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Hardware

MyCustomerDisplay runs on an off-the-shelf Raspberry Pi board. There is no custom carrier board or HAT — you need the Pi itself, a screen, an SD card, and the right cable to connect it to your host machine.

What you need

  • A supported Raspberry Pi board (see below).
  • A data-capable micro-USB or USB-C cable (see the warning below — this is the single most common setup failure).
  • A microSD card, A1/A2-rated, from a reputable brand — see the warning below.
  • An HDMI screen (any EDID-capable monitor/TV), or the official DSI Touch Display on Pi 4/5.
  • A host machine with a free USB port: the "host" in this documentation is whatever computer you plug the device into — typically a point-of-sale terminal or PC.

Charge-only cables are the #1 support issue

Many micro-USB and USB-C cables carry power but no data lines (they're built for charging phones, not for USB peripherals). If the device powers up (screen shows a boot splash) but never enumerates on the host (no new network adapter or COM port//dev/ttyACM*), try a different, known-good data cable before anything else.

SD card quality matters

The root filesystem is read-only and designed to survive power loss, but the data partition (configuration, content, splash images) is written to routinely. Cheap or counterfeit SD cards are the most common cause of boot failures and data corruption in the field. Use a well-known brand, A1/A2 application-performance class, at least 8 GB.

Supported boards

Board OTG connector Notes
Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W micro-USB port marked "USB" (not "PWR IN") Powers entirely from this port; tightest memory budget (512 MB total)
Raspberry Pi 4 (any RAM variant) USB-C power connector Often needs a powered hub or Y-cable under load — see below
Raspberry Pi 5 USB-C power connector Same as Pi 4, higher typical power draw

The full hardware capability table (SoC, GPU, video decode, audio, DSI, touch, wireless) lives in Board matrix — check it before picking a board for a project, especially if you need multi-screen output or hardware video decode for a specific codec.

All three boards are built for 64-bit ARMv8 — there is no 32-bit image, and the original Raspberry Pi Zero (v1, ARMv6) is not supported.

Which port is the OTG port

The OTG (On-The-Go) port is the one that both powers the board and carries the USB link to your host — it is not always the same port you'd use to power the board on its own:

  • Pi Zero 2 W: the micro-USB port labelled "USB". The other micro-USB port, labelled "PWR IN", is power-only and does not carry the device link — do not use it to connect to the host.
  • Pi 4 / Pi 5: the USB-C power connector is the OTG port. On these boards the same connector both powers the board and carries the composite USB gadget to the host (the board's separate USB-A ports stay in host mode, for peripherals — see below).

Power

  • Pi Zero 2 W is powered entirely by the OTG port; a standard USB 2.0 host port (500 mA) is enough.
  • Pi 4 / Pi 5 draw more current than a plain USB port reliably supplies, especially with the screen and any USB peripherals attached. If the device reboots unexpectedly under load, or the API reports an undervoltage/throttled condition (see Troubleshooting), use one of:
    • a powered USB-C hub with data passthrough between the host and the device,
    • a USB-C Y-cable (one leg to the host for data, one to a separate power supply),
    • a host port capable of USB Power Delivery.

Touch input

  • The official Raspberry Pi Touch Display (DSI) is supported on Pi 4 and Pi 5 only — the Zero 2 W has no DSI connector.
  • USB HID touch panels are supported on Pi 4 and Pi 5 only, on their separate USB-A host ports. On the Zero 2 W, the single data-capable port is consumed by the USB gadget link to the host, so there is no free port left for a USB touch panel.

Display output

All boards drive their display over HDMI (native resolution from the screen's EDID by default). Pi 4 and Pi 5 have two HDMI ports and two DSI connectors, but v1 drives a single output at a time — see Board matrix for the full connector count and video decode capabilities.

Wireless (Wi-Fi / Bluetooth)

Every supported board ships with an integrated Wi-Fi/Bluetooth radio, but both are off by default — the trusted, zero-setup link to your host is USB. Enabling Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is an explicit, optional step; see the dedicated Wireless guide for what it changes about the device's network surface and how to turn it on.

Next steps

Once you have a board picked out: flash the image, then walk through first boot.