Smart 6065/6075 mirrored display distorted scrambled image

[mr_anthony]

Good afternoon/evening/morning everybody (depending on your locale), looking for some ideas and/or advice here.

 

What would cause a scrambled and/or discolored mirrored picture on a Smart 6075 smartboards?

 

Recently my school districts bought and had installed three Smart 6075 smartboards, they are huge things with great potential, they went into classrooms replacing various older projectors like Sanyo and Smart. So Friday I went into these classrooms and connected the computer to these smartboards using a VGA-HDMI converter box and proceeded to test out the mirrored image mode (when you mirror the desktop image to both it's monitor and the smartboard.) At first the picture came out all scrambled and upon advice from my boss I tried different resolutions trying to find the right one. Almost all of them from 800x600 to even the 1920x1080 came out scrambled and the last one didn't even show on the desktop PC monitor. The only one which I got a solid picture (some of the time) was 1280x720. When the picture does stabilize on the 1280x720, the left quarter of the screen is cut off and tiles to the right (as shown in pictures below.) I tried directly connecting the computer to the VGA-HDMI converter bypassing the vga splitter with the desktop monitor, swapping out the vga cables, as well as bypassing the HDMI wall box and plugging the HDMI cable into the smartboard itself, all to no avail.

 

School starts in less than a week (may be even sooner than I know) and I want to get these working so I can quickly move onto and resolve my next task, any ideas and/or tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

P.S. - don't know why the images are rotated 180 and can't figure out right now how to rotate them another 180 back to their original.

[snagrat]

Do your machines not have any other connection than VGA?

 

You could try adjusting the Refresh Rate on the machine.

[dapaulio]

The reason your image is upside down is because projectors have a setting which will project in different orientations.

We only use Epson so can't claim whether other manufacturers use the same.

On epson projectors if you look in extended and projection mode there are options to project front desk, front ceiling, rear facing desk, rear facing ceiling.

[dapaulio]

Looking at the detailed spec on the smart board it is compliant to hdmi 1.4 and recommends that the cable is no longer than 5m. Outside these parameters would cause symptoms you describe. Check your cables.

 

I would remove all hardware between the computer and panel for test purposes then add the splitter then the hdmi converter. As these two things can also be the cause

 

As a test I would grab a laptop with up to date drivers and connect a hdmi cable directly to the panel to see if you get similar symptoms

 

This may be of use

http://downloads.smarttech.com/media/sitecore/en/support/product/sbfpd/6000series/guides/spnl6000_adminguide_27jun16.pdf

Edited August 27, 2017 by dapaulio

[snagrat]

The reason your image is upside down is because projectors have a setting which will project in different orientations.

We only use Epson so can't claim whether other manufacturers use the same.

On epson projectors if you look in extended and projection mode there are options to project front desk, front ceiling, rear facing desk, rear facing ceiling.

 

The image on the machine isn't upside down, just the ones he has uploaded to Edugeek...

[dapaulio]

Lol so they are. With a job that under no circumstances do you ever overlook the obvious, I just did. Evidently need more coffee. Mind My solution is still accurate and I'm sure will help someone, it just not relevant to this post [emoji23] Edited August 27, 2017 by dapaulio

[sted]

my experience with tv style smartboards is they are really funny about cable length both hdmi and usb. depending on the output source as well some pcs/laptops have a stronger output as well. id try straight hdmi to the board from a laptop with the shortest cable you have

[dapaulio]

I agree with sted. It is with all smart boards that are not connected via the supplied USB. We have earlier versions of the smart board connected by USB and some that are not connected by the supplied USB (but noted still within guidelines outlined in the detailed spec) have intermittent drop outs where we have to disconnect and reconnect the USB. They are very sensitive to imperfections (assuming) in the manufacturing of the USB cable. Example we have two identical smartboard supplied with two identical length USB cables supplied at the same time same place and connected to an identical model machines.

One smartboard drops out all the time where the other doesn't. After several permutations of problem solving. We came to the conclusion it was the USB

[mr_anthony]

Thank you for your comment snagrat, I'll double check with my manager but I believe all our PCs only use built in VGA.

[mr_anthony]

I agree with sted. It is with all smart boards that are not connected via the supplied USB. We have earlier versions of the smart board connected by USB and some that are not connected by the supplied USB (but noted still within guidelines outlined in the detailed spec) have intermittent drop outs where we have to disconnect and reconnect the USB. They are very sensitive to imperfections (assuming) in the manufacturing of the USB cable. Example we have two identical smartboard supplied with two identical length USB cables supplied at the same time same place and connected to an identical model machines.

One smartboard drops out all the time where the other doesn't. After several permutations of problem solving. We came to the conclusion it was the USB

Thank you for your ideas dapaulio, I'll see if I can run a USB cable straight from the board to the PC bypassing the wall mounted box.

[mr_anthony]

Looking at the detailed spec on the smart board it is compliant to hdmi 1.4 and recommends that the cable is no longer than 5m. Outside these parameters would cause symptoms you describe. Check your cables.

 

I would remove all hardware between the computer and panel for test purposes then add the splitter then the hdmi converter. As these two things can also be the cause

 

As a test I would grab a laptop with up to date drivers and connect a hdmi cable directly to the panel to see if you get similar symptoms

 

This may be of use

http://downloads.smarttech.com/media/sitecore/en/support/product/sbfpd/6000series/guides/spnl6000_adminguide_27jun16.pdf

 

Thank you dapaulio for the guide and suggestions. I'll check with my manager to see if we have any HDMI equipped computers or laptops as well as do another trouble shooting round starting with the most basic hardware.

[mr_anthony]

Good afternoon/evening/morning everybody (depending on your locale), looking for some ideas and/or advice here.

 

What would cause a scrambled and/or discolored mirrored picture on a Smart 6075 smartboards?

 

Recently my school districts bought and had installed three Smart 6075 smartboards, they are huge things with great potential, they went into classrooms replacing various older projectors like Sanyo and Smart. So Friday I went into these classrooms and connected the computer to these smartboards using a VGA-HDMI converter box and proceeded to test out the mirrored image mode (when you mirror the desktop image to both it's monitor and the smartboard.) At first the picture came out all scrambled and upon advice from my boss I tried different resolutions trying to find the right one. Almost all of them from 800x600 to even the 1920x1080 came out scrambled and the last one didn't even show on the desktop PC monitor. The only one which I got a solid picture (some of the time) was 1280x720. When the picture does stabilize on the 1280x720, the left quarter of the screen is cut off and tiles to the right (as shown in pictures below.) I tried directly connecting the computer to the VGA-HDMI converter bypassing the vga splitter with the desktop monitor, swapping out the vga cables, as well as bypassing the HDMI wall box and plugging the HDMI cable into the smartboard itself, all to no avail.

 

School starts in less than a week (may be even sooner than I know) and I want to get these working so I can quickly move onto and resolve my next task, any ideas and/or tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

P.S. - don't know why the images are rotated 180 and can't figure out right now how to rotate them another 180 back to their original.

 

 

Monday evening update:

Thank you for all the advice everybody.

(Short story)

I got it to work both with a mini-HDMI enabled laptop and directly connected to the VGA desktop with and without the VGA splitter box, after performing an auto-update via the smartboad's onscreen settings. It appears to me that the desktop itself would automatically scale to 1920x1080 with only the smartboard attached but if I attach the desktop monitor the computer would downscale to either 1280x720 or 1366x768 for the desktop monitor which would then screw things up because we are duplicated the screens. I could get the smart board to work on a VGA splitter but the resolution is out of range for the desktop monitor. If I downscale to a resolution within range of the monitor, then the SB picture would jump off.

Anyways that’s the short story, I will present my findings to my boss and see how it goes. Thank you everybody again for your help!