Slow display & key recognition

[Ruptor]

At first I thought it was a boot problem but now I believe it is the fact that the keyboard is not being read or not being acted upon quickly. I am using composite video so need to switch the display but the "3" key is not being seen or takes ages to do anything. The green light flashes so I am pretty sure the SD card is working. I have had the Noobs screen come up twice when the key press gets seen and I managed to even get on the Internet so most of the stuff seems to work. I can't install any OS because the free space is 0MB on a 2GB card. On my 32 GB card I have not been able to reach the point of getting the install screen up but if the install only needs 2.5MB why is it reading the 2 GB card as 0MB. This is all very strange so if anybody has any ideas or can point me to a post of a similar problem I would be grateful.

[FTrevorGowen]

At first I thought it was a boot problem but now I believe it is the fact that the keyboard is not being read or not being acted upon quickly. I am using composite video so need to switch the display but the "3" key is not being seen or takes ages to do anything. The green light flashes so I am pretty sure the SD card is working. I have had the Noobs screen come up twice when the key press gets seen and I managed to even get on the Internet so most of the stuff seems to work. I can't install any OS because the free space is 0MB on a 2GB card. On my 32 GB card I have not been able to reach the point of getting the install screen up but if the install only needs 2.5MB why is it reading the 2 GB card as 0MB. This is all very strange so if anybody has any ideas or can point me to a post of a similar problem I would be grateful.

Are you using a wireless keyboard - NOOBS can sometimes be "too slow" to detect those before (on first boot) performing some SDHC card "partition housekeeping" (you get a "second chance" several minutes later, see my notes & comments w.r.t. NOOBS & composite video here:
http://www.cpmspectrepi.webspace.virgin ... ellow.html )
W.r.t. "0MB free space" - this may be the same issue as reported last week or thereabouts, IIRC - one suggested "workaround" seems to be to ensure that, when you initially format the SDHC card for NOOBS etc., you make sure you give the FAT32/vfat partition (for the whole card) a label eg. "4NOOBS134" or "RECOVERY".
Trev.

[Ruptor]

Hi Trev
I am not using a wireless keyboard but it does have an integral mouse. It sounds like composite video is not so hot but I don't have HDMI capability yet. The missing of the keyboard might explain why it was a while before the board actually did something with the key press when I managed to get the install screen with 0MB available. I have given the card a name now so should avoid that problem unfortunately I don't have another USB keyboard to test if the keyboard is being missed. The slow key detection sort of looks like some thing is tying up the cpu and stopping it from displaying the characters so they stay in the buffer and suddenly appear all at once and that means the keyboard works at some point. Not a good starting experience for the Raspberry Pi and I.

[Ruptor]

Still have the problems and 0MB stops me from installing OS. I have typed this from internet help on Noobs menu but keyboard delay is getting worse as I type. Seems some RPis are worse than others with this design flaw. My old Tangerine homemade single board computer was more reliable.

[Ruptor]

These SD cards are a mine field. I thought I gave it a volume name but on another computer it was blank so I reformatted it with a name and put NOOBS on it again. Now it gives a size of 502 MB but requires 2512 MB so my 2GB is no good. Strang but keyboard started working without delay but now it has delay again. It definitely seems like it gets worse the longer it is switched on so I tried earthing the RPI in case it was some kind of charge build up problem nut no effect. The increasing delay must be due to some software buffer filling up causing maximum delay once buffer is full .

[FTrevorGowen]

Still have the problems and 0MB stops me from installing OS. I have typed this from internet help on Noobs menu but keyboard delay is getting worse as I type. Seems some RPis are worse than others with this design flaw. My old Tangerine homemade single board computer was more reliable.

The "0Mb" problem is a recent "NOOBS issue" - the exact cause(s) of which is/are still being investigated. Forum member @redhawk discovered the "ensure the initial FAT32/vfat partition has a label workaround" but that may only work if the label is assigned when the SDHC card is cleanly (re-)formatted and labelled with, say, the SDA's formatting tool. (ie. Window's own labelling mechanism may not be thorough enough). Have you checked http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals to see if your keyboard is there (as either a good or bad device). What version of NOOBS are you using, and is it NOOBS full or NOOBS lite? Keyboard issues can also be power related (eg. the wireless dongles of some wireless keyboards require more power than a basic, "cheap & cheerful" wired one - IIRC your's includes a mouse, is that wireless?) so, what's the spec. of your PSU and, if you can do so, measure the voltage between test points TP1 & TP2 (as marked on the pcb) - it should be at least 4.75V.
Trev.
PS. Just seen your newer post. As stated on the downloads page, NOOBS needs an SDHC card of at least 4Gb (since Raspbian grew), 8Gb is better. (For reference I've used these cards: http://www.cpmspectrepi.webspace.virgin ... cards.html)

[Ruptor]

Hi Trev
My keyboard is a cheap Chinese one with integral mouse pad that is not listed however it only takes a small current of <50 mA and no wireless is involved. I checked all the on board voltages of 1.8V 2.5V & 3.3V that were within 200mV and the input is 5.1V. I am using a PC power supply but when I looked at the rails of the internal voltages on the RPi they looked a bit noisy for my liking so tonight I shall try a good 5V linear power supply to see if affects the delay build up problem. It is strange that the 2 GB card seems to work but the 32GB card doesn't. I am using the NOOBS from this site. Is there any documentation of the ACT led flash decoding. The 32 GB card flashes 3 times in a loop dot dot dot what ever that means. It must be running something to get that far now that I have formatted the cards with a volume name.

[FTrevorGowen]

Hi Trev
My keyboard is a cheap Chinese one with integral mouse pad that is not listed however it only takes a small current of <50 mA and no wireless is involved. I checked all the on board voltages of 1.8V 2.5V & 3.3V that were within 200mV and the input is 5.1V. I am using a PC power supply but when I looked at the rails of the internal voltages on the RPi they looked a bit noisy for my liking so tonight I shall try a good 5V linear power supply to see if affects the delay build up problem. It is strange that the 2 GB card seems to work but the 32GB card doesn't. I am using the NOOBS from this site. Is there any documentation of the ACT led flash decoding. The 32 GB card flashes 3 times in a loop dot dot dot what ever that means. It must be running something to get that far now that I have formatted the cards with a volume name.

AFAIK, most people seem to use 16Gb cards, or less, and there maybe issues with some 32Gb cards (but I haven't checked http://elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards for some time). I've not confirmed this is card size dependent, but on first-boot, after the initial check for a "video mode keypress" NOOBS performs some SDHC card "parttion housekeeping", which certainly takes ~10 minutes for a 4 or 8Gb card, during which there is intermittent green led ACTivity. W.r.t. general led "patterns" those relating to O.S. (rather than the NOOBS installer) boot-up are documented at: http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting and also within the "Not booting...." sticky thread: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/posti ... postingbox
Trev.

[Ruptor]

Hi Trev
I checked the card lists and people have used 32 GB from Adata without problems. Perhaps mine is one of those counterfeit cards that we hear about. I have bought one of the RPi site 8 GB cards with NOOBS on it for dummies like me so that should remove one variable from the equation. I also checked the list of act led flashes and the two states I have seen with the 32 GB card only are
3 flashes: loader.bin not found
4 flashes: loader.bin not launched
The 4 flash state I have only seen once. What the 3 flashes seem to say is it sees the card but can't read from it pointing to a crap card again. Just assembling a linear 5V supply to see if things improve or not and willl post results later. Thanks for the pointers to the data it makes things much easier and quicker than Googling.

[Ruptor]

Now we are getting somewhere. Using a linear power supply instead of a PC computer power supply the RPi powers up every time and pressing "3" to get composite video always works. Clearly the RPi is not tolerant of noise on the supply rails so most of them might work but from what I have read on the forum there are a lot that don't. Therefore there is not enough filtering of the supply rails on the RPi. If you look at any computer board you will see lots of large capacitors because high frequency low voltage CPUs and other chips are very susceptible to voltage rail noise and the capacitors or other filtering are lacking on the RPi.
I think the noise is causing false interrupts that the cpu responds to and that is why things slow down.
I still get the character and mouse delay when on the internet under NOOBS but moving around within NOOBS the mouse and keys don't exhibit a delay. This maybe because running the browser under NOOBS is over loading the system but I guess people mainly load an OS and don't use NOOBS to surf.
It seems to me it would be relatively easy to make the RPi more immune to power supply noise perhaps just by the addition of one cheap component.

[FTrevorGowen]

Now we are getting somewhere. Using a linear power supply instead of a PC computer power supply the RPi powers up every time and pressing "3" to get composite video always works. Clearly the RPi is not tolerant of noise on the supply rails so most of them might work but from what I have read on the forum there are a lot that don't. Therefore there is not enough filtering of the supply rails on the RPi. If you look at any computer board you will see lots of large capacitors because high frequency low voltage CPUs and other chips are very susceptible to voltage rail noise and the capacitors or other filtering are lacking on the RPi.
I think the noise is causing false interrupts that the cpu responds to and that is why things slow down.
I still get the character and mouse delay when on the internet under NOOBS but moving around within NOOBS the mouse and keys don't exhibit a delay. This maybe because running the browser under NOOBS is over loading the system but I guess people mainly load an OS and don't use NOOBS to surf.
It seems to me it would be relatively easy to make the RPi more immune to power supply noise perhaps just by the addition of one cheap component.

Most of us use "'phone charger type" PSU's (hence the micro-usb connector). IIRC one of the problems with PC PSU's is that they require a minimum current to be drawn before they deliver a stable 5V (or something like that - the issue was discussed in another thread some time last year). Some 'phone charger PSU's (since they're also "switched mode") appear to have a similar issue eg.:
http://www.cpmspectrepi.webspace.virgin ... .29_268971
(I do have a better example, but it's not been posted to my external webpages yet)
The Pi has onboard regulator's for it's own I.C.'s etc. - it's (external) USB devices that may need a "stable" 4.75 to 5.25 V (at the current they and the Pi requires)
Trev.

[Ruptor]

The RPi doesn't power up correctly with or without the usb keyboard when using a PC supply and the usb keyboard works fine on any other computer so in my book that makes the RPi the problem. The regulator circuits on the RPi don't eliminate noise so the USB reference has the rail noise and might be the cause of keyboard problems. Anyway that problem aside I put the raw image of Wheezy on my 32 GB card but there seems to be a step missing in the explanations about setups. There is no mention of how to get the RPi to power up with the PAL composite. It seems it assumes NTSC because the composite screen comes up narrow and flickery due to wrong syncs. How do I get it to display PAL? I can't find anything about it on elinux site.

[Ruptor]

Its ok I found it here
http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt

[Ruptor]

All the problems have gone away with the linear smooth power supply even the 32 GB card works correctly now but the features remain. To recap the increasing delay of the keys still exists when using the internet under NOOBS but not when using an installed OS like Raspbian. A new feature has come to light when I tried to put a couple of files on the Raspbian SD card it screwed it up making lots of things fail during booting and causing an error that said files were locked. I thought I was being smart by putting the files on the SD card so I could access them after booting but clearly you can't put anything on the card using windows. I removed them and the SD card worked again so I guess I will have to figure out how to get files in to the RPi file system probably using a USB stick I think.

[Ruptor]

Not quite right it seems the 32 GB card is still unreliable but the 8 GB card from the Pi store does work reliably. Now I have a stable system I am going off to learn how to work it.