Hyperpixel 4.0 strange behaviour of Touch driver error

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1

Hello everyone!

I since a few months, I have been using a Hyperpixel 4.0 Touchscreen with my Raspberry 3B+ without any problems. Since a few weeks i use my touchscreen with the Raspberry Pi 4 Compute module and mounted both on my own designed PCB. Unfortunately, I’m facing some difficulties with the Touch function of my Hyperpixel 4.0. I have no clue how to solve these problems because the circumstances, which cause the fault don’t make sense to me.

Which System do I use?

Hyperpixel 4.0 in combination with Raspberry ComputeModule 4 with 2GB RAM and 8GB onBoard eMMC. Both is mounted on my custom PCB, which is supplied with 24V, stepped down by an «APP63300WU-7» Step down converter, which provides 3A @ 5.1V continuous output. The measured Voltage over 2 Days of measurement is a maximum of 5.2V and a minimum of 5.05V. The software ist the latest Raspbian.

What error is caused?

I have been running a GUI on my Raspberry Pi. I have one Page on which i have three sliders for changing brightness of my room light, colortemperature and one slide is to regulate the speed of some fans. Everything works fine in darkmode, but if I change to lightmode and touch the screen for about 1.5 seconds, the touch- function hangs up. My GUI doesn’t move anymore and I have a still image. I know that it’s only the touch function beacause if I plug in a keyboard and mouse, I can open for example chromium or other stuff without problems. With «i2cdetect »-command I can detect the Goodix GT911 driver on Address 0x14. Even if the touch has hung up, i can detect the Goodix GT911. I know that the address should probably be 0x5D but I thought it isn’t necessary to care about this problem as long as it works. After a reboot, the touchscreen works fine again until i use the lightmode of my GUI. Interesting to mention is, that i can click a thousand times for around 0,25seconds and no problems occur. But if I touch the screen permanently for around 1,5seconds, I instantly get my above described problems. Generally considered, this problems seems very strange to me and it doesn’t behave like any physical law i know…

On the first view, the error seems like a software issue ? Hear this!

If i use the official «Compute Module 4 IO-Board » to mount my Compute Module and Touchscreen, I don’t get the issue at all… My actual designed PCB ist the 2nd version. On the 1st version It also worked fine without any problems. The only differnce between version 1 and 2 is the wiring, which I tried to improve on the 2nd version and viewer parts which I only put on my 1st version to evaluate some functionalities like ethernet or 2nd I2C-Bus, which I’m not using on my 2nd version. The wiring did not change between these two versions, i only tried to increase the distance between the GPIO-traces to improve signal integrity.

So it seems like a hardware problem? But why does the GUI work fine in darkmode? I don’t have any explanation to that.

What did I do to narrow down the error?

I flashed a new image on my Compute Module and also used another Compute Module, Custom PCB and touchscreen as well, but without any success. As far as I experienced, the issue is only caused on my GUI and not on any other websites or images, etc. An interesting thing was the interrupt line, which is typically only drawn to 0Volts if the touchscreen gets touched. After the touchscreen hung up, I measured 0,084V on that line and as long as I touched the screen, this voltage rised to about 0,2V, which for me seems also like a strange behaviour. I also checked the «dmseg» file and got some entries for failed i2c tests of the GoodixGT911. I also tried the github fix for the swapped i2c address, but without success. I used the command «git clone GitHub - pimoroni/hyperpixel4: Driver for the Pimoroni HyperPixel 4.0" Touchscreen Display -b pi4-i2c-fix » for that.

What do I try next?

I dont have any clue what to do next. My only solution in mind, is to undo the «improved» wiring of my 2nd PCB to get as close as possible my first PCB version.

Conclusion :

I really need help and hope, someone can do me this favour. I’ve never found my described error behaviour in any forum. Are there any other usable forums for problems with the Hyperpixel 4.0? Let me please know.

Thanks, Manuel

2

Indeed very strange. So just some ideas to think about. At first, the GUI does not know anything about the touch-driver and vica-versa. So there should not be a relationship. But what if a long press floods the touch-driver with events in a way that in corrupts memory?! And maybe you only see the problem with certain values (i.e. during light-mode) in memory?!

What you could do is compile the touch-driver from source and add some debug-statements just to see what happens.

No idea if the pixel-brightness affects the capacitive sensing of the screen. A quick search did not bring up anything useful. Maybe some display-forums (if they exist?!) will know more.

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Thanks for your approach with compiling the touch-driver source to find the exact error. Do you know more about how the exact source is stored? Unfortunately I dont have much experience on this. Otherwise Trial and Error has to do his job ;)

Can you make any statement to the Interrupt(INT) Line which is held strangely low while the Touch driver hangs up? Is it possible, that the 18 Color Data-Lines (RGB666) are almost permamently held high because of the white screen and have some impact one the I2C- or Interrupt line? I really tried to put on the left, the right and the opposite PCB-Layer a groundplane to isolate the different datalines from another.