What I have realized is that people on the internet have been falsely selling HDMI to VGA cable converters when they know they don't work, but only sell them to make a profit for them selves. To convert your raspberry Pi or any device from HDMI to VGA ( or from VGA to HDMI )then you will need a converter, the reason why a cable doesn't work is because HDMI is digital and VGA is analogue, so power is needed to convert the digital signal into analogue. Hi! This is my first post on this forum so I hope this helps everyone. Word of caution: Make sure your power supply can handle the extra current AND you are sure that you won't forget to remove the bridge before hooking up the RPi to a regular HDMI display! As mentioned previously, D1 is there for a reason which is to protect your hardware if an HDMI-connected device also supplies 5V to pin 18.
#Video to vga converter diagram serial
In my case it was 148mA which proved that it wasn't the current that was the problem - the BAT54 can handle 200mA - but the voltage.Īs of raspberry PI's B+ and later, the BAT54 does no longer exist, nor does the voltage dropping problem, also the BAT54 was designed in with idea that the typical current consumption would not exceed the 20mA the serial EEPROM typical needs, it was NOT designed to support VGA converters, but the B+ (and later models) is! In this setup, the diode is bridged immediately and no current will flow through it. After bridging D1 and the config.txt settings everything started working beautifully.īTW one can easily measure the current needed for the adapter without removing D1 by putting an ampere-meter between TP1 (5V) and the diode's cathode, next to "D1" on the PCB. 2V off the 5V rail so we end up with 4.8V which for my adapter wasn't enough. * The voltage supplied to HDMI pin 18 via D1 is not sufficient so D1 has to be bridged * The supported monitor mode(s) are not reported back to the HDMI, so hdmi_mode has to be set to the needed resolution and refresh rate directly * HDMI is not properly detected so that hdmi_safe=1 has to be used in config.txt, as mentioned above
That said though, unpowered converters are still a risky gray area, because the pi has a diode in place that can easily burn out if too much power is being pulled through the HDMI port - you would be well advised to get a HDMI>VGA converter with it's own power supply, or if you're okay with a soldering iron, you can open up that unpowered converter and inject a few volts of your own.Īfter fighting with getting my cheapo VGA converter to work on the RPi for a while I thought I'd share my results here. Prices for converters are also getting lower all the time. To save yourself from heartbreak and a hole in your wallet, you should just look for a method to convert the analog video signal to a vga plug into a monitor instead of trying to harness the HDMI signal.Īctually, the neewer converter is one of the ones in the wiki listed as working. Some cheap ebay or amazon product going for $10 ain't gonna do the job for you. As stated on the forums in numerous places, you'd need a special converter box to convert the digital HDMI signal to VGA. You'll see heaps of different ones on the market but they probably won't work. Ahstwin wrote:Converting from a HDMI to VGA signal is not advised as the converters can be hard to find (Both expensive and difficult to obtain).