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Nathan N
12-16-2015, 08:09 PM
My company sells a product that uses DisplayLink monitors and BeagleBones together. Unfortunately, the current driver UDLFB only supports the USB2 monitors. The new driver for Ubuntu does support the USB3 but ONLY for x86/64 chipsets.

We're looking for ARM processor support for the USB3 monitors. I can compile the kernel and/or any other drivers that we need but the recently released Ubuntu/USB3 driver has a closed source binary blob which is key to making the monitors work. This binary blob is currently ONLY supported on x86/64.

Will there be any support for ARM (whether source code or a binary)?

mlukaszek
12-17-2015, 12:57 PM
Which BeagleBoard are you using for this project? (I assume something like BB Black - to get a kernel version supporting DRM).
Have you confirmed EVDI compiles and runs fine? Which distro are you using?

As with x86/x64 Linux support, please start from raising the idea at http://support.displaylink.com/

Thanks,
Michal

Nathan N
12-17-2015, 02:41 PM
You're correct; we're using the BeagleBone Black. I currently have tried the following:

Setup 1: Works with USB2 monitors
OS: Ubuntu 14.04
Kernel: 3.14.43-ti-r67 (which I realize isn't supported for the USB3 driver)
Driver: UDLFB

Setup 2: Failed with USB3 monitors
OS: Ubuntu 14.04
Kernel: 4.1.13-ti-r36 (from rcn-ee repository)
Driver: DisplayLink_Ubuntu_1.0.335

Once I got the required packages installed in the second setup, I quickly realized that the driver depends upon the DisplayLinkManager (which seems to have a binary compiled for x86/64 architectures). As the BBB has an ARM. I didn't go further with trying to compile individual components (e.g. EVDI) for my specific OS because of the binary that's only available for x86/64. If I'm incorrect in my assumptions, feel free to correct me :o

EVDI is installed and, I believe, working correctly as I can do modprobe evdi without getting an error. I also see a dmesg statement "evdi_init Initialising logging on level 5".

In our product, we're not using the regular desktop environment. Instead, I've configured an openbox session and Chromium to display a node.js application (as the user doesn't physically interact with the unit). This allows us to display information on the screen and the user to interact with it via a web browser. Think of the product as an information screen (kind of like an airport monitor showing flight information); it does more than that but that's the main function.

Again, I'm assuming that the lynch pin of this is the binary component (i.e. DisplayLinkManager) needs to run in order for the display to work. If run the upstart script, I get "displaylink main process (x) terminated with status 2".

I have added a comment to the original request "Support linux on ALL your devices" regarding ARM support as I figured there was already a request similar to what I needed. If you think it will help, I can use the "Post a new idea" link to create a separate request.

Thanks for your interest and help :D

mlukaszek
12-18-2015, 08:53 AM
Hi Nathan,

Just sent you a PM.

Cheers,
Michal

jsponz
01-29-2016, 12:19 PM
Hi,

We are also trying to use your products with Dual ARM Cortex-A7 cores.

Could try to give us a hint?

Thanks!
Jorge

Nathan N
01-29-2016, 03:00 PM
Hi,

We are also trying to use your products with Dual ARM Cortex-A7 cores.

Could try to give us a hint?

Thanks!
Jorge

If you're looking for USB2 support, I have had success using the UDLFB driver (not the currently recommended UDL driver). This has required me to edit my xorg.conf to include Driver fbdev & Option "fbdev" "/dev/fb1").

I hope this helps.

jsponz
01-31-2016, 06:11 PM
Thanks for your reply. I will take a look.

Any progress in USB 3?