No power to Picade screen - PLEASE HELP!

Picade
1

Hi all, this is my first thread on here since joining and I’m a bit of a noob to Pi and Picade!

I spent yesterday setting up my new Picade cabinet (thoroughly enjoyed it too!) however when it came to the good bit of switching it all on, I found out my 8" screen does not seem to receive any power at all.

I’ve triple checked my wiring and it’s all as per the instructions, but still nothing. I’ve been on this message board for the last day trying all of the suggestions (hdmi_force_hotplug=1 and the other command line to allow more amps to pass through USB to name a couple) and none of them have solved my problem.

I know people have reported blue/white screens but mine has not even switched on yet. Two main things I’ve noticed which seem different to the other posts on here:

  1. The button board that attaches to the screen never lights up. I know the little light at the bottom can light green or red, but I have neither upon power-up.
  2. The light on the Picade board only lights up when I’ve disconnected the screen from the Pi. As soon as the screen is reconnected in any way, the light on the Picade board goes straight back off again.

I’m using the recommended official Raspberry Pi power supply, and running everything on a Pi3 if that’s of any use.

Please, please help! I’m desperate to play the old Turtles arcade game!! :-)

2

It sounds like the screen isn’t recognizing the input from the Pi and is going to sleep. On my 8" Picade screen, I had to press one of the buttons (can’t remember which one) on the screen button board to get it to switch/recognize the input.

-Brent

3

Thanks for answering back.

I’ve had some contact back from Pimoroni who have suggested playing with the ribbon cable a bit, so I’ll try that as well as your suggestion too. Would that still work even though the power indicator light on the button board hasn’t been coming on?

Thanks again.

4

Is your volume cranked up to maximum?

My Picade has a Pi3 with the standard Pi power supply and 8 inch screen and if I turn the volume up past about 80% I lose the screen until the volume is turned back down again - then the screen leaps back to life.

You might also like to try a separate power supply direct to the screen - does the LED on the button board light up if you do that? If not, then I’m guessing you’ve unfortunately got a bad screen.

5

Sorry if this is obvious but you have the power plugged into the correct socket, right?

I think the video instructions were originally incorrect?

tmp_29750-picadescreen-561375710.jpg869×635 170 KB

6

Thanks for getting back to me.

Good suggestion on the correct power socket, but yeah I had noticed that whilst I was following the video tutorial so it was plugged into the correct socket.

In an update to the situation, Pimoroni got back to me via email and asked me to play around a bit with the ribbon cable. I did this and the screen is now getting power, but the picture is terrible - green where it should be blue, yellow patches, sub-standard resolution etc. I’ve tried a million different ways of putting the ribbon cable in and it’s still the same thing every time. The only thing that produces the correct image is to hold down the ribbon cable connection really hard - which isn’t exactly an ideal situation for playing games at the same time :-)

I’ve responded to Pimoroni mentioning this but I’m still waiting on them replying…

7

No, the power indicator light would be on if it was just asleep.

-Brent

8

Have you tried a separate power supply yet?

-Brent

9

It could be that brown film strip is not in far enough. Make sure you pull the black part down all the way and then slide in the ribbon all the way in and then close the black part.

10

Hi all,

Thanks for the responses to my question - after contacting Pimoroni, it turns out that the PCB for the monitor was faulty. They very helpfully replaced this for me and it’s now working perfectly.

Michael