Pironman 5 OLED does not work with Gnome Desktop

General
1

Got my pironman 5 yesterday and have since re-installed Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS six or seven times trying to get both the OLED display and Gnome desktop working together. No matter what order I do things in, as soon as I have both OLED drivers and Gnome desktop installed, my graphics stop working.

I am currently posting this from the Pironman 5 with Ubuntu Server / Gnome desktop working as expected so I know it works fine. And I have also installed Ubuntu Server and the Pironman OLED drivers and had that working just fine. Everything works, just not both the OLED and Gnome desktop together. Order of installation seems to have no effect either as the display stops working as soon as I try to either:

  • Install the OLED driver after installing Ubuntu Gnome Desktop
  • Install Ubuntu Gnome Desktop after installing OLED driver

Any help in getting this working would be great as I do not want to change the OS because I plan on doing a couple of things that require Ubuntu server and would really like to be able to see a working display while using a GUI desktop.

2

Did you follow the tutorial for Pironman5?

https://docs.sunfounder.com/projects/pironman5/en/latest/set_up/set_up_rpi_os.html

3

Yep, every time. And like I said, it all works after following the instructions right up until you do apt-get install ubuntu-gnome-desktop and reboot. There is something incompatible. I never go further than the git repo for pironman5 OLED driver though. I do not use Home assistant so I have not installed that or anything after that point.

4

1.Use the following command to check if the I2C address 0x3C of the OLED is recognized:
sudo i2cdetect -y 1
2.If the I2C address 0x3C can be detected, then run the command to restart the pironman5 service:
sudo systemctl restart pironman5.service
3.If the I2C address cannot be detected, please execute the command:
sudo nano /boot/firmware/config.txt

Add the following content at the end of the file:
dtparam=i2c_arm=on

Press Ctrl+X, then press Y to save and exit.

Then go and restart pironman5 again, and see the result.

1 Like
5

Well, that might be helpful if it were the OLED that stopped working, but it hasn’t. When I enable the OLED display, the main graphics desktop stops working. Gnome desktop fails to start up as soon as the OLED drivers get installed. The OLED display itself works.

6

I have found a work-around/resolution. Still not sure what was stopping the desktop from starting but using the following process, I was able to get both gnome desktop and the Pironman OLED display working.

  • Install a fresh copy of Ubuntu server 24.04 LTS
  • Update the install with apt update / apt upgrade
  • Reboot
  • Install Ubuntu-gnome-desktop
  • Reboot into graphical desktop
  • Take a backup of the contents of /etc/X11 using: cd /etc/X11 && tar cvf ~root/X11backup.tar .
  • Follow the installation instructions for the OLED screen at: Set Up on Raspberry Pi/Ubuntu/Kali/Homebridge OS — SunFounder Pironman 5 documentation
  • Do not reboot when prompted after install
  • Update the system again with apt upgrade
  • Restore backup of /etc/X11 directory
  • Reboot
7

Glad that you have solved the problem.
We will follow the steps you provided to reproduce the issue and test it ourselves.