Streaky inkyphat

I’ve liked to have one ordered during your 5 year 20% off sale, but saw that the InkyPHAT was not available. I hope you can sort things out, that’s surely a nightmare to have a product going astray after all the tests before it went to market. Best wishes, want to get my hands on one once the issues are sorted out.

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I have mine unused just to prevent a disaster. I hope a fix will be found sooner than later.

I have the same problem. After two days of running thermometer:

I have the same problem. After two days of running thermometer with the new library.

solutions? alternatives? The standar lcd have 128x32 or 128x64. Very poor! The TFT’s are very large for zero.

I’ve seen 3rd party e-ink displays with the same size and resolution (both 2 colour and 3 colour) which connect via SPI (?) - but I don’t know if they’re prone to this same issue, and I don’t know if they’d work with the Inky Phat library or have a library of their own.

Maybe I can give some additional information.

Last month I received my inkyPhat that also showed a “blank” line when using red background after a few days of using it. Since then (to not be frustrated), I never plugged it back on a raspberry and let it sit like that for one month…the missing line is still there, but the inkyPhat is not getting worse…so gravity, my speakers close by and mobile phone are not to blame.

I know it’s not the most positive or useful of updates, but I just want to let you all know we’re still churning away on this.

Despite the circumstances, this thread has been nothing but calm, rational patience and useful feedback. Thank you for that!

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I’m wondering, is this a problem all Inkyphats might eventually have? (No worries if you don’t know yet.)

My inky’s working just fine right now in the planning/building phase of my project. It’s almost finished now (live weather station, combined with an Envirophat and other external sensors) but I’m reluctant to put the Pi on a wall and have the display refresh itself over and over again – fearing it might fail.

If I were you, I would refrain from using the inkyphat more than necessary until we get more news from pimoroni.

I’m not trying to contradict you, so my apologies if I sound like I am. I often go over these responses in my head and find them less than satisfactory! :D

Actually, if Pimoroni finds that all of the Inkyphat displays are at fault, you’re going to need a replacement anyway, and until that happens, it may be prudent to use your display as much as possible to provide the diagnosis team at Pimoroni with as much information as you can. If it eventually does go wrong, you can always get a replacement when the display is finally fixed. :)

Well, it’s a valid different point of view :)
From my perspective I believe I cannot provide very good feedback to Pimoroni staff as I just launch updates to the display and that’s it. The script I use is not even updating the screen everytime it gets executed, it does only when new info is available, so it can take a lot of time to break it.

I’m not in the UK and my display was not purchased directly from pimoroni so my vendor should first get new units and then I would need to ask them for the replacement and wait for it to arrive, likely 1 or 2 weeks after I send my faulty unit. In the worse case in which it is a hardware issue I will have to wait that time. If it is just software related, I won’t.

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Ah, yes, I forgot completely about software related issues! Great for an aspiring software developer. :D

Yeah, with those wait times, you’re probably correct with waiting!

Are there any new updates about the Inky pHat testing?

Testing is still ongoing. I wish I had some more positive news, but every tweak and hypothesis takes multiple days of solid refreshing to verify if it’s had any effect. Presently we’re experimenting with some hardware tweaks

I’m keenly aware that it’s now more than 2 months after original reports of problems, but we’re not beat yet.

I am also sorry we don’t have better news. This is, most assuredly, not fun!

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I see that I’ve just been issued a refund on my Inky pHAT and that the replacement order has been canceled. Does that mean what I fear it does? :-(

Any news on progress? :(

I’m currently writing software so that we can test a revised version. Fingers crossed.

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Any news on progress? (Bump)

Mine also failed after running my inky-cryptochart with refresh every 15 minutes. Do you send replacement units or do we have to wait?

(Bump)

[cricket] ** tumbleweed ** [sound of wind blowing through derelict fence]

Since discovering a fault with the original displays, we’ve been extensively testing solutions, the result of which has been switching to a new display, a tweak of components, and completely redesigned software (the protocol for the new display is quite different). New PCBs are en route, and we hope to have units back on sale in the next few weeks.

As we’ve mentioned above, testing takes a looooooooong time, unfortunately. This is part of the reason that we failed to spot the problem initially, because it only manifested after the units had been running continuously for several days.

We’re fairly happy now though that the solution we have is a robust one. The plan is to release a small number of the new units initially to get feedback on them, then push out the remainder of the new batch after that.

Apologies again for the time that this has taken. We really love Inky pHAT and were delighted with the response when we released it, so you can imagine how disappointed we were when we had to take it off sale.

We’ll endeavour to keep this thread updated with information as and when we have it. :-)

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