Smart E70 Interactive Touchscreen's and random VGA issues

[Zourous]

Has anyone experienced any random VGA issues on Smart E70 interactive touchscreens. Issues include wrong resolutions detected and no picture or distorted flickering image that don't settle. We have 6 in one particular building and all of them have experienced problems at some stage. 2 with fixed Imac's are better but not perfect. I've tried the usual VGA cable swap outs and different laptops to try and isolate the issue but the only common factor is the E70??. HDMI does work but that wouldn't be the best solution for us.

[Zourous]

Anyone?

[Rob_D]

I'd recommend looking at the cable length in the walls. In my experience the E70s are very twitchy about cable length.

We use HDMI on ours, and it's fine as long as the cable runs are kept short. What's your reason for not using HDMI?

Based on what you've tried I'd get back to your supplier for support.

[Zourous]

VGA is just our standard used connection throughout the school so just simpler for the users to understand. I even get the issue on a directly connected loose VGA cable sometimes, but it's all too random to put my finger on it. I may well contact support soon, but unless there is some firmware fix I don't think it's going to help a great deal.

[GuyJD]

I've noticed that with my E70s they are very susceptible to dirty power, we've got building that the heating system seems to cause havoc with the power to computers and screen, the image will either freeze, display vertical lines or loose the signal all together. I've put one on to a surge protected extension lead along with the connected pc and so far that one has been fine.

 

I notice you said the ones you are having problems with are all in one building so it could be the same problem as I've found here.

[TechMonkey]

I'd recommend looking at the cable length in the walls. In my experience the E70s are very twitchy about cable length.

We use HDMI on ours, and it's fine as long as the cable runs are kept short. What's your reason for not using HDMI?

Based on what you've tried I'd get back to your supplier for support.

 

DING DING DING

 

We had exactly this issue after the summer, upgrading to new machines. Oddly enough we hadn't had any issues with the previous PCs on VGA or the same cables. Once the new PCs went in we had flickering issues. Swapped to HDMI and they lessened but still were there. Finally I swapped the HDMI cables for < 5m, higher quality ones and that worked. This was after having spoken to someone who had said they had many issues with cables over 5m and would never recommend them.

 

The randomness was something that annoyed me, I very rarely saw it flickering and users reported issues ranging from videos not appearing at all to flickering to the image not appearing at all. Now some of that could just be users lumping various issues all in to one problem but it was a massive issue and replacing the cable was the last resort before pulling the board down and sending it back under warranty. Didn't happen on any of our projectors.

[TommyCooper]

I agree on the cabling being the likely issue here. If you're using VGA cables make sure they're fully populated and properly shielded too.

[Zourous]

Just a note for the record, just found in the E70 manual that HDMI is only supported up to 3 metres!! I've now purchased some repeaters and so far so good.