Pimoroni HyperPixel 2.1" round LCD

• Manufacturer: Pimoroni
• Device: HyperPixel 2.1" Round 480×480 LCD with touch
• Extra: touch input

What to buy

• The HyperPixel 2.1" Round display from Pimoroni.
• A Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (preferred) or Zero W.
• A 40-pin GPIO header to solder onto the Pi - or buy the pre-pinned Zero WH/W2H and skip the soldering.

How it works

One native driver runs the panel - no Pimoroni installer, no Python, no Bullseye. On the first deploy its setup writes what the panel needs into config.txt and the frame reboots once. How the pixels get to the glass depends on the Pi, which the frame detects by itself:

• Pi Zero to Pi 4 - the Pi's firmware drives DPI into /dev/fb0, and FrameOS sends the panel its init sequence and switches the backlight over GPIO.
• Pi 5 - a Pi 5 has no firmware DPI, so setup enables the kernel's vc4-kms-dpi-hyperpixel2r overlay instead and FrameOS only writes the framebuffer. No touch on this path, and it hasn't been tried on real hardware yet.

Touch works on a Pi Zero to Pi 4: the kernel's own FT5x06 driver reads it, and it arrives in your scenes as pointer events - pointerDown, pointerMove, pointerUp and the tap, swipe and longPress gestures (input), with the older mouseMove, mouseDown and mouseUp names still working. Coordinates follow the frame's rotate and flip settings.

The rim comes bound to the frame, named for the quarter of the circle a swipe starts in: swipe up from the bottom for the scene switcher, down from the top for the scene's settings, and in from the left or right for the scene's own back and forward. The switcher, the settings and the on-screen keyboard are all laid out to stay inside the circle. Change the swipes under button actions.

Setup

1. Solder the header if your Pi needs one, and plug the display on.
2. Add a frame and select the Pimoroni HyperPixel 2.1" Round device.
3. Save & deploy. The first deploy reboots the Pi once, then the scene appears.

The HyperPixel takes every GPIO pin, so the Pi's I2C and SPI buses are switched off while it is the frame's display - no other HATs or GPIO buttons alongside it.

Display power

Turn display off / on - in the frame's … menu, or as turnOff / turnOn events from a scene, a schedule or the HTTP API - switches the backlight. The frame keeps rendering while the panel is off, so it comes back on with the current image. The driver owns the backlight pin (GPIO 19) and only switches it on and off; there is no dimming.

3D models

A community case design is available on Cults3D.