Screen Powers On.. Then Off... Then On

Picade
1

Hi all,

I bought one of these a while ago and I’ve just found the time to get it all built.

I have an issue now where the screen now powers on perfectly fine and shows the boot menu and lets me get into the RetroPie OS. I’ve even managed to map all the controls properly, but when I come to starting a game the whole screen powers off, the light on the control board (is that it’s name?) goes from green to amber, a second later the screen powers on and the control board light goes from amber to green. Repeat: Forever…

I’ve checked the connections between everything several times and can’t see anything loose anywhere. I’ve also tried enabling the setting to put more power through the HDMI in the config.txt to see if that made any difference and it did not.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? If I connect the Pi2B to my TV over HDMI it works perfectly fine.

Matt

2

config.txt at the root of your SD Card.

Uncomment hdmi_force_unplug and set it to 1

then add the 2 following lines at the end of the file :

disable_audio_dither=1
max_usb_current=1

reboot and you should be done.

1st is to force HDMI
2nd gives better sound
3rd maximize the power on USB ports (should be running a rpi 2 or 3 as this is specific to them, not model A)

1 Like
3

It’s likely that your power adapter isn’t 2A or you have too many things plugged in to USB, it’s pretty low powered while booting but when in a high cpu/gpu game there isn’t enough juice to for the gnu.

Try either a better power adapter or cut the dongles to the bare minimum, by perhaps wired instead of wireless, ssh instead of keyboard/dongle etc

4

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replies. I managed to sort it applying the config above and uncommenting config_hdmi_boost=4 as well to boost power. Got it running consistently now!

I did want to use an external USB stick to host the ROMs, but the power goes crazy if I plug anything else in… So I’m going to copy the files to the SSD, or use a USB drive with an independent power supply.

Once again, thanks for your quick replies!

Matt.

5

I use a powered USB hub so I’m plugging the Picade into the wall every time that I want to play on it.

I use a Aukey battery pack to power it when I want to play away from outlets. It will do the power flash dance if I don’t be careful using this method though.