GeeekPi 3.5 inch Touch Screen with Case for Raspberry Pi 4, with Fan and Heatsinks, 320x480 Resolution TFT LCD Display for Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (Raspberry Pi Board NOT Included)

So, first of all, I was referred to this shop due to their stellar customer service on another platform. They were incredibly responsive and helpful, but the shipping policies on the other platform weren't the best and I had problems. The folks at customer service were so helpful in fact that I told them I'd happily order from them again if they had an Amazon shop. So they sent me the link and I ordered this case/screen. So theres that.Second, I could legitimately type you an essay on what I've gone through trying to get this to actually work with Octoprint in the last week. Which, I have no idea why anyone other than Octoprint users would want such a small screen really. Its not very functional at all as far as a normal GUI. There may be other Pi OS's out there that benefit from something like this I suppose, but I'm not immediately aware of them, and I'd assume they'd have the same problems I am... Hah. It seems like everyone else in the reviews basically had the same problems, yet for once, I didnt read them before I purchased this because of how awesome these folks had been with me customer service wise ono a past order that failed to arrive through Walmart. They refunded me and were very responsive, so I told them Id buy the item again on Amazon if they had an Amazon store front. This is that item, this is that store front. Hah. So I didnt bother to check the reviews this time, I was already more or less committed in my mind. So that was my first mistake.My second mistake was expecting that the drivers work, or that once I finally got the drivers two work after about two days of wasting all my free time on this one thing... Never could get it to work with my original Octopi image that I had been running prior to buying this screen. I wanted a DSI screen and ended up settling for this because it was a good deal and it has 4 stars... But apparently pretty much all these GPIO screens have these problems and as soon as you buy one everyoone tells you that you shouldve gone a different direction. TLDR: THEY'RE RIGHT!!!The drivers corrupted my first image. Tried to download their preconfigured image after that only to have the Rpi Imager app tell me it couldnt be authenticated or something like that. Deleted it and tried to redownload it again, same thing. So I went with the basic raspberry pi os 64 bit, still had a little trouble with the drivers this time, but beyond that it went fine. Accept that I forgot to updfate before downloading the drivers, and updating broke the image AGAIN! Came back here and saw someone had recommended a video from Chris' Basement to set up Octodash on this screen. They also mention the drivers that were mentioned in the documents they got were out of date and did not work, and recommended the goodtft drivers instead. That was a couple years ago and now they ship the device with instructions to use the goodtft drivers from the jump. But they;'re out of date too now. They seem to be fine if you're on a Pi 3 or under from what I can make out via my research, but Pi 4 and up you can pretty much throw out the window. Tried the Rpi OS 64 bit again, updated first, installed drivers, configured, and it worked fine. Downloaded Octoprint manually and restored from backup. Tried to get Octodash or something going because as I said, theres no way to use this screen normally. You absolutely need a plugin like Octodash, and your other plug in choices in that regard have been abandoned by their developers at this point it seems like. You may find a decent fork though, cause OCtodash doesnt work either... I've tried it now twice, once on the Rpi Os and another on the Octopi OS, neither would work. All this screen does is basically let you ssh into the Pi next to your printer instead of at your laptop, but the text isnt dummy thicc enough to actually be of any use. You can barely read it at this size, so yeah. Pointless. Finally I kinda gave up and ust started printing again tonight like I used to, from my laptop, excpet now I have a nce new paperweight to go along with my Pi!Buuuuut wait! Theres more. Hah. Print stops about 30% because my Pi is running hot and sends a power fluctuation code of some sort which causes the pi to reboot mid print... I'm using the official power supply too. So its not a me problem at all, and it never did this before. Not once... Now all the sudden this screen and fan combo that doesnt actually work is also causing the pi to overheat...Just don't buy this. Buy a DSI screen or anything else, stick to HDMI even. Anything but this product. That said, if Geekpi sells a decent DSI screen, they seem like decent business owners. As I said, they were the only support that were good about getting back to me same day basically, even over Christmas. And they tried to rectify the shipping problem and when thaty didnt work, promptly refunded me. So its a decent company to deal with and I've seen youtubers use their stuff in projects before, so they apparently do have some good products out there. I'm just here to warn you, this isnt one of them...Hopefully I can tick my Pi Zero on it and give it to my son or something. He's 4, will absolutely love it, and will also destroy it quite promply anyway wanting to take it apart cause he wants to be a, and I quote, "cell phone repair man" when he grows up. Lol. To him, the fact that its crap is just more oppurtunity to take it apart and fix it... I'm done with it at this point. Im here reviewing and then one click buying a 5 inch DSI screen. Lol. Sadly I couldnt find one from Geekpi or i would patronize the establishment again because I do not exactly blame them for this. I shouldve read the reviews... But when it happens to you, don't say we didnt tell yah so. Hah. This screen isnt worth the hassle at all when a bigger DSI or nice HDMI is 10 bucks more. Especially considering the fan that supposed to cool this thing apparently doesnt do so... That could be a misconfiguration thing too I suppose, cause this is the first night its happened and I've had it running much longer than this before tonight. But if you have to misconfigure and break every build you try for weeks before you get back to even your original functionality, this is a waste of money entirely. End of story.Edit: After much experimentation, I have been able to get the goodtft drivers provided with the screen to work on both 32 and 64 bit Rpi OS. I’m now leaning more towards the fault being in octodash or something of that sort. Because even after replacing the screen with a DSI screen, (I haven’t gotten as far as reinstalling Octodasg yet honestly), I’m still getting the same error message from one of the dependencies left over from the prior Octodash install. The screen works fine with the basic desktop install of Raspberry Pi OS, 32 or 64 bit. And the screen works fine with the 64 bit Octopi image as well. But you can’t download the desktop package on the Octopi image without it causing blanking on the screen. And you can’t use it via a regular install of Raspberry Pi OS with Octoprint on top really, because it’s no where near big enough to make use of the normal Octoprint browser dashboard. So yeah, sadly this screen won’t work for my purposes no matter what I try, whether it’s a fresh install with no plugins, etc, I can not get this thing to function as an external monitor for my printer using Octoprint as I intended. That said, I will be keeping the screen for my sons Zero 2 W and I’ll make a little gameboy for him or something. Hopefully it’ll work better with a retropie image. If you don’t hear back from me, assume it does. lol.

I bought this case with the intention of making a point and shoot style thermal camera. The project ended up being a success, but I found that the screen is a real GPIO hog. My specific issue was that it uses all of your default I2C headers. Other folks who actually know what they're doing can probably work around this limitation with good circuit design, but since I'm an IT guy and not an engineer I had to make my hack work in software. This is by no means a fault with this case, and I am very happy with the finished product.The screen is very responsive and worked well with a default raspberry pi image after following the included instructions. I did find that after installing the screen's drivers, my external monitors started reporting "out of range", which I am sure is something that can be worked around in software. It wasn't critical for my application, so I didn't bother.Assembly was pretty easy, but there is no wiggle room. Since my build involved a few wires that needed to exit the case to reach my sensor, it was an extremely tight fit. Assembly doesn't leave much room for anything besides the screen.The only thing that I can say could use improvement would be to use a screen that exposes the GPIO pins so that things like sensors can be attached for noobs like me who can't design circuits yet. That would make it a little more user friendly, but also understandably raise the price.Overall, extremely happy with the product and would buy again for other projects without reservation.

It all looked pretty neat the 1st time a friend introduced me to, enough so that it actually spurred a larger interest in tech in general, more the hardware than software - coding might as well be Vulcan or Klingon for all I can make of it. The other part of that coin is I have no interest in grasping it either, a factor that's on me more than the products. As kits for STEM classes and such I can see where they are so useful as to be a mainstay, as well as totally changing computer technology, giving birth to the mini, fanless units taking over. In the end I'm still hoping to maybe recover at least a part of some of what I've spent on it all. At least I was able to return these for a refund, partial as it was.

This is just a warning for anyone that is considering this cheap screen. Do not bother. It does not work. Countless hours wasted troubleshooting trying to get the drivers to load and multiple driver versions tested, and other troubleshooting done. IT DOES NOT WORK and produces a white screen. Your better bet is to get a proper adapter if you are doing a Linux project like me, and just SSH into your Pi from your phone. It will be better quality and resolution while you have your Pi in your pocket on a battery pack. I thought this would be a nice little addition to the pi, but it is not. Again, don't waste your time. I have not tried the official Pi screen, but for me the SSH option will work.