Peter "Bobricius" Misenko's WiziTouch Is a Wi-Fi Touch Panel Powered by WIZnet's Wireless Pico Clone
Designed to serve as a basis for application-specific interfaces, the WiziTouch builds on Misenko's earlier PicoTouch HMI.
Peter "Bobricius" Misenko has unveiled his latest compact user interface design, the WiziTouch — a Wi-Fi-connected touch-panel driven by WIZnet's wireless clone of the Raspberry Pi Pico.
"WiziTouch [is a] simple touch front panel with integrated HD color IPS display, six touch buttons, and [a] beeper," Misenko explains of his latest design. "[Its] purpose [is as a] small standalone controller [for a] thermostat, clock, mini PLC, smart home panel. Ideal for small project[s] where Wi-Fi connection [is] required."
The front of the WiziTouch features the aforementioned six touch-sensitive buttons, which don't physically move, marked out as rounded rectangles with distinct symbols: Four directional arrows arranged in the familiar inverted-T of a modern keyboard, plus a cross symbol and a check symbol. Above this is the OLED display, designed to provide the user interface controlled by the buttons.
On the rear of the board is a space to mount a WIZnet WizFi360-EVB-Pico, a clone of the popular Raspberry Pi Pico microcontoller development board, which adds in WIZnet's WizFi360 Wi-Fi communications module — offering an alternative to Raspberry Pi's own Raspberry Pi Pico W. This runs a CircuitPython firmware, and provides power to the board while serving as a "core" for external hardware via general-purpose input/output (GPIO) headers located to the top of the WiziTouch.
The board is a direct successor to Misenko's earlier PicoTouch HMI, which was designed to be driven by the original Raspberry Pi Pico. Where the PicoTouch HMI has a full ten-digit number pad, though, the reduced button count on the WiziTouch makes for a simpler board — that can, Misenko explains, serve as a customizable base for application-specific project variants.
Misenko has shown off images of the board on Twitter, with additional details available on the project page, but at the time of writing had not yet released design files or source code.