New CM4 uConsole, no signs of life except power led

Hey all

Just got my new CM4 uConsole this week and have been having some issues getting it up and running.

The only sign of life that its showing is the green power led comes on, and I get a small flicker on the screen.
I can’t seem to get anything via HDMI either.

I’m running a CM4 lite 8GB, and have tried multiple SD cards, reseating the cm4, adaptor, and screen cable multiple times.

I’ll add some images later as I’m away from my desk at the moment.

Any suggestions?





I see you’re using a 8GB CM4 so it didn’t come with a sd card, are you using an official or community distro? Regular Raspberry Pi distros won’t work with the uConsole.

@Rex I’ve tried both the official distro and your bookworm one

You have the CM4 in the adapter the right direction?

Yep yep, I have the holes on the cm4 aligning with those on the carrier.
I made sure it made a satisfying click when attaching it.

I’ll update my initial post with a picture when I can

1 Like

Photos added! Thanks for your help by the way

Can you verify that the TF/SD card has the OS installed on it by plugging into a computer and seeing if there’s anything on the card? I doubt it happened but maybe there’s no OS on the card?

I’ve actually checked this previously, wanted to see if anything was written to dmesg, but I’ll take another as I’ve definitely reflashed since then.

The issue makes me think it’s likely a booting issue

what are you using to flash the sd and how? decompressing then flash, no decompress flash, custom settings?

you really applied force when mounting the CM4, It makes a forceful snap when fully seated.

Honestly I just decompressed then flashed using dd

~/Downloads/uconsole
❯ sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M oflag=sync,direct status=progress if=uConsole_CM4_v1.3g_64bit.img

I also tried with usbimager

Have you verified the CM4 works separate in another carrier board?
Have you contacted clockwork yet?

Yep, I contacted clockwork around the same time as I made this post, and I’ve got one of the official CM4IO boards on the way, as I figured that was probably the next step.

OK i hate to ask but you refer to SD Card however it is a TF Card device is it not? TF Card and SD Card are not interchangeable correct? From the description page

A microSD card is just a TF card under a different name.

microSD cards are TF cards under a different name. In 2004, when Motorola and SanDisk released the TF card, it launched as a separate standalone product. Aside from the fact that TF cards supported the same standard specs as an SD card (bar the size), TF cards were a separate, non-standardized product class.

So, to standardize these flash memory cards, the SD Association adopted TF cards as microSD cards later in 2004. Hence, microSD cards are TF cards under a different name.

Source

Never knew this…thank you for educating me…

Honestly at this point I’m just kind of assuming that my CM4 is dead :cry:

I’ve got a backup on the way along with the carrier board, and if its not I’ll just make a router or some thing with one of them.

I just ordered one may I ask how long it took for yours to arrive?

The uConsole itself?
It took the full 90 business days to be shipped, so around 4.5 months.
Once shipped it was here within the week.