piCoreplayer & Hyperpixel 4.0 Square Touch Display not working

[Reinhard]

Hi,

i'm new to this forum - so please don't get mad if I ask stupid questions...

I'm trying to get this Display working with piCoreplayer with Jivelite on a Pi4...
The idea is to only show the cover of the current song/album, so the square display seemed to be quite perfect fitting.

But so far I didn't succeed. :-(

There is a github page with install instructions (i can't add the link as this is my first post here) but unfortunately the install.sh won't run on the piCore shell, even after changing "bash" to "sh as there seems to be commands used which do not exist in the distribution.

I also tried to download the driver from a different display of the same manufacturer which had a more manual installatio approach (i can't add the link as this is my first post here) and adopt the settings for the square one i have. I found some info on this here on this forum...
I get a picture, but totally wrong. Pi's boot screen looks quite correct, but as soon as pCP is running, the picture is cut in half, and doesn't fill the screen, also colors are wrong. so the driver or the settings don't seem to fit very well.

So is there any more advanced user who could help me to get that working? best case with the drivers which are meant for this display?

Best regards,
Reinhard

[Reinhard]

adding the github links...

for my display (720x720):
https://github.com/piCorePlayer/hype...ree/square-pi4

for the other one *800x480):
https://github.com/piCorePlayer/hyperpixel4

[Greg Erskine]

hi Reinhard,

Generally most manufacturers assume people are using Raspberry Pi OS on their Raspberry Pi's. There is very little chance their scripts will work.

You need to follow the instructions manually, do not run the install.sh

I'd start from a fresh install of pCP.

regards
Greg

[Reinhard]

Hi Greg,

thanks for your hint!

I had a look at the shell script and I think the main issue (?) is that there is a command to compile some stuff on the fly:

"dtc -I dts -O dtb -o dist/$OVERLAY_NAME src/$OVERLAY_SRC > /dev/null 2>&1"

with...
OVERLAY_NAME="hyperpixel4.dtbo"
OVERLAY_SRC="hyperpixel4.dts"

as far as I understand dtc is not part of the piCoreplayer shell commands. So i guess this is why the shell script fails, and unfortunately i don't know how to work around this issue...

Best regards,
Reinhard

[Greg Erskine]

Follow the instructions on the https://github.com/piCorePlayer/hyperpixel4 readme page, not the install.sh

[Paul Webster]

Follow the instructions on the https://github.com/piCorePlayer/hyperpixel4 readme page, not the install.sh

Small thing - the top of that readme says it is for older devices - but the text has something for RPi4 - so I suspect the top line needs changing.

[paul-]

That comment was for what pimoroni publishes.

I should also note that this was the rectangular screen, not the square.

[paul-]

Looking at this a bit further. You will need to compile the dtbo file for the square display yourself. You can add the extension dtc.tcz to get the device tree compiler.

It also appears that the square has several hardware revision levels, and they are connected to different GPIO.

I would checkout the readme on the pimoroni github. https://github.com/pimoroni/hyperpixel4

Checkout the square branch that matches your board and what pi you have. And build the stuff you need. It appears that if you have a 2021 Square display, and putting it on a pi4, then you dont need the init program.


One word of caution, I'm not sure there is a skin in jivelite that will work nicely with a 720x720 screen. But that's a different problem.

[Reinhard]

ok, some progress... and bad news

i was successfully using this screen with official raspian image incl. touch working, and also did get it to work on piCoreplayer boot screen outputs by using the (outdated) install istructions with some modifications for screen resolution. but unfortunately, 2 BIG issues
1) (probably fixable) no jivelite skin which would produce "Readable"output - like Paul mentioned... i tried the 240x240 skin as it's at least square, but no luck, just some rubbish pixels...
2) (the BIG BIG one) as soon as the screen is connected, HDMI audio is disabled and can't be turned on again. when using aplay - L the entries for HDMi are missing, only the headphone stuff is left.

i tried another display as well which i borrowed, a Waveshare 5" DSI which is working out of the box with piCoreplayer.
But also here the same issue - as soon as i connect the LCD, the HDMI audio is disabled. and this would be my usecase :-(
--> have a little "squeezebox"with touchscreen and connect vial HDMI to my A/V receiver.

Again, any help i.e. on issue #2 would be helpful and highly appreciated.

i already tried some hints found on the web by adding below options in the config.txt but no luck yet...
hdmi_drive=2
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_force_edid_audio=1
hdmi_safe=1

update:
i just did a quick cross-check -> with latest Raspberry Pi OS (32bit) this does not happen, I still can see all hdmi outputs with aplay -L
i also did a fresh install of piCoreplayer, but still same hdmi sound issue...

Best regards,
Reinhard

[paul-]

HDMI has gone way down a rabbit hole on the current firmware and kernel series.

Take a look at this. This works with the RPI 7" display. https://forums.slimdevices.com/showt...=1#post1027716

Something else I just saw today. You might try adding

snd-bcm2835.enable_compat_alsa=1

to the cmdline.txt