Connect laptopTo Tv Through Serial Port

griss · March 8, 2018 at 7:56 PM

hi all

I have two small laptops with LE 8.2.3 on the two them

one is an aspire one D225 works no problems on two different TV's

The other laptop is A Toshiba NB 500-115

when I Connect this laptop TV Through Serial Port I am only getting half screen

its not the TV as I have the same problem on two different TV makes

is there a command I can type in too fix this

any help would be grate

thanks

**DaVu** · March 9, 2018 at 3:20 PM Official Post

I guess the problem is, that you are mirroring the screens. So the laptop and the TV shows the same picture. If that´s the case, the TV screen might show, what the laptop presents.

So I would disable the laptop screen. On some models it´s possible to use a key-combination with the FN-buttons and some of the F-keys. From the pictures I´ve found on google, it seems to be FN+F5

if that doesn´t do the trick, then SSH in and get us the output of xrandr | pastebinit. You will receive an URL which you could paste here.

griss · March 9, 2018 at 6:39 PM

thanks for the reply

here's what I got .

LibreELEC:~ # xrandr | pastebinit

UBo

LibreELEC:~ # xrandr

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767

LVDS1 connected primary 1280x1024+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm

1280x1024 59.68*+

1280x960 60.00

1152x864 60.00

1024x768 60.00

800x600 60.32 56.25

640x512 60.00

640x480 59.94

VGA1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 700mm x 390mm

1920x1080 59.93*+

1400x1050 59.94

1280x1024 60.02

1024x768 75.03 70.07 60.00

832x624 74.55

800x600 75.00 60.32

640x480 75.00 59.94

720x400 70.08

VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

LibreELEC:~ #

**DaVu** · March 9, 2018 at 7:29 PM Official Post

Before we start with some xrandr testing, have you tried using the FN+F5 button to swtich between the specific screens?

As the xrandr command shows, both screens are "connected". LibreELEC isn't made for multi-monitor environments.

So please, first try to use the FN-button combination (whatever it is, it might be different from FN+F5...a photo of the keyboard made by you could help in that regard), which is probably FN-F5 to switch the connecte monitors. Probably you have to press that combination multiple times as it switches from:

- internal + external monitor "mirrored" (means both screens will show the same)

- internal + external monitor "extended" (means that the laptop-screen will be extended to the connected monitor)

- internal only

- external only

probably not in that order

if that fails or doesn't result in anything useful, you could try to manually turn off the LVDS1 screen (which is your internal laptop screen) by entering the following command:

xrand --output LVDS1 --off

Then the only connected screen should be the VGA1 which is your external screen.

You probably need to restart Kodi after that. So simply execute: systemctl restart kodi

Please do not reboot to restart Kodi as that would probably result that both monitors are connected again.

griss · March 9, 2018 at 11:25 PM

thanks again

so the FN buttons don't work

however there's light at the end of the tunnel

when I use this command "xrandr --output LVDS1 --off"

I get full screen although the display looks like inverted colours

Then when I use this command after it "systemctl restart kodi"

and everything looks fine full screen working fine.

but when I restart the laptop it goes back too small screen again

is there a way of saving it too full screen setting so I don't have too keep putting in

xrandr --output LVDS1 --off

systemctl restart kodi

**DaVu** · March 10, 2018 at 5:40 AM Official Post

That's what we are after

Ok, knowing that the FN-key won't do what we want, I guess we can easily use a startup script. By default LibreELEC will execute an autostart.sh before the start of Kodi itself.

- SSH in

- cd .config

now it depends on which editor you are more comfortable with (not sure how linux-savvy you are ). So either you vi or nano to create a file in that folder

- vi autostart.sh

and fill it with the following content

Bash

#!/bin/sh
xrandr --output LVDS1 --off

That should disable the LVDS1 at every boot and then after that is disabled Kodi should start as expected.

If it still starts with inverted colours we can easily make use of other files. I guess we didn't even need to restart kodi. I guess more, it would be enough to reload the skin after Kodi has started and if the colours look wrong. So if that's the case and only!!! if Kodi starts with wrong looking colours you could try to use another startup-file called "autoexec.py" placed in your userdata-folder (/storage/.kodi/userdata)

That file need to look like:

Python

import xbmc
xbmc.executebuiltin('ReloadSkin()')

That will reload/refresh the skin after Kodi has startet. But I guess that's not needed at all.Only use that if the colours look wrong after boot.

If the colours still looking wrong, we need to do something additional. But I'll wait for your report to not confuse things in a single post

**chewitt** · March 10, 2018 at 2:53 PM Official Post

I'm a pedant. It's a VGA port. It is not a serial port.

**DaVu** · March 10, 2018 at 11:00 PM Official Post

It is, yeah

Was also confused at the beginning

griss · March 10, 2018 at 11:43 PM

ok so here what I did

I ssh in too my laptop

navigated to cd .config

typed in nano

then made a file

#!/bin/sh

xrandr --output LVDS1 --off

and saved it as

- vi autostart.sh

restarted it and nothing has changed

I then edited the file name and saved it with out the - at the start

as in vi autostart.sh

tried restarting it and seems to be stuck on a loop black screen so I reinstalled and back with the half screen display

noob question how do I make the nano file

thanks again

griss · March 12, 2018 at 7:51 PM

fixed it now thanks DaVu I wouldn't have done it with out your help..

I made a file in config

#!/bin/sh

xrandr --output LVDS1 --off

and saved it as

autostart.sh

I saved it without - vi

works perfect thanks again

**DaVu** · March 16, 2018 at 8:31 AM Official Post

glad I could help you