uConsole display flashes on startup, won’t boot

uConsole
1

I’m having trouble booting my new uConsole, powering on causes the screen the flash briefly, but nothing happens after that. Please see the linked YouTube video of what I’m seeing. I’ve flashed Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS to my MicroSD card, and I’ve seen this behavior whether plugged into power with usb c or just on batteries. Could anyone help me troubleshoot? I’ve got a mini hdmi on the way but it will be a few days before I can test a secondary display.

Edit: I got it figured out, the cm4 I installed had an emmc module which was the default boot device. I switched to a cm4 without emmc, switched my sd card to the stock os image from clockwork and powered on. Screen needed a few moments to turn on but it booted into Raspbian right away.

2

I had a similar issue, I hate to sound condescending, but are you absolutely sure your power supply is actually supplying power? Took me a couple hours to realize mine was unplugged lol.

Try removing the batteries and booting on USB-C, if it works, you may need to wait a bit to let the batteries charge (if they’re fully discharged it won’t boot when they’re installed even when plugged in in my experience).

3

Did you try with the official os ? Ubuntu will likely not work out of the box

4

The green power led visible in the video turns on and stays on after powering up, whether I’m running on battery or direct usb c power. So I’m pretty confident it’s not a psu issue

5

I will try to install the .img from the clockwork GitHub repo next, but wouldn’t I get a console message that the boot device isn’t valid regardless of the flashed OS image? My screen isn’t staying on after that initial white flash.

6

A: You should see the orange LED on as well if plugged into power.
B: The uConsole is a bit different from most (x86/wintel) PCs, in that it doesn’t have a BIOS, it just boots from the media you provide it. If the media is invalid, there’s no code to run to display that message. Maybe something is printed over serial, but I don’t know if that’s the case, and certainly the serial output from the CPU isn’t going to the display.

1 Like
7

Ok guys I got it figured out, the cm4 I installed had an emmc module which was the default boot device. I switched to a cm4 without emmc, switched my sd card to the stock os image from clockwork and powered on. Screen needed a few moments to turn on but it booted into Raspbian right away.