I put my monitors in faraday cages. can't really see them but I'm sure they are well protected.

LATEST UPDATE: Using a display port cable instead of HDMI fixed the problem. Most likely theory at this point is the HDMI cable in some way. Either not enough shielding, and/or incorrectly terminated shielding. Causing either HDMI data corruption which takes time to recover from, or some form of latchup or other influence. Not confirmed yet

You should write BenQ and tell them how it's not compatible with your chair. I'd just like to see the return letter. This is a good illustration of how fickle electronics can be. The younger generation probably does not appreciate that they don't have to wear anti-ESD wristbands and just how truly sensitive electronics were. Losing a whole IC due to static was not uncommon if you weren't diligent about your Anti ESD proceedures.

Ground your chair. The (actually not so) static electricity is caused by the hydraulic piston used for adjusting the height. The hydraulic fluid has some compression and when you stand up, the release of that pressure is causing somewhat of a piezo-elecrtric effect, which can result in quite a strong RF pulse. That is causeing your monitor to glitch. (My old CRT monitor showed a spike in the picture.)

Someone with a universal remote is just laughing right now

I had exactly the same problem. The only solution was to use an anti-static wrist-strap on my man-parts. The biggest problem was finding one big enough. And if you believe that, I have this Bridge at the bottom of George St you may be interested in buying ;-)

Damn it....I would not stand for this Dave!

Superpowers. As we know there can be no other explanation! Maybe static... but Superpowers!

It's a ground routing problem in the device that is compromising LVDS signal integrity, creating dropouts when a ground loop is present. The HDMI inputs on Denon AV receivers from a few years ago were really notorious for this, for example, but it can also happen with USB, giving random disconnect/reconnect sounds. In pro audio, issues like this are referred to as a "Pin 1 Problem" and can be avoided by following AES48-2005 recommendations, which state that the XLR ground pin (pin 1) is to be connected straight to chassis ground which is going to star ground, rather than taking a detour over local circuit ground. Big difference in practical common-mode rejection. 4K over HDMI, especially 4K60, is placing high demands on signal integrity, so inadequate cabling should be ruled out first, of course. Prefer DisplayPort if possible.

You are standing up wrong..... Oh wait, it's not a apple screen.. Maby you'r pants are not compatable. Have you tryed to upgrade them or simply turning them off and on again?

I work with security for businesses a bit, and in one location's monitoring room the central screen turns off and back on when you key up a radio in the room. About 40-50% of the time. Could be a similar thing. Could also be the frequency itself of the impulse doing it, and not necessarily the presence of an impulse.

No more wearing 1970s Bellbottom polyester disco pants when using this monitor lol

Our whole office experiences this during the winter when the air is dry. All brands of monitors, via all kinds of digital interfaces.

Had the same thing with a Dell UP3214Q, touching the DP cable dropped the signal the same as this (but the monitor had to be rebooted to get the picture back). Thought it was a loose connector at first but no amount of wiggling the connector induced it, only touching the cable halfway along. Best of all, you could trigger it with the tiny arc when plugging in other entirely unrelated equipment (e.g. monitors connected to different PCs) on the other side of the office. Have had all sorts of bizarre problems with DP, this is one of many. Odd to see it with HDMI which I've found more resilient. Presumably anything with the bandwidth to support 4K@60Hz is susceptible.

Give yourself another 10 years Dave, at that age you won't be able to jump up from a chair like that and the problem will bel solved :)

If you haven't figured out the problem yet, I suggest the monitor may have broken solder joints that may be getting jostled from the piston in your chair vibrating the floor and the table and monitor are on. The piston jumps and vibrates when you stand up, right? I had something similar happen with a shortwave radio where the DC jack PCB terminals broke inside the solder pool causing a small gap around the terminals and hole in the solder pad around the terminals. Refluxing and new solder fixed it like it was supposed to be. It was the darndest things that could make it go off, or come back on. I hope this helps, look for wiggly or broken solder joints, or loose socketed or crimped connection. 73's

A tip from manufacturers of office chairs: Mix fabric softener with water in a spray bottle and spray on seat and back cushion to reduce static electricity problems. There are also floor cleaners with antistatic properties. The alternative is to change to a special ESD chair, but they are quite expensive

Had the same problem with a display link cable and a Samsung monitor. Make sure the cable is okay and the connections are good and also have some separation between the video cable and power cables.

Could a cheap hdmi cable cause this with bad grounding etc?

The clicking in your headphones is likely the static electricity directly driving the headphones. I have the same issue with my headphones and in low light I can see the sparks from my clothing to the cables.

You could just not wear pants

I know it's a old video but I started to experience this just before Xmas. I got a new gaming chair, once I started using it every time I sat down my Acer Predator 27" 1440p monitor would black screen, like your Benq, tested 2 other monitors on my system (9900k/RTX 2080ti) they didn't exhibit the issue. Now my Predator is 2 1/2 years old, never had a single issue until the moment I got the chair, at first I thought the monitor was dying, but I was getting clicks in my Audioengine 5+ speakers, which lead me to thing it was my DAC, removed the DAC, still having the same issue. Isolated the monitor to another power circuit in the house, still the same. I posted on a few forums thinking it could have something to do with getting the new chair, was told "that's impossible", so I continued my search for answers. Tested the Predator on my sons 7700k machine, it never black screened. Here's the kicker, I ended up putting the kids car play mate under my chair, all symptoms stopped, no click in the speakers when I sit down, no black screen, nothing. The difference also is in my lounge room I have commercial grade linoleum flooring, my chair is a Anda AD4XL Dark Wizard ( Aluminium, PU Leather), but my sons computer is on tiles with a el cheap office works chair. I only found the video today, just after putting the mat under my chair. ESD man, what can I say that you haven't. Wow, just wow...lol

I remember this one. We can still see the subject of your original video in your channels profile picture and at the end of every video 🙂 (The yellow box for those reading along at home 😉)

For ESD testing this would be considered a pass, the device recovers which is good enough for consumer electronics. Can you do a near-field ESD discharge? Discharge the piezo element of a lighter on a piece of metal near the monitor and see if you can reproduce it.

Your case is interesting :) I had the same but it was because of a faulty cable which was reacting to even the most delicate physical touch. Weak electrical contact in the hdmi socket.

For static coupling possibility, the big antenna is the screen. Othervise the issue could be current through the unit, between two (or more) ports. In that respect, the power cord is one such port. But then the ferrite clamps come in different frequency characteristics. While the static discharges represent really high frequencies, my particular experiences have been that most clamps don’t even start to attenuate low frequencies below several megahertz like my problems turned out to be. Changing from 43 type to 31 type made all the difference for me. You might even need material type 77 - who knows?

I also have sensitivity problem with BENQ monitor. Every time our freezer turns ON/OFF, my monitor goes black for 2-3 seconds.

I've got a display port adapter into VGA cable that does this a lot. Do you think there's any good way to shield that junction?

I had a similar problem with my pc some years back. It would reset it itself at the wink of an eye.. Walking past it.. Reset. Opening/ closing the front door.. Reset. And of course, standing up in front of it like you're experiencing, Dave. It was obviously resetting, but where.. It was driving me insane. Turns out it was the reset button on the case short circuiting . Go figure.. Anyway, sometimes it is the simplest things that takes the longest time to fix because you overlook them.

So testing I'd do is disconnect the HDMI at the monitor end and see if it still does it. That'd tell you if its the monitor directly or being fed from you PC. You could also set a much lower resolution on the screen to see if its the frequencies its working at that its not liking.

I had a similar problem with a big plasma globe when put near my samsung monitor or conputer. I think the cheap thin HDMI cable was part of the issue and any EMI caused it to lose signal and reinitialize.

curious - did you use the hdmi cable that came with the unit? I have seen various types of hdmi and vga cables, some of which had ferrites built into both ends. Also assuming you have same star-grounding for your pc and monitors.

used to be a pc support guy. so I'd see stuff like this all the time. my best guess, especially with the audio noise as well, is that the video card driving that monitor is getting blasted. it's going out of spec and the monitor is resetting due to clock sync error. I didn't rewatch the video but I think I remember that each time it reset you touched the keyboard or got close enough that it could have passed the discharge to the pc.

Hi, we had this issue at my workplace and this video helped a lot. I managed to solve it by covering the material parts of the chair in a plastic bin/refuse bag. It works, but looks a bit odd though.

I’m had the same issue. My home office is in a carpeted spare bedroom with a protective plastic chair mat on the floor. At first I thought it was a loose connection but I eventually realized I was building a static charge as I rolled to & from the desk. Having worked in mil-spec electronics I purchased esd mats for all my computers & displays and grounded them. Sadly I destroyed an expensive thunderbolt 4 multi hub before I made the upgrade. Good quality esd mats are expensive but not as costly as frying a high end computer or monitor, it can & does happen.

We had this issue 2 years ago at a gaming expo. Our VR systems TV and the PS4 TV s were just like this blinking. On and off. It's your HDMI cable not having the ground on two terminals connected. Set your multimeter to resistance and connect your probes to each of the HDMI connector's outer metal to see if they are properly connected (resistance should register 0). Many HDMI cables don't have proper grounding making the signal vulnerable to tiny EMPs.

in a semi-related problem; when i connect my external 3.5" harddisks to my desktop my monitor blinks like that and - i guess - it triggers the polyfuse on the usb port and i have to power cycle my computer to get the usb port to work again. when i measure the ac voltage from the (unconnected) usb cable shield the my desktop case, it read 90-120 volts (out of 230v).. so i guess it has something to do with the class-Y capacitor on the power supply of the hard disk case or some phase shift due to capacitance mumbo-jumbo. what do you think?

Doing some arc welding in front of your electronic devices will see if they are susceptible to the sparking interference.

I have a similar issue with a 28 inch samsung 4k monitor using a display port cable. odd indeed. Have you disabled the audio adapters on the HDMI devices?

My Acer Predator 34" did it, but it was related to anything powering on or off in the house. Even the fridge clicking on caused it. I even seen it do it when I powered on a battery operated device! However when I bought a new PC the problem has not re-occurred. So it might not be the monitor, it could be the combination of monitor and graphics output on the PC.

change the hdmi & power leads over with the other screen and try to reproduce or is it when you get up vigorously perhaps that screen physically moves- maybe tap it or bump it for some kind of internal issue?

What is the humidity level in your lab ? It will be healthy at around 50 to 60% but I guess it is much lower than that likely thanks to the air conditioning unit that removes all the moisture.

I had the same problem at my bench. It started when I switched chairs. The new chair is like yours. It has a pneumatic cylinder that slides up and down when you sit or stand. It's the friction of the piston seal that generates the static. I would suspect that grounding the cylinder would alleviate the problem.

That could also be in compination with the floor. I got a wood floor where I work, never had the problem. But I was working in a lab with a stone marble floor and it did occur. I guess that is worth checking!

Daft question but could it be you bumping the desk a little as you get up? Lose connection inside the monitor perhaps?

A display that shuts down when you get up from the chair. That's a feature which sounds like useful.

DUDE this has been happening to my gaming pc for a year and im not just leaning about this!!! it also completely diables my gpu until i manually restart and enable it again! what can i do to resolve this?? i also read that gas lift office chairs are a main culprit

hmm, my monitor occasionally does that when I turn on or off my fluorescent closet light. I always thought I needed to get a power filter for my PC and monitors but now I wonder if it's an RF issue?

Back in 1993, in México, a company bought hundreds of Acer 486 desktops. They all had this static issue; they would lock or reset whenever you got up from your chair.

That it is interesting, thank you for sharing.

You've saved my monitor and my money mate thank you !

Spooky action at a distance.

Hi Dave Does this model have a mains lead with ground direct to the monitor or a power brick.

I have had the same problem with a LG monitor for about 3 years and took 2 years to figure it out. I had a DisplayPort cable and with the HDMI cable it would not do it. The problem seems to be the fact that the 4K monitors now use external power adaptors, so no grounding. I took one of the screws out, did a cable and put it in the ground of the wall and Bob's you uncle! Cool to watch this though!

My Dell S2716DG does the same thing! Also seems to have to do with my headphones/amp, using a ratty old unreliable 3.5mm to rca cable. Happens when I get up from my desk, I used to get shocks off my headphones with the monitor shutting off.

a simple try: you can interchange the hdmi cables between the 2 benq monitors, and see what happen. if you have the pc in the floor , also can affect in some way.

One minute you're working and the next one you're rubbing multimeters together and standing up and down 30 times from your seat. Will try it tomorrow at the office :D

I have a similar problem with my LG 4K 43UD79 but it gets flickering distortions on screen but only very rarely. Now I hope the fix with a ferrite core on the signal cable works! Fingers crossed ;)

*Weird coincidence.* I used to install ofice furniture for *EEV Technologies* in the UK (now E2V). We had to supplied Anti-static Certified office Chairs. The biggest eye-opener was we learned that the *Pneumatic Cylinders* under the chairs were the biggest culprit for generating Static Electricity. I think it is related to friction betyween the Poleythene seals and caps rubbing against the Chrome steel. Time for a Certified Anti-static chair..?

I've got a 4k Benq monitor that has an odd bug as well. The display is clearly split into two halves for decoding or final display because about once a day one half or the other will crash and lose a single frame, it sends garbled nonsense to the screen. It instantly recovers though so I just live with it but it's interesting to see how they put together large monitors. The circuitry to keep the two halves perfectly in sync must be interesting.

Need anti static spray for your chair. Our cleaner used to do a run around the office with a backpack sprayer, just to dose the carpet with anti static spray. At a different site, I managed to crash the security keypad, because when I touched it, I had a considerable static charge.

I would test using a better hdmi cable, one which says it supports 4k. Or use displayport if the monitor has such input. Other test would be to insert an hdmi switch between pc and monitor and check if it makes any difference. Also I would try other video card port. I had an issue with the displayport cable that came with my Dell monitor. Sometimes, rarely, after changing resolution it would show missing horizontal lines on what seemed to be a lower than required resolution. The fix was to select another input on the monitor menu (which was displayed correctly, no panel issues), then go back to pc input. That would reset the connection. This problem was listed on a few forums and it seems that Dell had a batch of bad cables and sometimes the display would not sync correctly. After buying a new DP cable the problem was completely gone.

I've had problems with monitors at work which are sited near two-way radio base stations (push-to-talk makes them go blank!), also have issues at home occasionally. Seems to be much more of a problem in QHD/4k monitors than 1080p, I'd guess the higher bitrate makes them more sensitive to disturbances.

Are the monitor and pc plugged into the same powerstrip? If not try that. Does the monitor have capacitive buttons?

This workout video is great. I can already feel my legs burning. That might just be the ferocious static though..

Great Scott this was helpful!

I have that same problem except its with my acer monitor and it happens if i touch any of the usb ports including on my keyboard and certain spots on my mouse and usb headset.

I've got one for you. We have electric Home Theater chairs that recline with the press of a button. They plug into the mains, but have a AC to DC converter to 24 volts. When a tesla ball (those novelty items sold at Spencer Gifts) is set within 4 feet of them, the chair kicks on and sporadically reclines and inclines.

I've got the same issue with Dell monitor. But I have iron-coated table surface. May be you have it as well? What kind of surface is on your table?

Compliance testing does check for ESD but it could be something as simple as a component was not installed or not correctly installed

If you're willing to take it apart you might scope a video signal to see if the monitor is rebooting or just going black because the signal is unreadable.

Whats the make and model of Dave wrist watch ? From Timex on buckle and shape it seems to be a Timex Expedition.

Hi Dave, Could it be something to do with the "Brightness Intelligence (B.I.)" or the "Smart Focus"? If they are disabled, I would be RMA'ing the monitor.

I've been having this problem for months and it never occurred to me until the last couple of days that it might be down to static. Only recently have I begun getting shocks when I touch my keyboard (it's has a metal frame) and each time I'd get a zap from it, it would momentarily turn it off and every time I stood up, the monitor would turn off. Time to get an anti-static mat I think.

Useful video

I have the same problem with my "old" BenQ (model 2222) monitor too! Took me some time to figure it out that only me standing up is the problem... The screen is on the wall mount, and is 90cm away from me, laptop is 60+cm sometimes. I have ESD matt on the table, but I doubt that is the problem... Also, it is sensitive to mains distortion, because flipping a switch on mains extender near it, or (un)plugging something will cause the same reset. Really weird, I hope you will do a followup :)

Hi Dave, have you had your gear appliance tested, in particular earth bonding? If not it might be time.... Put a conductive mat on the desk.

have you tried to replace the cable to a properly shielded one?

Please make a follow-up video when/if you figure out how to resolve it. I have a similar issue with a Logitech mechanical keyboard. Static discharge (of my chair, not on the keyboard) makes its backlight turn on , even when de pc is powered down. Really anoying....

We have this exact problem at work with several models of Benq touchscreen monitors And All our HP ellite touchscreen monitors ..all running at 1080p..we use them for production monitoring and operator action logging mostly driven by Raspberry Pi 2's as the machines run the screens will flash on and off .. I've had to move several screens away from the production lines to reduce this, but it's not practical to move all the monitors too far away so allot still flash on and off. We make plastic parts that generate loads of static, I've tried replacing the Hmdi leads and using shielded motor cable for the mains input cable .. hasn't helped so far ...maybe I'll have to strip the insulation on an HDMI cable and provide extra grounding to the shielding... If you find a 'fix' please share... thanks

...or how about separating it from the desk? Put the cable through the cable management slot in the stand (should have one, right?) so it doesn't get in contact with the desk... also on the PC side... would that work?

I wish you'd swapped out the HDMI cable. I've seen expensive robust-appearing cables cause problems. When I replaced them, the problems disappeared. If a new cable fixes it, it would be great to see measurements and then a teardown. Wish you'd put a ferrite clamp on the scope probe near the tip to see if the impulse is attenuated.

it is static or radio frequency interference. i had picked out of a garbage at local car wash a couple of hd lamps for car it was an inverter connected to a arc tube that connected into a car's headlight lens socket. if i lay the bulb on the usb cable for a hard drive and power on the lamp to test it the drive acted as if it was unplugged without first un mounting it. osx gave me the warning about improper disconnection of the drive. i even once got a kernel panic. and my emerson dtv display for my mac (it was $200 at walmart bought to replace a crt monitor that was not compatible with my mac) did the same thing if i let off a static charge or lit that hd lamp

Shouldn´t it have a shielding against static electrical charges?

Back in the day, our mainframe shop had an operator who wore silk stockings, and the static from them caused problems on an IBM 360/50 computer. Took a while for folks to figure it out.

I have the same issue with an Acer display. It happens with a USB-to-DisplayPort cable (being used with a Mac mini M1) as well as HDMI, but apparently not with DVI (which I have been using with a 2009 Mac mini). It started up this winter after years of giving me no trouble, but only got that new Mini in November. It's extra annoying because it sometimes causes my Thunderbird or other app windows to come up at the wrong size, as though the resolution was temporarily lower. I can trigger it, especially when sitting down, and my cats can even trigger it when walking under the desk.

Same thing happens at my work when someone touches a test jig.... another workers screen, 3 metres away, blanks for a second... No direct connection between the two devices, except the mains wiring...

We've had that same problem at work with a colleague's fullhd dell monitor. It even turned off when someone 7m across the room would get up from their chair. Now I'm sitting at that desk, with the same model lenovo notebook and the exact same cable attached to the monitor, and I don't have that problem. Only difference is my colleague was using a USB docking station while I'm using the lenovo docking station. So I'd consider that the receiver side might not be problem, but the sender side.

Is the humidity low in the room? You might need to raise it. Or ground the chair.

Had something similar with a work PC and my earbuds. Rolling across from the keyboard to soldering station would cause horrendously painful ESD strikes in my ears. Seemed like one strike for every few inches of travel. Had to switch to headphones.

My gut is the computer itself, or an issue with HDMI connectors (either side) are picking up the static and corrupting the HDMI signal. I can't tell from the video if the monitor is turning off or just going black. It appears that the image just goes black and the unit stays on??? If so, it may be possible that since HDMI uses encryption that any corruption in the data will typically result with a black screen on monitor. Also, with the inability to make the monitor fail when doing testing closer to it (from the back side) but away from the keyboard, mic, etc., could also support the idea of the issue being on the PC side.

What happens if you wear an anti static strap? Or how about that anti static spray on your chair? Make for an interesting follow up?

Yeah i was going to say it sounds like the HDMI i also had this problem with stereo and it turns out the ground to that outlet was faulty

I have the same issue with rather older HD Benq monitor on my worplace. Even switching on/off my soldering station causes that problem.

With the jumping up and down, this was probably the funniest video today :D

I had a similar problem with another BenQ monitor, type GL2450. However it happened, when my fridge started the compressor or i turned on the lights in my room. I've changed the short and expensive HDMI cable to a cheap and long one, and since then the problem is gone.

My secondary monitor (displayport not hdmi) turns off when I turn off a fan that's connected to the same power strip as the monitor. A lot of the time the screen just flashes (mostly in the top left) instead of turning off. Does this make less or more sense?

My 4k display has a similar problem where it can have half the screen go garbled for a moment before switching back. I think it has to do with how DisplayPort sends 4k@60 as two halves of the screen. Fun stuff.

Thanks for explaining this. I was thinking that I had a problem with my UPS or Graphics card.

Sounds it is more like the chair itself rather than the jeans, the telescopic cylinder sliding is probably creating a static charge.