Today I'm testing a tiny touchscreen monitor bought with the idea of building some form of home automation controller with Home Assistant. I'll check what you can get such a thing for 180 PLN from a Polish importer, present the contents of the kit, configurations and connection, and finally measure how much power such a monitor draws from USB C.
Shown here will be the 8-inch DB124 (8-HD-TS/B0D3XB7J47) Pisichen IPS HD with 800x480 resolution, HDMI and USB-C compatible. It features a 5-point touchscreen with 250 cd/㎡ brightness and 60 Hz refresh rate. It has built-in dual speakers (stereo) and a 3.5mm audio jack. A separate socket for a 12 V power supply is also present - at your choice. The dimensions of the monitor are 1.3 x 17.6 x 11 cm and the weight is approximately 920 g.
Let's start with the contents of the kit. We get full cabling and a power supply, on the one hand this is a good thing as not every accessory has one, but on the other hand it probably piles up the price a bit.
There is a manual included that can help you get the monitor up and running if in doubt. The booklet is quite thick as it is translated into several languages, although I did not see Polish in there.
The first impression is fine. It's not the cheapest plastic, although it's a bit short of top shelf too.
A 12 V 1.5 A power supply is included:
I have a little doubt about the leg. It runs quite clumsy. Surely after repeated folding and unfolding it can start to fail.
The first test I did was with a laptop. Windows immediately sees the touch device. It can then be calibrated in Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Tablet Settings. Calibration involves touching the screen where the markers show. Below is an overview photo:
The image is good, although it is clear that a small screen is still a small screen:
The viewing angle is also fine:
The monitor menu offers a number of settings to adjust the picture and sound to your own preferences. There, you can adjust, among other things, the backlight level, brightness, contrast or sharpness of the image, as well as change the audio settings. Additional options such as DDC/CI (to control the monitor from a PC), PCM (Pulse Code Modulation - sound format) and a demonstration mode to showcase the display's capabilities are also available.
I measured the current at the two extreme brightness levels:
Just over 1.5 W to 2.5 W is rather good for a small monitor. It's interesting to note that today's IoT actuators consume up to about 0.5 W without the relay on and up to 1.5 W with the relay on, so one monitor like this is a gross number of these modules.... of course this is the display itself, to have a control panel you would need to add some Raspberry.
It remains to check the delays:
The monitor does not introduce any noticeable latency to the laptop screen.
In summary , here we have a tiny touchscreen monitor that, even at high brightness levels, draws a mere 2.5W. The whole thing additionally supports DDC/CI, PCM and also has built-in speakers. The presented device can therefore undoubtedly work well as a control panel for home automation systems, a small service monitor or an additional screen for a laptop or minicomputer. Thanks to its touch support and USB-C power supply, getting it up and running is very simple and requires no complicated configuration. At this price, it seems like a pretty interesting proposition for hobby projects and experiments.
Do you use this type of monitor? What applications do you see for them?
Cool? Ranking DIY Helpful post? Buy me a coffee.
