Tag Archives: VGA

Fix black screen in Raspberry Pi with HDMI to VGA adapter

Posted by on 2013/05/28 11 comments

If you use an HDMI to VGA adaptor and get a black screen you may tweak the config.txt to solve the problem.

HDMI-VGA

If you open config.txt you will see that there are plenty of lines commented out that change the behavior of the HDMI output in the Raspberry Pi. This is the configuration that made my Raspberry Pi work OK using an HDMI to VGA adapter at 1920×1080 resolution:

disable_overscan=1
hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=16
hdmi_drive=2

hdmi_group defines the HDMI type (Not specifying the group, or setting to 0 will use the preferred group reported by the edid):

  • hdmi_group=1 – CEA
  • hdmi_group=2 – DMT

hdmi_mode defines screen resolution in CEA or DMT format.

hdmi_drive chooses between HDMI and DVI modes:

  • hdmi_drive=1 – Normal DVI mode (No sound)
  • hdmi_drive=2 – Normal HDMI mode (Sound will be sent if supported and enabled)

If you want to know which modes (hdmi_mode) are suported by your screen comment the lines for those 4 options (thus leaving all with their default values), reboot and the run those commands:

For hdmi_group=1 available modes:

sudo /opt/vc/bin/tvservice -m CEA

For hdmi_group=2 available modes:

sudo /opt/vc/bin/tvservice -m DMT

See all available options at http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt

Source: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=33477