Inky frame 7.3" - Update problem: nothing happens

Support
1

Hi all,

My inky frame has been sitting and doing its job for a over 1.5 years now: every few hours pick a random image + weather info + date and display it.

Today I noticed the date was incorrect. This happens sometimes, usually a reset / power cycle gets things going again.

Today that did not work.

The pico seems fine. I can connect per USB and my scripts prints will work as expected.

When it comes to calling the graphics.update function, it returns near instant. The screen is not updated.

I don’t really know how to debug this.

For far I’ve tried updating to the latest version, so its now running pico_w_inky-v1.26.1.

The update did not help, I did add a set_blocking(True), since it seems non-blocking by default now.

How to proceed debugging what is wrong with the screen? I am suspecting something is just broken, there is however no visual damage.

2

Since the Pico is fine and everything was running ok for more than a year, I would guess that the “display” is broken. You could check the display connector on the back, but there is no good reason why the FPC-cable from the display isn’t seated anymore.

A “broken display” can be anything: the driver chip or some support electronics. Carefully inspecting the back side may give a hint, but I don’t think there is anything you can do even if you find something.

3

Thanks for your reply.

That is what I was thinking. Visually I see no damage but it could be microscopic.

If someone has ideas for debugging the connection to the display I’m all ears.

4

You could try to trace the signals on the Pico side. But all you would know is that the Pico is sending the correct data across the SPI-bus. Which is probably the case.

On the Inky-Frame side, the support electronics for the display is more or less power-related. You could measure the power-levels directly on the FPC connector, but you really need a small probe for that. And you would have to know which power levels are correct.

1 Like
5

An update. The display is not broken!

I re-seated the connector; which visually looked like it would sit perfectly. I was under the impression that it has been sitting still for months, so I really did not expect this to help.

Since the next step would indeed be probing these tiny traces, which is not something I can with the gear I have, I went ahead to just try whatever I could: different power supply, different cable, re-seating the connector.

The connector sits pretty good, so I’m quite surprised this helped…

Thanks for thinking along.

1 Like
6

This sounds like the same issue I had, where a reseat of the connector resolved it. Maybe this should be added to the FAQs and/or the troubleshooting pages?

I’m not sure there is any way for the inky to detect that the screen is not connected correctly, I don’t think the screen feeds back anything that can be checked.

7

I’m not sure there is any way for the inky to detect that the screen is not connected correctly, I don’t think the screen feeds back anything that can be checked.

Yeah, if that’s possible I’d like to hear it. I’m not familiar with the lower level workings. I was expecting some sort of error but instead it just returns quickly. Maybe thats enough? Start and read a timer and if its <1 second its a red flag.

8

If it is not connected properly, how could it ever report something back?!