SDL_Error: No available video device on BeagleBone Black with 4D Systems display

Hi. I’ve got a recent BeagleBone Black with a 4D Systems 4.3" cape attached (http://www.4dsystems.com.au/product/4DCAPE_43/). Debian comes up nicely on it, displaying a desktop on the display.

I logged in from a separate machine, created a very simple SDL program after building and installing SDL2, and when I execute it, I get SDL_Error: No available video device. I tried running it from a terminal program via the desktop, but it didn’t change things (it did actually also report “no protocol specified” a couple of times).

I’d like to completely take over the screen so my app can display some information. I’d like to be able to launch this app at startup, or via ssh connection, rather than having to interact with console. Perhaps later, it would be nice to respond to touch events.

I’m sure there’s some display configuration or contention issue, but I don’t know what it is, and so far my googling has turned up nothing.

Any and all help would be much appreciated. Thank you.–
Rick

2014-06-19 6:54 GMT-03:00 Rick Mann :

Hi. I’ve got a recent BeagleBone Black with a 4D Systems 4.3" cape
attached (http://www.4dsystems.com.au/product/4DCAPE_43/). Debian comes
up nicely on it, displaying a desktop on the display.

I logged in from a separate machine, created a very simple SDL program
after building and installing SDL2, and when I execute it, I get SDL_Error:
No available video device. I tried running it from a terminal program via
the desktop, but it didn’t change things (it did actually also report “no
protocol specified” a couple of times).

I’d like to completely take over the screen so my app can display some
information. I’d like to be able to launch this app at startup, or via ssh
connection, rather than having to interact with console. Perhaps later, it
would be nice to respond to touch events.

I’m sure there’s some display configuration or contention issue, but I
don’t know what it is, and so far my googling has turned up nothing.

Any and all help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

SDL2 does not have support for the BeagleBone black. I looked into it some
time ago and it seems they have some legal/technical problems with their
OpenGL ES2 support/drivers, so adding support to SDL2 was not possible at
the time.
If that situation changed I’d be interested in adding support.

By the way, if you can run X11 or Wayland with OpenGL ES2 enabled, SDL
should just pick that up and run (if it was properly configured and
compiled!).–
Gabriel.

Thank you, Gabriel. I’m told by the #beagle IRC channel that neither Wayland nor X work on the BeagleBone Black yet. But fbdev does. Is it possible to use that with SDL? The channel tells me that SDL2 doesn’t work with the raw frame buffer, but I guess SDL1.2 does?On Jun 19, 2014, at 05:58 , Gabriel Jacobo wrote:

2014-06-19 6:54 GMT-03:00 Rick Mann <@Rick_Mann>:
Hi. I’ve got a recent BeagleBone Black with a 4D Systems 4.3" cape attached (http://www.4dsystems.com.au/product/4DCAPE_43/). Debian comes up nicely on it, displaying a desktop on the display.

I logged in from a separate machine, created a very simple SDL program after building and installing SDL2, and when I execute it, I get SDL_Error: No available video device. I tried running it from a terminal program via the desktop, but it didn’t change things (it did actually also report “no protocol specified” a couple of times).

I’d like to completely take over the screen so my app can display some information. I’d like to be able to launch this app at startup, or via ssh connection, rather than having to interact with console. Perhaps later, it would be nice to respond to touch events.

I’m sure there’s some display configuration or contention issue, but I don’t know what it is, and so far my googling has turned up nothing.

Any and all help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

SDL2 does not have support for the BeagleBone black. I looked into it some time ago and it seems they have some legal/technical problems with their OpenGL ES2 support/drivers, so adding support to SDL2 was not possible at the time.
If that situation changed I’d be interested in adding support.

By the way, if you can run X11 or Wayland with OpenGL ES2 enabled, SDL should just pick that up and run (if it was properly configured and compiled!).


Gabriel.


SDL mailing list
SDL at lists.libsdl.org
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org


Rick

Yes, SDL2 does not have a fbdev backend, 1.2 does have it AFAIK.

2014-06-19 16:12 GMT-03:00 Rick Mann :> Thank you, Gabriel. I’m told by the #beagle IRC channel that neither

Wayland nor X work on the BeagleBone Black yet. But fbdev does. Is it
possible to use that with SDL? The channel tells me that SDL2 doesn’t work
with the raw frame buffer, but I guess SDL1.2 does?

On Jun 19, 2014, at 05:58 , Gabriel Jacobo <@Gabriel_Jacobo> wrote:

2014-06-19 6:54 GMT-03:00 Rick Mann :
Hi. I’ve got a recent BeagleBone Black with a 4D Systems 4.3" cape
attached (http://www.4dsystems.com.au/product/4DCAPE_43/). Debian comes
up nicely on it, displaying a desktop on the display.

I logged in from a separate machine, created a very simple SDL program
after building and installing SDL2, and when I execute it, I get SDL_Error:
No available video device. I tried running it from a terminal program via
the desktop, but it didn’t change things (it did actually also report “no
protocol specified” a couple of times).

I’d like to completely take over the screen so my app can display some
information. I’d like to be able to launch this app at startup, or via ssh
connection, rather than having to interact with console. Perhaps later, it
would be nice to respond to touch events.

I’m sure there’s some display configuration or contention issue, but I
don’t know what it is, and so far my googling has turned up nothing.

Any and all help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

SDL2 does not have support for the BeagleBone black. I looked into it
some time ago and it seems they have some legal/technical problems with
their OpenGL ES2 support/drivers, so adding support to SDL2 was not
possible at the time.
If that situation changed I’d be interested in adding support.

By the way, if you can run X11 or Wayland with OpenGL ES2 enabled, SDL
should just pick that up and run (if it was properly configured and
compiled!).


Gabriel.


SDL mailing list
SDL at lists.libsdl.org
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org


Rick


SDL mailing list
SDL at lists.libsdl.org
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org


Gabriel.