Skywriter + Pi3

I bought two hats and have the same result. if I touch top of the board directly I get x, y , z. I am hoping that there is patch or and update to fix it. If firmware update would fix it would be much appreciated.

It’s extremely unlikely this is a firmware issue. It could be that both boards came from a batch that somehow got through QC undetected.

I would contact support@pimoroni.com and ask for a RMA.

I’m the friend that Enkerli is referring too. My first Skywriter was indeed DOA but I was over the 30 days to return it. So I got a second one, and wouldn’t you know it, it has the same issue!
Skywriters do not seem to like me much. I’m also running it on a Pi3 with a brand new Raspbian SD card.
CleoQc

I contacted support and received a replacement Hat – thank you I appreciate it! This new hat registered positions above the board, swipes, and wheels. It worked. I sent back the original. It was definitely broken when I received it.

I sent an email to support. We’ll see how it goes. The first one was bought in April and the second one didn’t come from Pimoroni, so I’ll see.

No answer, from support. Not even an acknowledgment :(

sorry for the delay… we’re in the process of assessing the various issues. I know the production guys are busy with Skywriter at this very moment, testing the profiling and all the units in the warehouse going through a new round of QA.

still, I’ll liaise with support to make sure they keep all those with non-working Skywriter what’s happening and what the next step is.

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Hopefully you got the reply to your support ticket yesterday?

Your replacement Skywriter should be on its way!

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I have two broken units, will they be fixed with firmware or I need to order new ones? Are you working to get it working on pi?

This came into my inbox. Sorry. I’ve also been investigating the Skywriter issues and I think we made some headway today and yesterday as @RogueM suggests.

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@open yes, it’s definitely possible that the new firmware could improve things for you, so it will be worth a try.

… that answer is valid for you, possibly other people who have posted herein, as long as the issue has to do with the Skywriter’s response. That won’t include everyone so anyone reading this and not having symptoms similar to the original poster, please refrain to post herein, create a new topic and we’ll take it from there!

My assumption is skywriter does not work with pi 3 or my units are broken.

I don’t think it’s an issue related to the Pi3 specifically, we don’t expect it to be a factor at least for this particular issue anyhow.

What is the issue then?

It could be any combination of factors related to production, near-field chips require profiling and the 2-year old firmware appears to be non-optimal at this stage - so we’re issuing an update.

@gadgetoid will post herein when it’s posting to github, with outline of the process.

Yes I got a reply, in fact more than one :)
The lines of communications are now open, unfortunately Canada Post is going on strike. So no Skywriter will reach me soon. Nothing to do with Pimoroni, obviously. Just my bad karma

I’ll be preparing and testing an in-the-field firmware update file today. We’re still unsure exactly what changed to necessitate a re-calibration of the Skywriter HAT. It may have been a hardware revision in the chip or some impossible to observe change to the geometry of the PCB. Unfortunately they still worked well enough to pass our testing process :(

With any luck, it should be possible to revive units in the field with this new firmware. Instructions will be posted here once I’ve done the necessary preparation and testing and sent to anyone who’s on our radar as having this particular fault.

We’ll be rolling out boards with the new calibration from now on, and revising our testing procedure to more thoroughly check the sensor response.

I’ve prepared a new firmware update. This is for Skywriter HAT Boards which are not responding to gestures/finger movement only. You can find it here: http://get.pimoroni.com/firmware-july-2016.tar.gz

  • Plug your Skywriter HAT onto your Pi
  • Copy this file onto your Pi
  • Extract with tar -xf firmware-july-2016.tar.gz
  • cd into the firmware-july-2016 directory
  • run ./update.py
  • The board should be updated, with no “FAILED” messages
  • Enjoy your, hopefully, revived Skywriter HAT
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Much improvement on my side! Thank you!

When trying to do the firmware update, all I get is:

Starting Loader update…
Loader update failed!
Retrying…