BBG & HDMI cape: won't run together still in 2020?

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1

Hi all.
Bought this autumn a Board Green and a HDMI cape (sold by Seeed as Plug & Play device…), mounted the cape on the board, green light on, but:…never seen a character from the HDMI port to the HDMI monitor, no signal at all. Never.

OS-Image mounted is Debian 10.3 2020-04-06 IoT SD 4GB. The BBG board is normally managed via SSH session.

Tried to solve activating video module in uEnv.txt, shorted the pins of TP4, changed the dipswitches on the cape: no luck at all.

Anyway HDMI cape is sold as a Plug & Play device.

Digging in Forum I’ve found someone else with my same problem exposed since 2018, but the posts are with no help or official and clear support from Seeed.
The same to me, except for the suggestions from 2 members: it seems that the problem does’nt exists…but I’m certain it exists.
Some concrete help, please?

2

Well, my first thought would be that the IoT image does not load an
X-Window server, and hence likely not anything that drives an HDMI output.

  However -- https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/BeagleBone_Green_HDMI_Cape/ --
specifies a an IoT image (Debian Jessie I think, so way out of date), so it
is not that specifically. OTOH, the image they specify is one that is
specific to SeeedStudio! Ah, but they then install an X-Window system on
that image (perplexed, as there is an image that already included lxqt
available too).

  Unfortunately, that Feb 2018 Jessie image appears to be the /last/
Seeed specific build. My first approach would be to install an LXQT image
https://rcn-ee.net/rootfs/bb.org/testing/2020-11-30/buster-lxqt/ to ensure
that a desktop is active, and hope that it has Seeed specific drivers
built-in, or available via apt get.

  Don't know if these are relevant:

debian@beaglebone:~$ apt search seeed
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
seeed-modules-4.14.108-ti-r125/unknown 1buster armhf
  seeed modules

seeed-modules-4.14.108-ti-r126/unknown 1buster armhf
  seeed modules

seeed-modules-4.14.108-ti-r127/unknown 1buster armhf
  seeed modules

seeed-modules-4.14.108-ti-r128/unknown 1buster armhf
  seeed modules

<SNIP>

seeed-modules-4.19.94-ti-rt-r55/unknown 1buster armhf
  seeed modules

seeed-modules-4.19.94-ti-rt-r56/unknown 1buster armhf
  seeed modules

seeed-modules-4.19.94-ti-rt-r57/unknown 1buster armhf
  seeed modules

seeed-modules-4.19.98-bone-rt-r45/unknown 1buster armhf
  seeed modules

seeed-modules-4.19.98-bone45/unknown 1buster armhf
  seeed modules

  They appear to be tied to specific OS kernel builds...

3

As was posted in the other post, Seeed appears to only support this with kernel 4.4.
https://forum.seeedstudio.com/t/re-the-hdmi-cape-for-the-bbg/251093/3

Other references.
https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/BeagleBone_Green_HDMI_Cape/

https://www.seeedstudio.com/Seeed-Studio-BeagleBoner-Green-HDMI-Cape.html

Have you tried the Seeed Studio community forums yet?

Jon

4

Hi Dennis & Jon and once again thanks for your support.

Well Dennis, my first act was to install the IoT 2018 image, as recommended by Seeed, but not a character was output from HDMI cape, since the first boot.
Of course me too I was sure that at least a simple graphical iface was yet present in the OS, but anyway I’ve installed lxqt as indicated in the Seeed installation guide, with same no luck.
After a while I’ve installed the 2020 IoT release (sure a kernel 4.4.x), and the following history is well known…I’ve tried your suggestions but no way to arrange the stuff.

And no, not yet tried the way of the Seeed Community: of course I’ll follow the last suggestions of Dennis, before to approach to Seeed (with no big hope, let me say…).
If all would fail again I must suppose that the cape hardware has some fault, or the 1.2 HDMI protocol declared onboard is not suitable here.
Otherwise I can’t imagine how, and how longtime, Seeed would continue to sell an hardware surely NOT Plug & Play knowing the problem.

Get in touch and stay tuned, in the meantime have both my best wishes for a (finally…!) happy 2021
Luigi