I just picked up an official Raspbery Pi Monitor. It seems to be a great little monitor and good value for the price, but I'm running into a problem with it.
If I power the monitor from the USB output on my Raspberry Pi 3 B (older model, not plus), when I boot the Pi I see the monitor get power, I see the monitor-driven splash screen, then the various "not connected" icons in the top left, then nothing else. This problem does NOT occur with my Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W or Raspberry Pi 4 B. I don't have a Pi 3 B+ on hand to test.
I suspect what is happening is a timing issue, where the monitor comes alive too late for the Pi to see a connected HDMI device, and the Pi disables the HDMI. If I boot the Pi with the HDMI connected to a different monitor, and then after boot move the HDMI cable to the Pi Monitor, it works. If I do the reverse (boot connected to the PI Monitor then switch to a different one), it doesn't.
I also was able to get the display working by adding the following to config.txt:
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_drive=2
The problem there is that it doesn't negotiate screen resolution, and I'm stuck at 640x480. I expect I can also force the resolution in config.txt to work around that problem, but that seems hacky and will make the Pi less portable between devices.
So my questions are just:
- Is this a known issue with the Raspberry Pi 3 B?
- Are there any more elegant known solutions than the config.txt hacks I mentioned above?
Thanks in advance for any input!
If I power the monitor from the USB output on my Raspberry Pi 3 B (older model, not plus), when I boot the Pi I see the monitor get power, I see the monitor-driven splash screen, then the various "not connected" icons in the top left, then nothing else. This problem does NOT occur with my Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W or Raspberry Pi 4 B. I don't have a Pi 3 B+ on hand to test.
I suspect what is happening is a timing issue, where the monitor comes alive too late for the Pi to see a connected HDMI device, and the Pi disables the HDMI. If I boot the Pi with the HDMI connected to a different monitor, and then after boot move the HDMI cable to the Pi Monitor, it works. If I do the reverse (boot connected to the PI Monitor then switch to a different one), it doesn't.
I also was able to get the display working by adding the following to config.txt:
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_drive=2
The problem there is that it doesn't negotiate screen resolution, and I'm stuck at 640x480. I expect I can also force the resolution in config.txt to work around that problem, but that seems hacky and will make the Pi less portable between devices.
So my questions are just:
- Is this a known issue with the Raspberry Pi 3 B?
- Are there any more elegant known solutions than the config.txt hacks I mentioned above?
Thanks in advance for any input!
Statistics: Posted by bogtoots — Sat Dec 06, 2025 7:29 pm