Problems with display orientation and touch alignment on Pi 5 (DSI)

Building Zynthian
1

Hi folks!

I’m running Zynthian Oram-2511 on a Raspberry Pi 5 with a Waveshare 5" DSI Touch A display.

The UI has the wrong orientation being in “portrait”. I managed to rotate it with xrandr, but touchscreen coordinates don’t follow the rotation (touch is sideways), so the Zynthian UI is unusable. I also think that those settings might will be overwritten after zynthian updates.

What I’ve tried:

- Kernel / cmdline rotation doesnt influence Zynthian UI.

- “xrandr” rotation works for the display, but touch does not follow.

- “xinput” coordinate transformation doesnt work.

- Different config.txt flags like swapxy, invxy etc.

Questions:

1. Is there an official Zynthian way to rotate DSI displays and touchscreen (including multitouch) on Pi 5?

2. I’ve seen screenshots showing a “Rotate” (not the “touch rotate”) option in Webconf. Is this available in Oram, and if so how is it enabled?

3. What’s the recommended approach for 90° rotation with touch on DSI (DT overlay, Zynthian config, calibration)?

Thanks in advance,
Netrom.

3

Hi!

I had the exact same issue with a 5’’ touchscreen (a generic one, but likely a Waveshare clone). I was struggling with the settings until I noticed a reference to “DSI 1” in the logs. The RPI5 has two DSI/CSI ports. Initially, I connected the display to the port furthest from the Ethernet jack, and I couldn’t get it to rotate through the WebConf or by manual config edits. Once I saw that reference, I simply switched the cable to “Port 1” (the one closest to the Ethernet connector). After doing that, I was able to rotate both the display and the touch interface via the WebConf without any issues.

Have you tried switching the port on your Pi 5? It might solve the problem instantly.

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