FrameOSFramebuffer & HDMI
Drive any HDMI screen, TV or LCD panel straight from the Raspberry Pi's video output.
Illustration
Generic HDMI / Framebuffer
- Vendor
- Generic
- Model
- HDMI / Framebuffer
- Technology
- HDMI
- Colors
- Full RGB
- Resolution
- Any / configurable
- Size
- -
- Interface
- HDMI / composite
- Platforms
- Raspberry Pi
- Status
- 🟢 Confirmed working
- FrameOS driver
framebuffer
Part of the FrameOS device database. Spotted an error, or tested this panel? Edit this page on GitHub - it's a markdown file.
The HDMI / Framebuffer driver renders straight to the Raspberry Pi's video output. Anything you can plug into the HDMI port works: TVs, computer monitors, small HDMI LCD panels, projectors.
This is also the fast path: on a Raspberry Pi 5, FrameOS can push 60 frames per second to an HDMI display, while the same scene system also runs e-ink panels at one frame per minute.
Setup
- Connect the display to the Pi's HDMI port.
- Select the HDMI / Framebuffer driver when adding the frame.
- Deploy. The width and height are autodetected from the display's mode - FrameOS writes them into the frame's config and the backend picks them up, so only fill them in if you want to force a different size.
On a Pi 5 with a Buildroot SD image, /dev/fb0 may exist before the display has a mode set
(or while nothing is plugged in). The driver treats that as "not ready yet" and re-probes on its
own - every 2 seconds, backing off to a minute - instead of waiting for the next scheduled
render, so plugging a screen in brings the picture up within seconds even on an hourly frame.
Power control
You can turn the display output on and off from the command line - handy in schedules:
vcgencmd display_power 0 # off
vcgencmd display_power 1 # on