Need support to connect 3.5 LCD touch screen for Raspberry Pi Volumio

Help and Support
1

Running Volumio 3.0 over Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB). Attached a 3.5 LCD touch screen as a GPIO HAT ( 3.5 Inch Touchscreen HD Touch Screen W/ Cooling Fan And Case For Raspberry Pi 4B (ebay.com))
Did try to follow most of the threads here addressing 3.5 LCD screen with Volumio, to no avail. The Touch scree is installed, touches seem to operate, but the LCD screen remains dark.
I did install the Touch Plugin. I did follow the instructions and notes on several threads (i.e. MHS-3.5inch Display! Touch Screen does not work - Help and Support / Help - Volumio ). The 3.5 screen is dark. I did try several drivers LCD3.5, MHS 3.5 and so on.

Can someone who did manage to activate this particular screen provide detailed instructions?

The touch screen operates OK under Raspberry Pi OS. The problems are with Volumio 3.0 OS.

2

@gvolt can you help him with the settings for his screen

@Moshe_Zolotov not all the screens are the same btw the link to your screen goes to a login of ebay
please provide what for screen it is brand, type, version or a link to it .
and did you install the touch display plugin?
on your display do you see welcome to volumio / login?

best regards,
dvo

3

I assume you have this display - if not provide a valid link please.

If you cannot exclude the possibility that your system could be messed up by earlier attempts to make the display work, I recommend to start with a fresh Volumio system, i.e. start from scratch. In that case make sure to wait some minutes after the first boot of Volumio so the data partition can fully expand. Otherwise you will not be able to install the Touch Display plugin because of too less space.

  1. Install the Touch Display plugin. I recommend to install version 3.3.5beta. Unlike 3.3.1 the beta version detects download errors and cancels the installation of the plugin if such an error occurs. In this case, the plugin would not appear in the list of installed plugins, giving the impression that the installation was successful.

    In order to be able to install beta versions of plugins at first you need to enable “Plugins Test Mode” on http://volumio.local/dev; maybe you have to use the IP address of your Volumio system instead of “volumio.local”.

    After that head over to the plugin store and click on the “Details” button for the Touch Display plugin and choose “Install v3.3.5(beta)”.

    Be aware that updating the plugin from a beta version to a newer beta version of the same plugin is not possible in the proper sense, but requires to uninstall the older version and install the newer one. Uninstalling a plugin erases the settings you may have made on the plugin’s config page.

    I also suspect, that it is not possible to update from the beta version of a plugin to a newer stable version, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. So if you want to change to the stable branch of a plugin you would probably have to uninstall the beta version first.

  2. Execute

sudo curl -L https://github.com/goodtft/LCD-show/raw/master/usr/mhs35-overlay.dtb -o /boot/overlays/mhs35.dtbo

sudo curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/goodtft/LCD-show/master/usr/99-calibration.conf-mhs35-0 -o /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf

sudo curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/goodtft/LCD-show/master/usr/99-fbturbo.conf -o /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf

sudo sed 's/"fbturbo"/"fbdev"/' -i /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf

sudo apt-get -y install xserver-xorg-input-evdev

sudo cp /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/45-evdev.conf

cat >> /boot/userconfig.txt <<EOL

dtparam=spi=on
dtoverlay=mhs35
EOL

  1. Reboot.

  2. If the display should not have the orientation you are looking for, add a rotation parameter to the overlay in “/boot/userconfig.txt” so it looks something like this:

dtoverlay=mhs35:rotate=90

This would rotate the display (not touch) by 90 degrees clockwise.

  1. Reboot once again.

  2. If the display rotation appears to be correct now, check if the touch function is already properly aligned to the display. If this should not the be case try to find out by what amount touch has to be rotated. Then head over to the Touch Display’s configuration page and set this value in the rotation setting.

  3. Reboot and check if touch is properly aligned to the display now. It is possible that setting the rotation in the prior step does not suffice. This would be the case if the screen’s touch axes are inverted or swapped which is not uncommon on these kind of screens… Then you would have to find out how the axes are inverted or swapped to be able to find a correction.

4

Thanks for the prompt support.
Will try it today.

5

Installed Volumio OS from scratch. Installed Touch plugin verion 3.3.5

Getting error message after running 3rd command:
sudo curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/goodtft/LCD-show/master/usr/99-fbturbo.conf -o /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf

volumio@zzzvolumio:~$ sudo curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/goodtft/LCD-show/master/usr/99-fbturbo.conf -o /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf
** % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current**
** Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed**
** 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:–:-- --:–:-- --:–:-- 0Warning: Failed to create the file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf:**
Warning: No such file or directory
100 609 100 609 0 0 1927 0 --:–:-- --:–:-- --:–:-- 1933
curl: (23) Failed writing body (0 != 609)
volumio@zzzvolumio:~$

Cannot find directory /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/

please advice

Thanks

Edit: Trying again from the beginning. Will update soon

6

I would have expected that “/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d” gets created automatically… You could try to create the directory manually

sudo mkdir /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d

and execute step 3 again.

7

Thanks

I did get an error while reinstalling the 3.3.5 plugin.
Now I downloaded the latest version of the Volumio OS (24.2.2022) and start again from scratch.

Thanks again for the support.

8

If there was just amn error downloading or installation a software package during the plugin’s installation process a new installation of Volumio (which can’t hurt OTOH) is not necessarily required. Most probably trying again to install the plugin suffices.

9

Installation of the 3.3.5 plugin fails repeatedly. Even under the newest Volumio OS 3.233.
I will resort the 3.3.1 and try again. Perhaps my previous installation where I started to apply your recommended commands was 3.3.1

Will report soon

10

Did you wait several minutes after the first boot so the data partition could fully expand? On a system where the data partition had not been expanded there is typically not enough space for all the software the Touch Display plugin needs and tries to download.

Also DNS problems can be the cause for failed downloads and in turn for the plugin’s installation process aborting.

11

Will try to wait 5-10 minutes after the 1st boot.
Should I persist on installing 3.3.5 beta or stay with the stable 3.3.1?

With the 3.3.1 plugin (installation was very short 3-5 minutes). I did get the following error

volumio@zzzvolumio:~$ sudo apt-get -y install xserver-xorg-input-evdev
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), is another process using it?

Starting all over again

12

3.3.5beta

Seems very fast. Probably a download error was the reason. It’s one advantage of 3.3.5beta over 3.3.1 that the plugin does not appear in the list of installed plugins seemingly successfully installed although a download error happened…

Hard to say afterwards. Could imagine this to happen if you e.g. executed “apt-get -y install xserver-xorg-input-evdev” while the installation of the plugin was still running. However, the priority ATM is that the plugin is installed successfully.

13

Did reinstallation of the 3.3.5 beta and all subsequent command, them rebooted.

The 3.5 LCD display stays white (unchanged).
After the installation and activation of the touch 3.3.5 plugin, the raspberry pi (PC) screen displayed the Volumio UI after prompting for theVolumio user and password ( as should); but after applying all the subsequent commands and reboot, the Volumio UI was not displayed after the user/password prompts. Toggling the Touch plugging on and off did not help. Should I reinstall the Plugging?

Thanks

Additional questions:
Should there be a /LCD-show directory?
Should the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d be located under the /LCD-show directory?

Thanks again

14

Did uninstall the 3.3.5 beta plugin. rebooted and installed it again.
Still no improvement (3.5 LCD display is unchanged, and no Volumio UI on the HDMI screen soon after the user/password prompt).
Perhaps I am using the wrong driver (not MHS35?)

15

No and no. Don’t use LCD-show!

16

Please post the results of

ls -al /dev/fb*

ls -al /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d

cat /boot/config.txt

and

cat /boot/userconfig.txt

Do you still see the Volumio login screen if the Touch Display plugin is enabled or a white screen or black screen?

Do you spot any error messages from the UI when you enable the plugin?

17

Hi
The screen was white (without any change) from the beginning.
In order to send you the results requested above, please let me re-install everything again because I did uninstall and and install to the touch-display plugin.
I want everything to be as you had configured.

Thanks for your patience

18

Results:

volumio@zzzvolumio:~$ ls -al /dev/fb*
crw-rw---- 1 root video 29, 0 Mar 13 18:43 /dev/fb0
volumio@zzzvolumio:~$

=================================================================

volumio@zzzvolumio:~$ ls -al /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
total 18
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Mar 13 18:43 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1024 Mar 13 18:35 …
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 92 Feb 7 2019 10-amdgpu.conf
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 1099 Aug 23 2018 10-evdev.conf
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 1350 Jan 4 10:05 10-quirks.conf
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 92 Apr 6 2019 10-radeon.conf
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 1429 Mar 31 2019 40-libinput.conf
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 1099 Mar 13 18:43 45-evdev.conf
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 2747 Jun 26 2017 70-wacom.conf
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 607 Mar 13 18:42 99-fbturbo.conf
volumio@zzzvolumio:~$

=================================================================

volumio@zzzvolumio:~$ cat /boot/config.txt
initramfs volumio.initrd
gpu_mem=32
max_usb_current=1
dtparam=audio=on
audio_pwm_mode=2
dtparam=i2c_arm=on
disable_splash=1
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
force_eeprom_read=0

include userconfig.txt
volumio@zzzvolumio:~$

=================================================================

volumio@zzzvolumio:~$ cat /boot/userconfig.txt

Add your custom config.txt options to this file, which will be preserved during updates

dtparam=spi=on
dtoverlay=mhs35
volumio@zzzvolumio:~$

=================================================================

After installing the plugin the HDMI display presented the Volumio UI soon after prompting for user/password.
After executing the set of commands the HDMI screen did not show the Volumio UI after the user/password prompt (it remained dark).

as mentioned above: no login prompt on LCD screen (only on HDMI)
LCD screen remains white (with no change)
Toggling the plugin makes no change
Error connecting to xserver , keeps popping up

When trying to update plugin setting of mouse pointer I get the message:
Touch Display
Error applying pointer settings: Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat ‘/tmp/.X11-unix/X0’

BTW. the 3.5 LCD display was working OK under Raspberry OS (set of commands received with the display). When I did try before to install under volumio (other threads) it did turn black but no display and it seem to respond to touching it (the mouse pointer had moved on the HDMI screen).

1 Like
19

Disable the plugin, execute

sudo sed 's/fb1/fb0/' -i /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf

and enable the plugin,

If that does not help, we would need to check if you really have an MHS35 display. Could you post an image of the screen’s PCB?

20

The above procedure had returned the Volumio UI to the HDMI screen. The LCD screen remains white.

My display is this one
3.5 Inch Touchscreen HD Touch Screen W/ Cooling Fan And Case For Raspberry Pi 4B | eBay

Tomorrow I will open the case, extract the display PCB and send you pictures of it.

Meanwhile, I find no words to thank you for the prompt support.

Will contact you tomorrow