Verdin Development Board carrier and HDMI output?

The DSI to HDMI adapter I received, does not match the mating connector on X48. It appears Toradex changed connector X48 between versions 1.0 and 1.1 of the carrier but continued to ship the old HDMI adapters with the carrier.

  • Verdin Development Board V1.1A
  • Verdin DSI to HDMI Adapter board, V1.08
  • Verdin iMX8MM Q 2GB WB IT, V1.1D

Is it possible to use the native HDMI port (X37) on the Verdin Development Board V1.1A?

Thank you,

-Ed

I used the on-board video connector for the bulk of my development until my touch screen arrived.

It will not support an adapter.

You have to have a true HDMI cable and a monitor that has a true HDMI connector. No fake-it-until-you-make-it is possible with that connector. Well, I suspect it is the driver that doesn’t provide enough oomph to power the adapter.

@seasoned_geek I do not need touch, just a display.

You were able to use the built-in native on-board HDMI connector X37 ? See screenshot below.

Did this require special TorizonCore configuration to enable?

Thank you for your help,

-Ed

Yes, I was able to use that port. It was all I had until the adapter/card came in for the touch screen. I had to use an old Acer a279h monitor because it was the only one I had with such a port.

Download EasyInstaller. Flash it to SD. Put the board in reset mode and boot. Easy installer should find and use the monitor.

I personally never did anything to make that port work but I wasn’t the first to have my board. I vaguely remembering something in the documentation about a jumper or dip switch that might be required, but I think that was for the adapter card and touch screen.

You cannot use an adapter under any conditions.

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" You cannot use an adapter under any conditions."

Disregarding touch, are you saying the little DSI to HDMI adapter board that mounts on X48, does not work at all for Linux?

https://www.toradex.com/accessories/verdin-dsi-to-hdmi-adapter

I will try putting EasyInstaller on SD card, and booting in recovery mode.

I was using VNC with the factory installed EasyInstaller, but after loading boot2qt image I lost vnc server. I am not seeing any output on the built-in HDMI output X37 with boot2qt image. I will try to install TorizonCore. I should try another HDMI display.

Thank you,
-Ed

Not what I’m saying. I’m saying you cannot use things like this:

Nor can you use things like this

It must be a true HDMI cable

and your monitor must natively support HDMI.

That boot2qt stuff is pretty bad. Download the official Torizon EasyInstaller and install TorizonCore. Unless something is horribly hosed on your carrier board, TorizonCore will load the proper device tree for this carrier board and use the built in video port.

You will need to have a USB keyboard and mouse.

I bought one of these powered USB hubs and it worked with the board.

That got me extra ports for thumb drives and such. I don’t think I would try a non-powered hub.

I took a quick scan of the data sheet and did not see anything one needed to do to enable that port by default.

Thanks for feedback on boot2qt being pretty bad.

It looks like I would have to build a custom boot2qt image for production anyway. Verdin has no boot2qt image support from Toradex or Qt.

I will try to get TorizonCore running. A simple hello world type QML app using Qt for Device Creation would be a good start.

Then I need to figure out costs if ended up TorizonCore in production.

Thank you.
-Ed

Hi @embeddEd,

I’m sorry for the delayed answer.

Actually, this is not possible. The Verdin iMX8M Mini processor doesn’t have an HDMI interface (the processor itself). That’s why you will need the converter. As you can see in the Verdin iMX8M Mini datasheet (5.6 section):

5.6 Display 

The i.MX 8M Mini SoC features a single display controller with MIPI DSI output with up to four 
lanes. The i.MX 8M Mini SoC does not have a native LVDS function. However, it is possible to add an MIPI 
DSI to LVDS (or other display interfaces) bridge on the carrier board. The MIPI DSI port is available as a 
"Reserved" interface of the Verdin standard. The HDMI port in the "Reserved" class of the Verdin is not 
available on the Verdin iMX8M Mini.

I apologize for what happened to you, there was a mistake with the adapter. Please, contact the Toradex Sales team again so they can replace it for you if the new adapter.

As you can see in the revision history, the connector was replaced (as you correctly mentioned):

- Replaced Main Board-to-Board Connector: Samtec QTH-030-02-L-D-A with Samtec LSS-130-03-L-DV-A-K-TR

Just to mention, using the last Toradex Easy Installer Release build 5.7.0, you can access Toradex Easy Installer by VNC viewer, so there is no need for a keyboard plugged into the board anymore (just to flash the image in this case).

Best regards,
Hiago.

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Honestly,

I’ve written multiple books on Qt. I never recommend Qt for new development given all of the licensing shenanigans that has happened over the past couple of years. There really isn’t an OpenSource version anymore. Definitely no LTS OpenSource. Other than legacy products still needing maintenance, the medical device world has abandoned Qt entirely. Ford didn’t abandon it, relying on it for infotainment systems in their cars. Now they no longer make cars and last I hear will be laying off thousands.

May don’t like it, but wxWidgets is just as big an 800 pound gorilla of a library.

If you are running inside of Docker containers you can run almost any X11 library. There are limitations, particularly in the GLES area. If you just need minimal and can deal with a library that isn’t fully polished NanoGUI is a good choice. I’ve used that on this board before. Elements is a more robust choice.

I’m terribly sorry for the incorrect information.

I was using the MP

With TorizonCore from several months ago. I was able to directly use the display port.

I missed the part where embeddEd stated MM

Hi @seasoned_geek,

don’t worry and thanks for all the inputs, we are here to help!

@embeddEd if you need extra help with that, please, let us know!

Best regards,
Hiago.

Thank you for the information!

I have used Qt for many years, mainly widgets, targeting RHEL, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows. More recently I was involved with a Qt for Device Creation product that used QML.

That is interesting that medical industry and automotive, except for Ford, have largely abandoned Qt. Automotive and medical applications. They are using the graphics libs you mentioned? Crank Storyboard? Any feedback on LVGL ?https://lvgl.io/

In my experience QML resulted in a nice responsive UI on an embedded Linux device running on an Toradex iMX6UL SOM. No OpenGL used.

We have a new UX design in FIGMA we were hoping to import FIGMA design into QML. However, this requires an added expensive license for “Qt for Enterprise” on top of “Qt for Device Creation” costs.

A containerized app for embedded Linux either Docker or similar makes a lot of sense. I will look into NanoGui and especially Elements sound interesting. Robust is good.

Thank you for your time and info!

-Ed

I did not use it, but on my last project one team did, on the IMX8MP. They liked the level of control it gave them or so they said.

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Hi @embeddEd,

Has my answer solved your question?

If so, can you mark it as “solved” please?

Thank you! Please, feel free to ask more questions that you might have.

Best Regards,
Hiago.

@hfranco.tx Yes! Thank you!

Is there a way to install VNC on the boot2qt image installed from EasyInstaller. VNC worked great with the EasyInstaller. Once I installed the boot2qt image using EasyInstaller, I lost VNC support.

Do you know if the “TorizonCore with evaluation containers” images contain support for VNC?

I understand the native HDMI port on carrier board ( X37 ) will not work with an Verdin iMX8MM. The Toradex Sales Team shipped a replacement yesterday.

Thank you,

-Ed

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Hi @embeddEd,

Thanks!

VNC support is installed inside Toradex Easy Installer only. There is no support for it inside TorizonCore.

It’s possible to add VNC support for your custom image using Yocto. You can add a recipe to install the VNC inside of it. If you want to try it, you can follow the recipes from Toradex Easy Installer as an example: https://github.com/toradex/meta-toradex-tezi/tree/dunfell-5.x.y/recipes-graphics/neatvnc. I don’t think it will be an easy thing to do if you are not used to Yocto though.

Great! Feel free to ask any further questions that you might have.

Best regards,
Hiago.

Hi @hfranco.tx

Thanks for pointing me to neatvnc recipe.

I had used yocto with previous Toradex iMX6UL SOM project. I was hoping TorizonCore might save work this time. However, I expect there is no escaping Yocto, and I should start setup to get Yocto building sooner rather than later.

Thank you,
-Ed

Hi @embeddEd,

I apologize, actually, TorizonCore does have support for VNC, you can check more here: Remote Access the TorizonCore GUI Using VNC or RDP | Toradex Developer Center

I’m sorry for the wrong information. Please, feel free to ask any questions that you might have,

Best regards,
Hiago.

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Thank you @hfranco.tx ! I wanted to figure out Docker on TorizonCore anyway.

Any tips for a headless method ( I have no display currently ), of replacing an installed boot2qt image with TorizonCore ?

I am working on setting up TFTP, NFS, boot. I wanted to get this working regardless. I can memory dump a TFTP server file loaded into RAM from uboot prompt. Next I am working on NFS and getting an image to boot.

Thank you,

-Ed

Hi @embeddEd,

To enable the VNC in TorizonCore, you just need to pass --env ENABLE_VNC=1 to the Weston container or to the docker compose file. This will initialize Weston with VNC enabled for you.

Best regards,
Hiago.