Reddit mentions of LoveRPi Premium Black Case for Official Raspberry Pi 7" Touch Screen Display and Camera

It really depends on the level of complexity you want to get into.

Want something that will take you 4 minutes to put together? Here's what you need:

• Official Raspberry Pi screen
  
• Raspberry Pi screen and board case - There's 2 major options here. Option 1 or Option 2
  
• A portable battery pack - This one is just an example, there's so many to choose from with size and weight being the biggest factors.
  
  Again, this is hassle-free and the quickest route to go. What you'll still need:
  
  
• Bluetooth controller
  
• Headphones
  
  I can go into more detail if you're interested in something like this.
  
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  EDIT: Sounds like there's some interest, so here's my additional notes.
  
  First off, let me say that I do not take any credit for this idea. I was pushed-over-the-top by this Reddit post. With that said, I can add my personal experience onto things.
  
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  About the case - Like I mentioned earlier, there's 2 major options for the case, both with pros and cons. In no particular order ...
  
  Option 1: LoveRPi Premium Black Case for Official Raspberry Pi 7" Touch Screen Display and Camera
  
  
• Pro - The case is very compact. There's room to affix a small battery onto the backside of it.
  
• Pro - The case comes with shortened cables (when compared to what's bundled with the Official Screen). This keeps the wire clutter down to a minimum.
  
• Neutral - Upon installation, the screen needs to be flipped (sudo nano /boot/config.txt ... add "display_rotate=2" to it). This isn't a deal breaker, but it was necessary for the case's functional design.
  
• Neutral - There's no easy way to have the HDMI port become the active visual output upon cable connection. There's no simple toggle for this.
  
• Con - The viewing angle is very difficult at times. With most portable consoles, you adjust the screen to meet your head's angle. Although possible, it's not easy.
  
  Option 2: Case for the Official Raspberry Pi 7" Touchscreen Display - Adjustable angle
  
  
• Pro - The case allows for 3 major viewing angles. Although it's not 100 adjustable, it's better than nothing.
  
• Neutral - There's no easy way to have the HDMI port become the active visual output upon cable connection. There's no simple toggle for this.
  
• Con - For 100% portable gaming users, the solution isn't fully enclosed. You can poke the ribbon cable. You can touch a GPIO pin.
  
• Con - Size. It's bit bigger than the other case and there's no room to flush mount a battery pack.
  
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  About the audio output - The 3.5mm headphone jack becomes your primary audio output. There's a way to control the volume output on the RetroPie's menu screens. Unless you have in-line volume controls on your headphones, you may need something like this..
  
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  Personally, I went with the LoveRPi Premium Black Case, Aukey battery, a shortened power cable, and the Koss VC20 Volume control.
  
  I don't have pictures with me, but the setup is pretty efficient. I didn't have to solder, cut any cables, or anything crazy. Connect the bits, tuck the cables, and go.
  

I, too, have just recently got around to dabbling with SBCs recently. I was looking into some odroids, but eventually ended up getting a pi 3, along with a zero for the hell of it, because it's 5 dollars.. I couldn't justify not getting one... In fact, I literally just ordered a gameboy color housing off amazon. I plan to either use this zero, or drop another fiver on another one, along with a 2.3" LCD, gamepad PCB's, and load an SD with adafruits PiGRRL zero image and make a little handheld emulator gamboy. Im hoping everything will fit just fine, and overall cost should be pretty reasonable. No 3d printing nonsense required. If it turns out good, I'll post an update.

Anyway, yes, you can use any card reader/adapter you want, and it will work just as well as an sd card slot. I have used several, and have had no problems.

Before buying mine, I also contemplated wether or not I should get a screen with it, and if so, which one. There's literally hundreds of choices. I spent a solid few days just researching display options on amazon and elsewhere. Trying to sort through prices, features, and cross comparing ramazon reviews can drive you mad. Like theyll be split 50/50 between 5 stars and 1 star, and you're like wtf. I am especially bad at making descicions when given more than 3 options, and have a viscious OCD, so it was an ordeal. Normally, I would have gone with biggger screens, and a cheaper multipart setup as opposed to all-in-ones, but relative mobility is preferable for me at the moment . All said and done, I'm relatively happy with what I got, which was:

-RasPi 3 from amazon - 35$
-3.5" resistive touch TFT LCD from adafruit
-PiBow acryclic layer case fits 2.8"and 3.5" TFT, adafruit- like 20$ (also fits a 2.8" TFT)
-Pi Zero, adafruit - 5$
-PiBow Pi Zero case, adafruit - 6$

If you're intested in a good, cost effective 7 inch all-in-one setup - The best deal I have found is the official raspberry pi 7" lcd, along with one of these cases. I have found the price varries a bit from place to place. It's cheaper from ameridroid.com - 65$ than it is from Amazon - 72$! or adafruit - 80$!. The cheapest was 60$ at MCM.

I am a sucker for spiffy looking shit, so when those adafruit cases caught my eye I was sold. The larger one was pretty much exactly what I wanted in an all-in-one case, and I would HIGHLY recomend it to anyone who wants a quality, nice looking case for a Pi+LCD. Its compatible with 2 size LCDs, and several Pi versions out of the box. It's solid, fits together nice and tight, screen is flush, looks super nice, perfectly palm sized(note: my hands are fairly large). I am also quite pleased with the TFT's picture quality, especially the console. Adafruit's TFT displays seem to be high quality, and built well. The only downside is that you are pretty much cut off from the GPIO pins, and accessing them requires partially dissasembling the case. So not a good choice if you're going to need to use the pins with any frequency. Theres 4 small holes that line up with the holes in the Pi on the bottom, not sure what for, along with a small slit on either side. Maybe you could thread a ribbon cable down and out, I'm not sure. I just wanted a neat little backage to run linux on and mess aroud with, keep it on the table, nothing really serious.

Now, these TFT screens, they are NOT as plug and paly as they may seem. Getting them to work with any distribution will require preconfiguration, either on the sd card immediatly after flashing it (best way to set it up to connect to wifi on boot), chroot (pain in the ass), usb-to-serial cable (very touchy, didn't always work, usually have to edit boot config file to enable UART), or, ideally, via SSH (without ethernet, have to configure it to connect to wifi on boot).

Once youve got a terminal over serial/ssh/chroot, you then at the very least have to run a script, or as much as install a custom kernel, modules etc. Even disributions specifically for TFT screens will require some sort of configuring befoer they will work. Untill then you jsut get a blank white screen. It's alwasy a good idea to wait untill youve got it workign before assembling it within the case.
In my case, I decided to try and get this cool Kali setup running, and even after follwoing several guides, to the letter, nothing but a white screen, starting to wonder if I got a dud. Turns out, the speed value for every screen, even of the same kind, can vary, anywhere from 16 Mhz to 62Mhz*, and you basically work back incrementally, rebooting untill you find the sweet spot. None of the values in any of the guides/premade config files for my exact screen worked. I found it odd this wasn't mentioned in the actual guides, but only buried in the help sections and the odd "help my screen is white" forum post.



All those starter packs on Amazon looked pretty nice, but either contained too many things I didn't need, or not the right things I did. I nearly got the Kuman 3.5inch LCD + case kit off amazon, they have one with an SD card, and one without.

To keep this project as easy as possible, your best bet for a screen is likely the official 7" raspberry pi touchscreen.

https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-7-Touchscreen-Display/dp/B0153R2A9I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486661505&sr=8-1&keywords=raspberry+pi+3+screen

Using that screen and a pi 3, you can find cases that hold both, such as: (I don't know if this is the best case, do some research here)

https://www.amazon.com/LoveRPi-Premium-Official-Raspberry-Display/dp/B01GEOLNNS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1486661584&sr=8-2&keywords=raspberry+pi+3+screen+case

After you have that all assembled, you can load up your software.