HyperPixel 2.1 Round – Hi-Res Display for Raspberry Pi

A perfectly round, high-resolution, high-speed 2.1′ touchscreen display for the Raspberry Pi.

HyperPixel 2.1 Round has all the great features of our other HyperPixels – crisp, brilliant IPS display, touchscreen, and high-speed DPI interface—it’s just rounder! You can use it with any Raspberry Pi with a 40 pin header* but it works particularly nicely with the Pi Zero footprint – we’ve designed it so you can mount a Zero neatly behind it, so you can’t see the Pi when you look at it from the front.

This version of HyperPixel would be great for custom interfaces and control panels – mounted on a wall it would make a really neat, minimalist smart home controller or a stylish ‘what’s playing’ display for your sound system. Everything is pre-soldered and ready to go, just pop it onto your Pi, install our software, and away you go!

The images of the displays on this page are not renders – they’re real photos of the display!

Note: M2.5 Standoffs and booster headers are not included with Hyperpixel Round – check out the Awesome Extras section for them. You will need a booster header if you want to use Hyperpixel Round with a full-size Pi! Standoff fitment is M2.5 – we have a range of options in the store.

Features

• High-speed DPI interface
• 2.1′ IPS (wide viewing angle, 175°) display
• 480×480 pixels, minus the corners (~229 PPI)
• 18-bit colour (262,144 colours)
• 60 FPS frame rate
• Active area: 53.28 x 53.28mm
• Capacitive touchscreen (with Python library)
• Compatible with all 40-pin header Raspberry Pi models
• Display library for Raspberry Pi OS
• Python touchscreen library
• Dimensions: 71.80 x 71.80 x 10.8mm (WxHxD, depth includes header and display). With a Pi Zero attached with short standoffs, the total depth is 17mm.

HyperPixel 2.1 Round uses a high-speed DPI interface, allowing it to shift 5x more pixel data than the usual SPI interface that these small Pi displays normally use. It has a 60 FPS frame rate and a resolution of approximately 229 pixels per inch (480x480px) on its 2.1′ display. The display can show 18-bits of colour (262,144 colours).

The touchscreen variant is capacitive touch, that’s more sensitive and responsive to touch than a resistive touch display, and it’s capable of multi-touch!**

Attaching Hyperpixel Round to your Pi

The Hyperpixel Round will work with any 40-pin version of the Pi, including Pi Zero and Pi Zero W. If you’re using it with a full-size Pi then you’ll need a booster header to raise it up over the Pi’s USB ports and extended standoffs if you’d like to bolt it in place. If you’re using a Pi Zero or Pi Zero W you won’t need a booster header, but we have some special short standoffs that will let you attach everything securely together in an extra slim package.

If you’re using standoffs to fasten your Hyperpixel and your Pi together, just screw them into the posts on the underside of the HyperPixel PCB and then secure with screws through the mounting holes on your Pi.

Please note: when installing HyperPixel 2.1 Round onto your Pi make sure not to press down on the screen surface. We recommend putting the screen face down on a soft surface and gently wiggling the Pi to mate with the extended header (or GPIO header). If you need to remove your Hyperpixel, take care not to pull on the edges of the glass display – it’s best to hold on to the rectangular PCB. As the glass edges of this display overhang the PCB they’re quite exposed, so it’s worth being extra careful with them.

Software

With this version of HyperPixel, we’ve separated the display drivers and touch drivers which should hopefully make it easier to incorporate touch interfaces into your own programs. To download and install the display drivers:

git clone https://github.com/pimoroni/hyperpixel2r
cd hyperpixel2r
sudo ./install.sh

Note that you’ll need another display, keyboard, and mouse to install the software, or you could do it remotely over SSH if you set your Pi up headlessly.

There’s a separate Python library to handle touch input, complete with examples – click here for installation instructions!

Notes

• HyperPixel uses basically all of the GPIO pins to communicate with the Pi (including the standard I2C pins) so it’s not generally possible to use it with other HATs and devices that connect via the GPIO…
• …but we have provided an alternate I2C interface broken out on the back that will let you use I2C devices (like sensor breakouts) at the same time as HyperPixel. There are instructions how to set this up in the Hyperpixel 4.0 tutorial (scroll down to the bottom).