First picture you posted is definately wrong as even the instructions mention that you need a connector that raises the board over the usb ports.
Hope you did not power it up like that as you could easily bridge 5V to a gpio or serial data lines what could lead to permanent damage of the gpio pins.
Please try to align the cable correctly, so that the red marked cable is pin one of the pi and ends in the connector on the according pin (might be upside down on the lcd board if you connect from the top!).
Better way is to use separate bridges (female/female breadboard cables) to connect only to the pins that are necessary.
The datasheet states that the connector routes only to the additional gpio pins of a b+ pi. Those are not the pins that the so file is configured to work with.
Connect the lcd pins directly to the gpios specified in the tutorial!
If nothing works, buy another display without a board and wire it manually so you have control over what you are doing.
They are about $5 from china.
Edit: page 2 of the datasheets shows where on the pinheader the pins of the lcd are connected to the pins on the pi.
Take male/female jumper wires and connect them to the pins specified in the lcd configuration file in the tutorial and it will work.
Hi Thanks for your reply, I just bought some jumper wires on Amazon and they will arrive tomorrow. Just wondering should i connect the lcd directly to the pi or should I connect it through the lcd board gpio pin? The red one or the yellow one? Thanks for your help!
Use the red one but look at the datasheed what pins go where!
Go from the original positions on the lcd board to the positions specified in the LCDd cobfig in the tutorial.
Edit: you can use the yellow marked pins, too of course, but I think you would have to solder to them.
It worked! Thanks so much for your help!
You’re really lucky you didn’t fry something hooking it up backwards. Maybe you should buy a lottery ticket 
Hi Guys,
Before the Osmc update from 05 june 2017 my lcd screen (HD44780 compatible) worked fine with lcdproc package and “XBMC LCDproc” addon from Kodi… Since I get a “Failed to connect to LCDProc” from the addon. At the same time I had to recompile WiringPi to get other stuff to work. I have reinstall ldcproc package with:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall lcdproc
but nothing happend magic.
The lib /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lcdproc/hd44780.so is still at the same place, the pin map is unchanged and I updated the /etc/LCDd.conf after reinstall.
Now I don’t know what to do…
Thank you
Actually, this happened to me, too.
Thought it was a hardware problem and I didn’t have time to investigate further.
Will do so next week.
Until then, you could post some debug logs demonstrating the problem.
Cool, I am not alone…
My kodi log (~/.kodi/temp/kodi.log) at startup give me:
osmc@RaspDac:~$ cat .kodi/temp/kodi.log | grep "XBMC LCDproc"
23:44:00.901 T:1705284592 ERROR: ### [XBMC LCDproc] - Connect: Caught exception, aborting.
It seems the client cannot connect to the LCDd server, isn’t it?
Then I checked the LCDd service:
osmc@RaspDac:~$ systemctl status LCDd
* LCDd.service - LSB: LCD daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/LCDd)
Active: active (exited) since Wed 2017-06-28 23:43:07 CEST; 11min ago
Process: 446 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/LCDd start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
and it is running. And the test with the “curses” driver:
osmc@RaspDac:~$ LCDd -d curses
succeed:
lqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqk
x RASPDAC x
x 3018 MB Libres x
x x
x x
lqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqk
Then after restarting the LCDd service I tried to use the hd44780 driver instead and then I got the following error:
osmc@RaspDac:~$ sudo LCDd -d hd44780
check_board_rev: This board is not recognized as a Raspberry Pi! Found:BCM2835
Driver [hd44780] init failed, return code -1
Could not load driver hd44780
There is no output driver
Critical error while initializing, abort.
So it might be the hd44780 driver fault… I remember having downloaded the “patch hd47780.so” as recomended in the post at [Howto] LCD HD44780 on Raspberry Pi 2. I did not build it myself. Then we had perhaps to build this lib… What do you think?
Perhaps it was overwritten with an update. Try to redownload and replace.
Or see if the configfile was replaced that points to the file.
Edit: Or something changed in the image so that the internal check of the driver isn’t satisfied. You could have a look at the driver source to see how they do the check for a raspberry board and patch it out for testing.
Hi there,
Same problem here, RPi3. Everything worked fine until the latest update… LCD stays dark…
Any solution for this problem yet?
Thnx in advance.
Try to redownload the driver file and replace the one in the drivers folder with it.
Report here if it worked.
hi,
nope, still doesnt work. same error as posted, init failed.
Hi,
You may try to build the latest version from the github repo. See the instructions here.
Remove installed LCDProc first.
Hi Fengalin,
Thank you for tour reply and all of your contributions. It seems we are working on a similar project. I have done all thé steps you mentioned in your tuto, and it worked perfectly until the last osmc update… After, a card incompatibility occured after LCDProc launching. I corrected thé LCDProc sources, re-built them but nothing happens… I am still blocked at this step!
Hi agintz,
Just to be sure:
- did you remove any previously installed LCDProc version?
- did you build from github latest version?
I had the same problem as the one you describe and I fixed it without patching any .so file. The only difference is I use a RPi 3. The commits I think fixed it are this one and this one in your case. The second one addresses the detection issue you mentioned and which causes the following message:
check_board_rev: This board is not recognized as a Raspberry Pi! Found:BCM2835
Edit: added reference to second commit.
