SunFounderRasPad 3.0 - an All-in-One Tablet for Raspberry Pi 4B with 10.1" Touchscreen and Built-in Battery for IoT, Programming, Gaming, 3D Printing Projects

Tips:* Pre-bend the stiff USB-A connector cable into "big omega" shape. Otherwise it would be very hard to align PI with the screw holes.* You need to long-press the power button to turn on the tablet.* The screen has a protective film (there is no tab, so it's easy to miss the fact).This is my first Raspberry Pi tablet, so I have nothing to compare.Package:(+) The tablet has nice packaging which contains everything needed including screwdriver.(+) There are spare screws.The tablet had batteries and can be charged by the included power brick.Case:Overall the device looks pretty nice.The screen has big bezels like the first tablets.The tablet is somewhat heavy at 954 grams.(-) Port markings are very hard to see. Light gray on light gray.Ports:* 3x USB3* (+) Full-sized HDMI* Headphones port* Ethernet* Power(-) The external USB ports all come from a single USB3 A port, so the total throughput might be limited compared to PI.Screen:The screen looks good. I see no issues.I've tried to watch a full-screen 60FPS YouTube video and it looked nice. The only problem (software problem, not device) is Vsync (screen tearing) - I need to find an option to turn it on…Touch works pretty good.Screen auto-rotate works as expected. (It's pretty sluggish (understandable, given the system performance))The screen has brightness control buttons and OSD that shows up when you make adjustments.The screen can also show low-battery sign which is useful.Sound:Sounds OK. I did not notice anything bad. But I'm not an audiophile.Fan:Initially I completely forgot about the fan. Only when I turned off the tablet I've realized that the fan was audible. The fan was pretty quiet and the sound was OK. Although on one startup I heard a growling sound for a second, but it disappeared right away. For now the fan seems pretty quiet and usually does not bother me. Let's see how it sounds in the future.Update: sometimes the fan is buzzing a bit.I've checked the fan grill (which is smaller than the fan) and I feel almost no wind. I wonder whether the fan shroud is efficient.Battery:There is a 3-LED battery level indicator on the side.The tablet can be charged while on.It took me several hours to charge the batteries.I have not formally tested how long the tablet can work on battery.Power button:Short-pressing the button makes the PI sleep/hibernate immediately. Another press and it wakes up.Additional thoughts about the design:The product has interesting and complex engineering. Most ports are forwarded via cables (USB-A, USB-C, Ethernet, 2x micro-HDMI, microSD). So, for example, there are 3 Ethernet ports in total (1 on the PI, one internal, one external). But I wonder whether all of that difficulty was necessary.What if the back box was the size of Pi with few very slim connectors (slim like the microSD extender) grabbing several ports: 1 USB-A, USB-C. The screen could have been connected via DSI cable or a slim 90-dgree micro-HDMI connector.Full testing log:The instruction manual has couple of small issues* Error: The manual says "attach the fan with the four M2.5x9 screws." but the proper screws are not m2.5 - they are smaller.* Nit: the fan screw caps are too big to fit the hole or too small to go well over the hole.* "Go see a tutorial at https://raspad.rtfd.io", but the page is not the main docs page. Main docs page is at https://docs.raspad.com/en/latest/(+) The Ethernet cable is neatly reversed for easier insertion.(-) USB connector cable hard/thick and is shorter than ethernet cable. But also longer than the needed distance. So it strongly pushes the Pi away from the proper location. You have to make a bend in the hard and stiff USB A cable to align Pi with the screw holesThe other cables have pretty OK length. But they are also a little bit longer and somewhat stiff.I had to use a lot of force to push the PI to align with the holes and feared a bit that the pressure could tear the USB-A ports off from the PCB.The MicroSD extender is an interesting solution. Nitpick: The microSD extender ports are not fully aligned, but this does not matter.Accelerometer module is nice and tiny.I've connected the tablet to the power brick. One green led started blinking.I've tried to press the power button, but nothing happened. Turns out you need to long-press the button to start.I've turned the tablet on.It booted and I hear "To install the screen reader press control alt space"I've read the instructions and installed the "onboard" virtual keyboard, the screen auto-rotator and the launcher.The virtual keyboard works, but there can be some glitches. For example, the keyboard buttons that happen to be on top of the window boarder often do not work. that At one point the screen went dark and the login prompt appeared. I was unable to log into the system and had to restart the device.All of this is unrelated to SunFounder or RasPad though - just the state of Linux software.The launcher makes Raspberry Pi menu more touch-friendly by making UX bigger. It's a bit sluggish to activate though.Overall, this seems to be a usable Raspberry Pi tablet shell.

I’ve played with Raspberry pi’s for years, while I tinker with Arduino a lot for making custom electronics I’ve never used the raspberry pi’s GPIO pins for projects before. Mostly because I didn’t feel like learning a new coding language after I finally got the hang of C++. I’ll force myself to learn one of these days. Raspberry Pi’s have a lot of cool open source projects out there ready to go which is how I’ve used them so far. RetroPie for gaming, Kodi as media and SMB server, OctoPrint for 3D printing and monitoring, basic Linux desktop computing, security camera, Ham radio SDR receiver, etc.The RasPad 3 solves the headache of having a dozen cables coming out of it while constantly connecting it to a wall outlet. I purchased a small 10” hdmi monitor for my Pi and I hate trying to get it plugged in and stay still without the tension on all the cables making the monitor and raspberry pi do flips. I also hate having a keyboard and mouse requirement. Sure you can do headless installs, but that sometimes brings other headaches. I might finally try and learn python now since I can tinker with this in the comfort of my couch instead of the floor or a big messy desk. I have the CrowPi 1 and it was pretty cool until I found this. The CrowPi 2 turns the raspberry pi into a laptop with a keyboard built into it and I almost bought that, but I ultimately decided to get this because it was simpler and I didn’t intend on messing with the GPIO even though there are exit holes for the ribbon cables if you wish to do so.I plan on using this tablet for many things since it’s so convenient, but I mostly wanted an SDR computer for receiving radio signals. You can use any laptop for this function, but setup is a pain. There’s enough room in the case for me to fit an SDR USB adapter and mount an SMA antenna panel mount connector. I can finally have a portable high tech radio receiver that I can boot and hold with just one hand.Battery life is as I’d expect. It doesn’t last very long compared to modern tablets, but it really depends on what you are doing. RetroPie battery life is short, but fun. Maybe 1-1.5 hours in RetroPie. I did have it overclocked to the max though. Basic desktop interface lasts the longest. Haven’t fully tested battery life in that scenario. The power input to charge the battery and power the raspberry pi is 15v at 2A. Unfortunately, this is a really uncommon voltage compared to most power supplies. Likely due to the 3 cell 18650 batteries in series which brings the battery voltage to 11.1v. It probably uses the extra voltage to keep the Pi running while it is charging the battery. I wish this would work on a 12v power supply since I have tons of those. You might want to buy a spare power supply in case you lose this one. I rig my Ryobi batteries to power everything I have so I just took a buck converter and 3D printed a socket to connect it to my Ryobi battery and drop the voltage from 20v to 15v to charge this device off the grid and/or extend the battery life.I followed the guide on their website to get started. It was pretty straight forward I got everything to work in the latest Bullseye OS except for the right click touch functionality. I couldn’t find a solution to this and found a forum where other people had the same problem. I ended up downloading the older Buster OS and the touch right click function worked. This is a must have feature if you don’t want to use a mouse. If I have to use a mouse or a keyboard it is no longer a tablet. I hope they solve this issue soon on the latest OS. This is why I docked a star. The screen rotate function works great on both of the operating systems. The onscreen keyboard works great as well.I wish they had a solution for making the auto rotate feature work in RetroPie.Overall I am very happy with this. I’ll mess around with the Pi more since I can do it on the couch now. This might be a good way to introduce my kids to python after I finally dive into it myself.

This kit Having a 10.1 inch screen and clearly laid out manual was a treat to work with. I was very impressed how easily it came together. Using the raspad site I configured the rotating accel shim and keyboard interface very easily. The rotating feature worked thou the delay was a bit longer than I would expect. Now looking at the gpio would have liked it to be more like the pi400 gpio where you don’t have to open the case to access the gpio pins. Maybe future version feature? The weight of the unit is very heavy. This is due to the glass screen and the three 18650s. was very disappointed there was a place for a camera, but csi slot on bottom to push a cable thru. There doesn’t seem to be a rtc feature also for time keeping. Looking at the raspad site I didn’t see a padded case to store the unit and power supply. Maybe one can be made later.Over all it’s a very well designed system. I see many good uses for this unit in the future.