Now that I finally competed my industrial case design for the Raspberry Pi 4 & the official 7" Touch Screen, I really need Carbide Motion to be optimized for the reduced resolution of the 7" DSI touchscreen.
I love how the Pi & 7" touchscreen is compact & strictly functional. Plus I don’t need an additional stand/table for a laptop. It keeps my Shapeoko to the minimalistic design aesthetic while providing the controls needed to run jobs.
But the latest version of Carbide Motion dashed my hopes of having a nearly perfect minimalistic setup.
Please make Carbide Motion on Raspberry Pi with the 7" touchscreen a priority consideration!
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As one of the mature (read old person) owners of a Shapeoko I suggest making the screens readable for older eyeballs is much more important than trying to fit them on smaller screens.
Just my two cents worth which was typed on a 32" monitor 
Bill
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@Chaotica Your setup looks great. I have put several hours of thought and investigation into My Pi and the screen size. For me. The 7" screen comes up all over Google and at a reasonable price. 10" or larger, not so much and the price starts to go way up. there are lots of great 7" touch screen options.
I also have the same condition as many others, BFF, Big Fat Fingers.
So this is a conundrum, nice small screen or finger friendly ? I see other threads talking about the amount of clicks. Small screens means there is less room for buttons and this means more screens and more clicks.
I see other programs and they have basically everything on one ish screen. Some do have a kiosk mode for smaller screens.
For me after looking at as many options as I could, I went big, pulled out an old 42 inch screen (easy to find these) and mounted it on the back wall above. I was looking for a 10 to 20 inch touch screen, I just couldn’t find a good fit for the price. I found issue like poor cable management. I also thought I might want to use other sender programs in the future, they might require a larger screen and might have G-code simulators that need better resolution. I decided I wanted to go with a more future flexibility approach, so I just went the other way, which worked out great for me. I use a mini keyboard (it is not very often I have to type if at all, it sits in the drawer ), an optical mouse ( to navigate the screens ) and a game pad (to set up manual zeroing) . all wireless. On a side note, I might be able to get away with just a $20.mini keyboard to jog, mouse and type all in one, but it does not jog in the zero screen while the game pad does.
I can only assume it is hard to make a one size fits all.
Some day you might grow out of CM, it is a great program but it does have some limitations. Or you may want to try some of the other features in other programs. I have no idea what works for you, I am just sharing what I went through. I to like clean and simple, I just had to weight the pros and cons for me.
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Indeed, everybody has their own needs/preferences & space restrictions.
One of the annoyances I always had with operating my 3XXL was that I always had to setup an extra table/stand for an old laptop to use for CM. And seeing other CNC setups with dedicated/attached UI controllers with touchscreens made me very jealous. So when I found out about running CM on a Pi, I was all for it!
Then when I found out it could work with the official Pi 7" touchscreen, I was estatic - as I already had one. Having had experience working in the oil/gas well services industry as an equipment e-tech, I have seen various setups of industrial touchscreen UI’s - even had the chance to program one that was 25yr+ ancient but still a solid solution. So my view of the 7" touchscreen is that it’s about as small as you would want to go while still being readily viewable/functional to the adept operator. And what I liked about the size is that it could readily be mounted directly to my CNC table - no extra anything, which was my goal.
So once I verified that it could work, I found a minimal Pi+touchscreen case design on Thingiverse to use - and was very dissappointed. Most, if not all, the 7" touchscreen case designs seem to be designed off the assumption that the screen backplate & the mounting holes therein are solidly attached to the screen lens - they are not. After a temp setup with the Pi/screen/case which used the screen mounting holes to literally hold the case together, I discovered that CNC vibrations plus hot summer temperatures could peel the screen lens away from the back mounting plate & allow dust in. Not a good thing.
I had looked at other, bulkier, Pi/screen cases, but none seemed suited for what I needed it to do. So, after a big move, first priority to re-setup my Shapeoko was to design a case which would seal in the touchscreen as much as possible, allow for at least a couple of Pi mounting positions & provide flexibility for different mounting options & possible accessories - like a camera.
And finally, after quite a few interations, I have a dedicated & attached CM touchscreen Pi controller for my Shapeoko that I can be happy with, for now.
Still waiting to get some new 3D filament as my prototyped colour choices have been bugging me.
Maybe someday, I’ll be in a more permanent position & large enough space for setting up a larger UI controller solution, but for now, concise & functional are my constraints.
Thank you Carbide team for making my little dream happen! The latest version of CM on the Raspberry Pi has been a great improvement!
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I can appreciate using a nice large screen - I used to have a UST projector setup on a wall for a 9’ screen to design on…and watch movies.
CM is designed for minimum screen resolutions of 1280x1024 & up…so going bigger is pretty easy if you’ve got the space.
But for what I want/need & space restrictions, the 7" Pi touchscreen is right about the perfect balance.
It is also a special case for the software team to design for as the touchscreen resolution is only 800x480 - significantly smaller than their listed minimum UI design specs.
So I for one, greatly appreciate the extra effort they put into making it work!
Regards
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Yes they have done a great job. Some people do like a minimalist solution, Me too This is however considered a desktop machine I personally like the flexibility and the creativity that the PI world adds. In my Googling around I have seen other systems with a small 10" screen. I was looking for a 10" - 14" touch screen, I personally have too big of fingers for a 7" and I wanted to be more compatible with other G-code senders. Glad it is all working out for you. Happy Caving
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