Jetson TK1 fails to detect HDMI monitor

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson TK1
1

Hi,
In this forum I found several threads which seems to be related to the issue I am reporting, but I could not find a solution in any of them.

The symptom of this problem is that the board seems to fail to boot since the connected HDMI monitor exhibit a “no-signal behavior”.
A lot of people is reporting that their boards fail to boot since also the console is not showing at boot and thus it really seems the board is completely dead.

Actually, if connected to a network, the board is accessible through ssh and is perfectly working, a part from the fact that the X server was unable to start.
I am almost sure this problem is related to the monitor detection (EDID decoding) since, given the same board and the same software configuration, on my samsung HDTV everything is perfectly working, but on an ASUS VS238 monitor the X server fails to start and the monitor do not detect any signal during the boot as well as later on.

Does someone found a workaround or knows in detail the reason why this is happening?
Is there a rule to know which monitors are going to work and which are not?

Thanks in advance,

Enrico

2

I had issues with different hdmi cables on different monitors. For example one hdmi cable worked ok on one monitor but didnt on another. Try to replace your hdmi cable, may solve your problem.

3

Already tried with a different cable (one of the two is the one shipped with the monitor) and the same behavior is exhibited…

4

I’m using my jetson on TVs only as I dont have any hdmi capable monitor.
Does your monitor have an option (like TVs have) to look for signal from hdmi even before you connect anything? On any of the TVs I tried, Jetson does not show any signal when I switch to hdmi few seconds after I turned jetson on.

5

What is the output of “get-edid | parse-edid”?
(You’ll need to install: apt-get read-edid)

6

SOLVED!

Hi,
that’s indeed the direction in which I was trying to investigate…

but, parse-edid was not able to correctly parse what was coming from (one of) the monitor which was not working with my board (an ASUS VS238), here is its output:

This is read-edid version 3.0.1. Prepare for some fun.
Attempting to use i2c interface
No EDID on bus 0
No EDID on bus 1
No EDID on bus 2
No EDID on bus 4
No EDID on bus 5
1 potential busses found: 3
256-byte EDID successfully retrieved from i2c bus 3
Looks like i2c was successful. Have a good day.
Checksum Correct

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier "ASUS VS238"
	ModelName "ASUS VS238"
	VendorName "ACI"
	# Monitor Manufactured week 51 of 2012
	# EDID version 1.3
	# Digital Display
	DisplaySize 510 290
	Gamma 2.20
	Option "DPMS" "true"
	Horizsync 24-83
	VertRefresh 50-75
	# Maximum pixel clock is 170MHz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1152x864, 75Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1280x960, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1280x1024, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1440x900, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1680x1050, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1920x1080, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1280x720, 60Hz
	#Not giving standard mode: 1280x800, 60Hz

	#Extension block found. Parsing...
Hmm, you have data blocks, but not video ones... weird
Something strange happened. Please contact the author,
Matthew Kern at <pyrophobicman@gmail.com>

Thus, I e-mailed the author, as suggested by the command output ;) sending also the binary EDID provided by get-edid.
He quickly answered that he will fix this problem in the next release and moreover he provided to me the correctly parsed EDID (I have to thank him again for his help!)

Here is the correctly parsed EDID:

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier "ASUS VS238"
        ModelName "ASUS VS238"
        VendorName "ACI"
        # Monitor Manufactured week 51 of 2012
        # EDID version 1.3
        # Digital Display
        DisplaySize 510 290
        Gamma 2.20
        Option "DPMS" "true"
        Horizsync 24-83
        VertRefresh 50-75
        # Maximum pixel clock is 170MHz
        #Not giving standard mode: 1152x864, 75Hz
        #Not giving standard mode: 1280x960, 60Hz
        #Not giving standard mode: 1280x1024, 60Hz
        #Not giving standard mode: 1440x900, 60Hz
        #Not giving standard mode: 1680x1050, 60Hz
        #Not giving standard mode: 1920x1080, 60Hz
        #Not giving standard mode: 1280x720, 60Hz
        #Not giving standard mode: 1280x800, 60Hz

        #Extension block found. Parsing...
        Modeline        "Mode 16" 27.00 720 736 798 858 480 489 495
525 -hsync -vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 0" 148.50 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1084
1089 1125 +hsync +vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 1" 25.200 640 656 752 800 480 490 492
525 -hsync -vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 2" 27.027 720 736 798 858 480 489 495
525 -hsync -vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 3" 27.027 720 736 798 858 480 489 495
525 -hsync -vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 4" 27.000 720 732 796 864 576 581 586
625 -hsync -vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 5" 27.000 720 732 796 864 576 581 586
625 -hsync -vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 6" 74.250 1280 1720 1760 1980 720 725
730 750 +hsync +vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 7" 74.250 1280 1390 1420 1650 720 725
730 750 +hsync +vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 8" 74.250 1920 2448 2492 2640 1080 1082
1089 1125 +hsync +vsync interlace
        Modeline        "Mode 9" 74.250 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1082
1087 1125 +hsync +vsync interlace
        Modeline        "Mode 10" 54.054 1440 1472 1596 1716 480 489
495 525 -hsync -vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 11" 54.054 1440 1472 1596 1716 480 489
495 525 -hsync -vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 12" 54.000 1440 1464 1592 1728 576 581
586 625 -hsync -vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 13" 54.000 1440 1464 1592 1728 576 581
586 625 -hsync -vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 14" 148.500 1920 2448 2492 2640 1080
1084 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 15" 148.500 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080
1084 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 17" 74.25 1280 1390 1430 1650 720 725
730 750 +hsync +vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 18" 74.25 1280 1720 1760 1980 720 725
730 750 +hsync +vsync
        Modeline        "Mode 19" 27.00 720 732 796 864 576 581 586
625 -hsync -vsync
        Option "PreferredMode" "Mode 16"
EndSection

I just copied and pasted all of this in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf (in the place of the already present “Monitor” section).

After a reboot the monitor is correctly displaying the board boot and after some seconds the ubuntu desktop.

7

Great!