Old Tablet as a touch screen?

I have an old Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 GT-5210 and was wondering if it could be used to either install octoprint or just as a Touch screen interface.

I've been looking and found Unbutu can be installed as a side by side ui so something must be possible. While possibly a little under powered for octo as a touch screen it would be ideal, sitting beside my printer and my RPi for some controlling one or both.

If anyone knows anything and can point me to a how to I would be grateful

OctoPrint is the software that controls your printer connected via USB to the (RPi) host. OctoPrint is controlled via its web browser interface so any desktop, laptop, tablet or phone that has a browser can control OctoPrint.

Small screen devices like a tablet or phone are painful to use this way but there is an OctoPrint plugin, TouchUI, which creates a browser interface that is more suited to small screen devices.

Since you have an android device, another alternative is Printoid which is an application you install on your tablet or phone. There's a lite version and a premium version.

Both of these solutions are for controlling OctoPrint. Controlling the RPi is a separate issue. Many RPi / OctoPrint are "headless" (i.e. no local keyboard, mouse, or monitor) and are usually controlled via SSH terminal sessions. It is possible to install a desktop on the RPi and then use Remote Terminal or VNC to access it.

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In a case like this, add TouchUI as suggested, use a standard Raspberry Pi 3B computer to host OctoPrint and then just setup the tablet as a standard client next to the printer. When you connect to the instance via a browser there, it will detect that it's a smaller screen and display a touch interface.

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