Hi everyone, let’s see if you can help me solve this mystery. As I mention in the thread title, the combination of an Inky Impression 13.3" + Witty Pi 4 L3V7 + Raspberry Pi Zero W2 does not work. It doesn’t matter whether I run an example or my own code—the result is always the same: the screen doe…

I forgot an important test I did. I ran the same test with the Witty Pi 5, which in theory only uses the SPI, I2C, 5V, and ground GPIO pins, with the same results: it doesn’t work on the Raspberry Pi Zero 2, but it does work on the Raspberry Pi 4.

The Witty Pi uses GPIO17, irrespective of the attached Pi. So this does not explain why it works for a Pi4 and not for a Pi02W.

This is an important information. I am still interested if it could be a mechanical problem. Did you measure the length of the pins already? AFAIK, Pimoroni supplies an extension header. Have you tested the Pi02W together with this extension header?

I use the same GPIO extender for all the tests—one that has longer pins so it sticks out from the WittyPI and allows me to connect the Inky. I usually use a GPIO cable to connect the pins that stick out of the Witty to the Inky. I do this because the Inky is very, very delicate and I prefer not to b…

I wonder if the upgraded GPIO drivers of the rpi 4 are better at filtering the noise coming from both the Inky and Witty Pi on GPIO 17 then, where the zero 2w is seeing the BUSY signals from the Inky as power monitoring calls for the Witty Pi. My attempted fix was going to be running a jumper from B…

I don’t think the busy pin is the problem. The inky driver checks if the pin is driven high by something else and then uses a default timeout instead. This should slow things down, but it should not prevent screen refreshes. And the Witty Pi only sets this pin high once at startup, so this might not…

[image] bablokb: I don’t think the busy pin is the problem. I completely agree. As I already mentioned, exactly the same thing happens with the Witty Pi 5 Hat+, and with this Witty model there should be no GPIO conflicts of any kind. I think you’re on the right track with what you’re thinking…

In that case I’m going to avoid soldering any jumpers for the time being and keep an eye on this thread if anyone has any breakthroughs. If not I’ll be getting a pi 4 for this project. You said the pi 4 didn’t experience any issues with with Witty Pi 4 L3V7 power cycling with the button or a schedul…

I finally managed to solve the problem with the Witty Pi 4 L3v7 + Raspberry Zero 2 + Inky Impression 13.3"! You need to lower the SPI speed. In my case, I edited /boot/firmware/config.txt and added: dtoverlay=spi0-0cs,clockfreq=2000000 It seems that the Zero 2 has an SPI bus that is less tolerant …

Nice! Glad you were having this issue same time I was or I don’t think I would have figured that out. Going to try this later and report back if it fixes mine as well.

Inky Impression 13.3" + Witty Pi + Raspberry Pi Zero W2 not working

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Dountill November 29, 2025, 8:58am 16

Legend. This does also seem to fix the issue I had with my PiSugar 3. I still have to do some more testing to be sure, but a quick test does seem to work.

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Inky Impression 13.3" + Witty Pi + Raspberry Pi Zero W2 not working

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