Official Raspberry Pi 7" touchscreen not working on new Oram stable relase (2409 solved) )

Using Zynthian
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1

Hi there,

A bit of context: I discovered Zynthian around a month ago and build a custom kit with what was taking dust on my shelves (RPi 3B+, official RPi touchscreen, Behringer UCA202, Belkin USB2 powered hub and an empty box of macarons).
Everything is powered by a 5V 6A adapter bought for this build, RPi directly from the output and the rest from the powered hub (itself being powered from the output the adapter as RPi).
It was working pretty well with the previous stable release (2401, pre-Oram).

As Oram has gained a stable release and seems to be a great update, especially for touch only builds, I tried to burn the new image (Oram stable 2409) to my SDCard.

Problem is the display is not working at all; black screen but also no backlight, as if it was not powered.

I can access to webconf (from LAN), but configuring the whole thing do nothing, same problem at reboot. I tried to power the display in different ways, but still no luck.

So I flashed the old image (2401) just to see what happens, and everything works fine with the previous release, so it’s not a powering issue.

I’m not sure if someone has already had this kind of problem. As it’s a custom build, I ask here rather than filling an issue on Github, but please tell me if I need to.

BTW, this project is really nice: it lets me reuse things that were standing there for nothing, replaces a lot of gear that I had to remove due to moving in a smaller place, makes me rediscover (very) old plugins like mda ones… coolness++

Here is the config:

Configuration

Hardware

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Plus Rev 1.3
Audio: Behringer UCA222
Display: Pi 7 Touchscreen Display 800x480
Wiring: DUMMIES
I2C: Not detected
Profile:

System

Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
Build Date: 2024-09-11
Memory: 44% (408M/907M)
SD Card: 24% (14G/59G)
Temperature: 54.8ÂşC
Overclock: None

MIDI & UI

Tuning: 440 Hz
Master Channel: Off
Preload Presets: On
ZS3 (SubSnapShots): On
Power Save: 10 minutes
Audio Levels on Snapshots: On

Software

zyncoder: oram (71de6d2) 
zynthian-ui: oram (a238652)
zynthian-sys: oram (996e5eb)
zynthian-data: oram (6fa0db4)
zynthian-webconf: oram (640087f)

The display is possibly recognized: lsmod gives me

raspberrypi_ts         12288  0
backlight              24576  2 rpi_backlight,drm

(I’m not sure if I have to check something else here.)

Please let me know if there are other useful information that i can provide and thanks in advance for the help.

2

After running from freshly burnt image, after the initial setup it reboots, I updated and reboot another time. After this reboot I observed the same issue. But after switching of and running starting again the screen was working normally.
Regards

3

Multiple reboots and shutdowns, trying to update, other reboots and shutdowns, but still no luck.

I tried to switch backlight on/off as indicated here, but nothing happened and the file got back to its original state after a reboot (0).

Did some research to find if its related to bookworm but I haven’t found anything yet.

The screen looks like dead (which is not as it’s working with previous stable 2401).

4

A question from the Peanut Gallery - I noticed that @gitnob specifically mentioned powering off and on and in @bear 's reply you said you did multiple reboots and shutdowns but did not mention power - could it be that simple?

If not, which seems likely, could you send some pics of how the “official RPi touchscreen” is hooked up to the RPi 3B+ - there are at least 2 different official 7" displays - they differ in terms of how many leads connect to GPIO in addition to the flat cable. Mine does work with oram 2409 stable - it uses 2 gpio leads for power.

5

The touchscreen is not powered via GPIO pins but via micro usb. I also tried to power it from the GPIO but it was the same behaviour.

I always shutdown before powering off (ie software shutdown from webconf followed by the removal of electric cord). Did you mean powering off only the display while the RPi is still running?

Finally, I didn’t find any information on the two version of the RPi 7" touchscreen; do you have some? Mine has 5 pins, two for powering and the others to connect to RPi 1.

6

I had problems with the version 1.0 official touchscreens with not repowering on reboot which was solved by v1.1. It’s worth checking which you have.

7

Just checked and my display is a v1.1.

I won’t be able to experiment the next few days, but if someone has some ideas, I would be so grateful :smiling_face_with_tear:

Only idea I have now is to start the first boot with only the RPi and the display.

8

So I tried different things:

  • starting with only the RPi 3B+ and display (without soundcard), both powered at the same time;
  • powering touchscreen first, then RPi (without USB hub);
  • and numerous image burning methods (Rufus on Windows, Pi Imager and dd on Linux, unzipping with 7z on Windows, unxz on Linux);

nothing is working. Same with 2609 stable.

Back to old stable (24-01-16), pre-oram, only way to have the display powered and working.

I’ll fill a bug on github, just for the record. If I’m the only one experiencing this, on old hardware, not sure that a fix could be find easily.

9

Have you tested your display with latest RaspberryPiOS (bookworm 64bits). ZynthianOS is just RaspberryPiOS with some extra packages and custom software, but the base is the same.
If you display works with RaspberryPiOs, it should work with Zynthian. If it doesn’t, try tweaking the configuration lines.

Regards

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10

I followed @jofemodo advice and tested latest RPiOS, both 64 and 32bit.
As expected 64bit wasn’t working, but I still had the splash screen, then nothing. 32 bit was working normally.

I came across this issue on RPiOS-64 Github, and adding dtparam=i2c_vc_baudrate=50000 to config.txt worked for me too on RPiOS.

When I tried this back to Zynthian Oram it didn’t work. But I found that dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d wasn’t present in my config.txt either, even if I selected “Pi 7 Touchscreen Display 800x480” in webconf.

So finally, adding these two lines in webconf/display/config box works for me:

dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
dtparam=i2c_vc_baudrate=50000

(The second line is necessary to avoid issues where touch stops working after a while.)

BTW, I needed to invert the screen, so I selected “Pi 7 Touchscreen Display 800x480 (inverted)” in drop-down menu. But this brought me to the same orientation as both display_lcd_rotate=2 and kernel option video=DSI-1:800x480@60,rotate=180 rotate the screen. So I removed the first option, as I read somewhere that kernel option was the way to go since Bullseye.

I wonder how @wyleu got the same config working: did you need to do all extra config? Or did you choose an other display config in the drop-down menu? I’m also on RPi3B+ and display v1.1.

Thanks everyone for the help.

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11

My rack machine, which is a Pi 4 using a 7" touch screen is using…

Pi 7 Touchscreen Display 800x480

Not had any trouble with it.

I don’t have any Pi3’s with 7" screen. My other 7" screen is on the pedalboard with a Pi4 which I will check when next I’m near it, but I’m pretty sure it’s set the same way except rotated.

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12

Thanks for your reply, I thought you used the display with a RPi3. And I read somewhere that this is that specific combination, RPi3 with 7" display, that could be problematic.

I don’t know how to edit the topic title with a SOLVED tag, but now it’s time for playing.

1 Like
13

I’ve done the solved tagging

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