I currently have 6 on tap with plenty of blank space on screen).

 

[DrunkleJon]

Will post pics tonight (if I make it home from work), but I have mine attached to an old 19 inch HP flat screen some former tenants left behind. I only have 3 taps currently and will probably be adding a 4th. I am taking up just over half the screen currently so 5 should easily fit, maybe 6. Oddly enough I cannot seem to get the RPi to power off the USB hub part of the monitor, but I have an power strip on the other side of the wall (just drywall, as it is the unfinished water heater/heat and AC closet on the other side) which is powering both.

 

[DrunkleJon]

As promised.
HP 1955

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

I just decided to tinker with a raspberry pi and started ordering what I need for a raspberry pints draft list.

What make/model/size monitor are you using and how many drafts are you displaying?

I'm looking to display 3 - 5 drafts. I also have a single outlet available behind my kegerator and would like to keep cords to a minimum. I just read that a USB powered monitor would work, but can't seem to find one that has extra USB ports and/or HDMI input. Does anyone have one set up in a USB powered config? Pictures welcome... As well as any tips or tricks. Thanks...

Where did you read about USB powered?

When i was looking i found this
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005SEZR0G/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Its perfect for what i need, its small enough it would fit in the backsplash of my coffin keezer.

The problem is that it only seems to function in Windows 7/8 because it gets both power and video over USB so requires a special driver...i didnt really spend any time investigating if such a driver existed for *unix as its unlikely...but maybe it is?

 

[Kalvaroo]

I read that on the RPints website under "choosing a display". Somewhere in there it talks about setting it up to run off USB from the pi but looks like it can't do both through USB only. So I was hoping to find either a display that I can power with USB, which also has HDMI, or a display with HDMI and a couple USB ports and possibly power the pi from the display. I haven't really been shopping around much, but I'm sure I can find a computer monitor that might work. I just tried pulling up the site but it seems like it's down. Glad I didn't get the raspberry pi in the mail today, hopefully the site's back up soon. I've got a 19" LCD Samsung TV that I can use for now, I was just hoping to use only one outlet.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, I have six taps displayed on an old 19" 1280x1024 LCD running full-screen in landscape mode and there's plenty of room in both dimensions. I plan on moving my stout faucet to a separate tower so I'll end up with seven taps on display and I'm pretty sure that last one will fit just fine...

Cheers!

 

[EGeekBMe]

What they are referring to regarding USB powered, is a monitor that has USB ports. That way, you only need to run a single power cord to the monitor and then you can use a USB cable to power the RaspberryPi. Then you can mount the RPints behind the monitor and not have a bunch cords running to it.

 

[mcangeli]

I'm using an old laptop monitor.

 

[Twang]

How would raspberrypints look on a cheap ~25" 720p TV?

 

[day_trippr]

"Big".

Cheers!

 

[Calfj60]

Bump bump bump for any further ideas

 

[day_trippr]

Meh.

There's a metric crapton of possibilities, but it's silly to just throw random display types out there.

Give us some parameters to work with...

Cheers!

 

[Calfj60]

Was looking at a computer monitor that I could find cheap, maybe 19"?

 

[day_trippr]

I'm using a retired 19" 4:3 DVI LCD atop my 6-faucet keezer.



I use an HDMI to DVI cable from the RPi2.
Works very nicely, with plenty of space for each beer listing...

Cheers!

 

[herc1354]

Any ideas on displaying more than 10 beers? Best I can think of is two independent systems

 

[day_trippr]

wrt that many taps...

There was some effort by HBTer @mcangeli into adding a Centipede shield to the stack.
A Centipede provides 64 bits of IO via I2C expanders with an interrupt signal per 8 bit groups.

The interrupt is key - as is the execution speed of the service routine running on the AVR - because the AVR would have to trigger on the flow meter rotational signal as an interrupt through an expander on the Centipede, figure out which port was active, add a tick to an accumulator for that tap, then return in time to catch the next rotational pulse from the meter.

Right now the AVR on the AlaMode does much of that - but it doesn't have to figure out where the "tick" came from, as each pin is mapped directly to a faucet, so it already knows which tally to increase. And I2C protocol isn't particularly terse; reading an interrupt register from one of the expanders on each tick could be tight.

On the up side, as we've definitely identified at least 8 Uno pins that are capable of interrupt functions (and thus supporting flow meters), in theory the Centipede could actually support 64 taps (and if you could afford all those meters, I'm your new best friend )

Not sure where Mark was on this effort, haven't checked the Github page lately.
In the history of RaspberryPints, not a lot gets done in the summer...

Cheers!

 

[TheMcAnally]

What did you guys do to make all your taps fit? I have a 26" Sanyo LCD I picked up at a pawn shop for $50, and i can only display 3.5 taps in landscape and portrait isn't much better. I've set the hdmi settings to hdmi group 1 mode 4. The desktop and everything else fits the screen fine. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

The tv is model # dp26649 720p@60hz
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1444497313.602789.jpg

 

[Baja_Brewer]

Just out of curiosity.... Phones and tablets often allow displays in landscape and portrait mode. If you have a wide screen, can you turn it portrait and tell the app to display it as such? I know with computers it's a little more difficult, but windows 7 and newer lets you do it- can really help when editing a word document.

 

[TheMcAnally]

I solved my display issue. I had to delete the kiosk line in step six. I then went into chromium, set raspberry pints as the homepage, adjusted the zoom to 60, and set to full screen. Unfortunately I will have to open chromium and go to full screen manually each time, but the Kiosk feature left the screen zoomed in too far.

 

[day_trippr]

That is exactly how I run my tap list.
It's no big deal because that system rarely gets rebooted...

Cheers!

 

[Soundwav]

must be nice guys..

im trying to use my old 22" monitor but i can not for the life of me get Rpints to work!

i get the it works msg from apache and thats it!

how did you guys get it working?????

 

[TheMcAnally]

The fourth time was the charm for me. I honestly started over from scratch 4 times before I could get it installed properly.

Are you using the RaspberryPints-master.zip or RaspberryPints-2.0.1.zip?

I had to use the 2.0.1 file from the rp site as opposed to GitHub

 

[Soundwav]

ya i finally got it working properly.

 

[DrunkleJon]

I solved my display issue. I had to delete the kiosk line in step six. I then went into chromium, set raspberry pints as the homepage, adjusted the zoom to 60, and set to full screen. Unfortunately I will have to open chromium and go to full screen manually each time, but the Kiosk feature left the screen zoomed in too far.

While in Kiosk mode try adjusting the zoom (Ctrl-mouse scroll wheel down) until it fits. It should remember the page zoom setting if you close it gracefully (f-11 or alt f-11 to get out of kiosk mode then close chromium with the x).

 

[TheMcAnally]

While in Kiosk mode try adjusting the zoom (Ctrl-mouse scroll wheel down) until it fits. It should remember the page zoom setting if you close it gracefully (f-11 or alt f-11 to get out of kiosk mode then close chromium with the x).

Thank you! I will try that when I get home tomorrow.

Worked perfectly! I can't believe I didn't think about that to begin with.