gen4 Primary Displays for Raspberry Pi
gen4-4DPi Page 7 of 29 www.4dsystems.com.au
4. Connecting the Display to the Pi
4.1. Hardware Connection
The gen4-4DPi is easily connected to a Raspberry Pi.
Ensure the Raspberry Pi is powered off when
connecting the gen4-4DPi display or adaptor.
Simply align the Female 40 way header on the gen4-
4DPi-Adaptor with the Raspberry PI’s Male 40 way
header, and connecting them together – ensuring the
alignment is correct and all pins are seated fully and
correctly. The gen4-4DPi-Adaptor should be
overhanging inward of the Raspberry Pi.
Next simply connect the 30 way FFC cable between the
FFC Connector of the gen4-4DPi and the gen4-4DPi-
Adaptor, ensuring the copper pins are facing upward in
the connector.
Please note that hardware connection to the Pi is not
recommended until the Pi has been set up. Please see
instructions below.
4.2. Software Download/Installation
4D Systems has prepared a custom DMA enabled
kernel for use with the Raspbian Operating System,
which is available for download as a single Package.
This can be installed over your existing Raspbian
installation, or it can be applied over a fresh image. It
is recommended to apply over a fresh image.
If you are starting from a fresh image, start from Step
1, else skip to step 3 if you already have a Raspbian
Image and which to apply this kernel to that. Please
note, it is impossible for us to know what you have
done to your Raspbian image, if you are not installing
from a fresh image – so if you encounter issues, please
try and use a fresh image to determine if possible
modifications are conflicting with our kernel release. If
you are running a Raspbian version with a Kernel
version later than our Kernel Pack, you may encounter
problems. Please contact support if you have
problems.
1) Download the latest Raspbian Image from the
Raspberry Pi website:
http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_lates
t
2) Load the Raspberry Pi image onto a SD card, using
the instructions provided on the Raspberry Pi
website for Linux, Mac or PC:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/inst
allation/installing-images/README.md
3) Insert the SD card into the Raspberry PI. Do not
connect the gen4-4DPi yet. You will need an
external monitor / keyboard / network
connection, else simply a network connection to
the Pi and the rest can be done over an SSH
connection. Start up the Pi with at minimum an
Ethernet connection connected.
4) Either log into the Raspberry Pi from your
keyboard/monitor using the standard ‘pi’ and
‘raspberry’ credentials, else SSH into your
raspberry PI and log in via your SSH session.
5) Expand the file system on downloaded image
using raspi-config (submenu Expand Filesystem).
After exiting raspi-config a reboot is needed.
#sudo raspi-config
#sudo reboot
6) Once rebooted, It is highly recommended to do an
apt-get update and apt-get upgrade to ensure you
are running the latest version of the kernel and
firmware on your Pi, before you patch it for the
4DPi. After doing this, reboot once again.
Warning: An upgrade should only be done after
making sure that the latest kernel is supported by
the latest kernel pack from 4D. Otherwise,
installing the 4D kernel pack will downgrade the
kernel.
7) Once rebooted, log into your Raspberry Pi again,
you will need to download and install the kernel
which supports the gen4-4DPi. The following step
requires sudo ‘root’ access.
8) To download and install files, enter the following
commands in terminal/shell /SSH to download
the kernel from the 4D Systems Server:
$ wget
http://4dsystems.com.au/downloads/4DPi/Al
l/gen4-hats_4-19-57-v7l+_v1.0.tar.gz
Install:
$ sudo tar -xzvf gen4-hats_4-19-57-
v7l+_v1.0.tar.gz -C /
The package automatically selects the kernel
required for Pi1, Pi2, Pi3 or Pi4 automatically. If
you want to check for the kernel packages
released by 4D systems, proceed to Section:
Latest Kernel Versions