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Black (not no signal) or flashing screen

By @remoteworker
    2024-01-23 20:38:44.146Zassigned to
    • @david

    Hello Michael,

    I have built a tinypilot myself using the recommended hardware.

    I am experiencing sudden black screens akin to this issue Black screen

    However, for me, the black screen appears sporadically. restarting the host machine does not seem to fix it.

    Also, I do not know if this is related (feel free to ask me to create another ticket), i have experience of the screen "flashing".

    By this, I mean that it appears as if the screen is constantly refreshing.

    I have captured logs for these cases:

    blackscreen: https://pastebin.com/nF9tRDJ1
    saw the screen go from normal to black: https://pastebin.com/fK1juipf
    flashing screen: https://pastebin.com/9uGwiYfJ

    thank you in advanced for the help,

    cheers,

    Reply
    • 7 replies
    1. R
      @remoteworker
        2024-01-23 20:55:52.964Z

        I logged into the pi and saw that in the journalctl there is a bunch of failures:

        Failed to start Load EDID for TC358743 HDMI capture chip..
load-tc358743-edid.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'

        Is this due to an incompatibility of the capture card?

        I thought this might be of interest.

        cheers,

        Reply
        1. R
          In reply toremoteworker⬆:
          @remoteworker
            2024-01-23 21:42:58.138Z

            Another note here as I found this issue: Failed to start Load EDID for TC358743 capture chip.

            following the steps on here did not help with my problem

            I reimaged my sd card with the latest Bullseye (fresh download) and ran the install command from the tiny-pilot README.

            The issues here are still the same. absolute black screen the same status from systemctl status load-tc358743-edid.service

            thanks,

            Reply
            1. In reply toremoteworker⬆:
              David @david2024-01-24 12:45:14.345Z2024-01-24 15:50:58.210Z

              Hi @remoteworker, I'm sorry you're running into this blank screen issue with your community build.

              And thanks for sharing those logs.

              Those failures loading the EDID are only relevant if you're using a TC358743 HDMI capture chip. If you're using an HDMI to USB device, you can ignore them.

              The blank screen and flickering feels like this could be a loose connection or a bad capture device.

              Could you check your HDMI cable to make sure it works with a known working device like a TV or similar?

              If the HDMI cable works, could you try testing your capture device with a PC to make sure it's working as expected too?

              Please let me know if you have any questions.

              Reply
              1. R@remoteworker
                  2024-01-24 14:48:46.579Z

                  Hello David,

                  thank you for the prompt response.

                  I have tried HDMI cable and it is fine.

                  How can I best test the dongle? just plug it into another PC and see if it captures?

                  please let me know and I will conduct the test.

                  Cheers,

                  Reply
                  1. David @david2024-01-24 15:50:44.580Z

                    How can I best test the dongle? just plug it into another PC and see if it captures?

                    One option to test the dongle is to plug it into another PC and use software like OBS to capture and view the video feed. I think VLC also has an option to open a video stream from a capture device, too.

                    In OBS, you'd add a new video source from a 'Video capture device', select the HDMI to USB capture dongle, and then check whether you get the expected image in the preview window.

                    Another option is to capture the video feed using ffmpeg. On a Linux-based machine, it would be something like:

                    ffmpeg -f v4l2 -video_size 1920x1080 -input_format mjpeg -i /dev/video0 output.mp4

                    I hope that helps! Please let me know if you have any questions.

                    Reply
                    1. R@remoteworker
                        2024-01-24 15:54:06.792Z

                        thank you for the detailed instructions.

                        let me try this a bit later today.

                        cheers,

                        Reply
                        1. David @david2024-01-25 12:22:37.315Z

                          You're welcome! Please let me know how it goes.

                          Reply
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