Can I get my monitor to work correctly with BBB, or can you recommend a different monitor?

GoogleGroups
1

My current monitor (Acer X213H) works poorly with the BBB. It appears as if the BBB picks an incompatible refresh rate and/or resolution when it boots, as the screen looks like a CRT TV with HSYNC issues. I tried reading the EDID to get an idea of the problem, and the BBB was unable. However, out of the blue, I woke up this morning to find that the BBB picked a compatible resolution sometime overnight… I’d prefer it always pick a compatible resolution. :slight_smile:

(The BBB need not feel bad: The monitor also works poorly with the Raspberry Pi, though slightly less. I have been able to read the EDID on the Raspberry Pi, but must specify the following settings in boot.txt for the monitor to work at 1080P with the Raspberry Pi: “hdmi_force_hotplug=1”, “hdmi_group=2”, and “hdmi_mode=82”.)

Perhaps it is time to buy a new monitor. My requirements are that the monitor must be 1080P, support HDCP (for the sake of my PC, not the BBB or RPi), and have an HDMI input along with wither a DVI-D or MiniDP input for my PC. And the HDMI input must work with the BBB [and the Raspberry Pi, but I realize that’s out of the scope of this Group]…

Or is there a way to get this monitor working with the BBB, much like I got it working with the Raspberry Pi?

2

With some monitors, it's just a bad common ground connection. I have
a couple cheap lcd's that need either the usb-otg or serial ftdi
adapter plugged into a pc connected to the same ac outlet to make the
hdmi monitor even work.

Regards,

3

If you know the resolution you want, you can also try forcing it via
/boot/uboot/uEnv.txt. There should be a commented kms_force_mode
setting if you are using a recent release. You can uncomment this line
and hard-code a resolution here per details in:

https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/fb/modedb.txt

4

I had to use my Raspberry Pi to dump the EDID of my monitor (couldn’t get the BBB to do it), and found a resolution that my monitor and the BBB could tolerate (720p at 60Hz). I was then able to successfully force the resolution in uEnv.txt.

Unfortunately, this is not the resolution I wanted to use. My monitor is incapable of 1080p at 24Hz, and the BBB is incapable of 1080p at 60Hz.

Looks like my resolution-sensitive project will have to use a Raspberry Pi. (sigh.)