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Raspberry Pi Touch Screen Ground Station

Alan Johnston edited this page May 19, 2026 · 20 revisions

These instructions are to build a Raspberry Pi Touch Screen Ground Station based on the Fox-in-a-Box v4 disk image.

Video

Here is a video of this.

Parts

Here's what you need:

  • Raspberry Pi 4 (or Raspberry Pi 5) Single Board Computer. Any RAM amount is fine.
  • Micro SD card with Fox-in-a-Box v4 disk image (FIABv4)
  • Sunfounder 7" Touch Screen with Speakers
  • RTL-SDR radio dongle
  • Antenna for RTL-SDR
  • USB extender cable
  • Raspberry Pi power supply
  • Wireless mouse
  • two AAA batteries for mouse

Here's how the parts look:

Ground Station

Steps

Here's the parts to put together the Touchscreen:

Ground Station

The first step is to plug the Pi 4 (or Pi 5) into the back of the touch screen:

Ground Station

Here's how it looks:

Ground Station

Next plug the HDMI adapter and the USB adapter into the Pi and the touch screen as shown:

Ground Station

Ground Station

Ground Station

Ground Station

Ground Station

Ground Station

Ground Station

Next, attach four nylon standoffs to the touchscreen back using four screws:

Ground Station

Here's how it looks:

Ground Station

Then place the screen on top and secure with four screws:

Ground Station

Ground Station

Ground Station

Here are the rest of the parts that we will plug in:

Ground Station

Start with the USB extender cable:

Ground Station

Ground Station

Then plug the RTL-SDR into the USB cable and screw the SMA antenna into the RTL-SDR:

Ground Station

Flip the mouse upside and remove the plastic cover:

Ground Station

Unplug the colored USB receiver and plug it into a USB port on the Pi:

Ground Station

Put two AAA batteries into the mouse:

Ground Station

Put the cover back on and slide the switch to the ON position:

Ground Station

Plug the micro SD card into the Pi:

Ground Station

Ground Station

Plug the USB-C power supply into the Pi:

Ground Station

Power up the Pi and you will see the AMSAT background then FoxTelem will run:

Ground Station

Ground Station

The Ground Station is now ready to use!

Here's a [video of testing it].(https://youtu.be/KMjQzJLp0A8)

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