Inky WHAT No display EPROM detected

Support
1

Hi!

I have a raspberry pi zero2 w with an inky WHAT board attached to the GPIO pins, and running the identify.py example returns an error “No display EEPROM detected”.
I have I2C enabled :

>sudo raspi-config nonint get_i2c
>0

(I believe 0 = true)

Here is the version of the inky package I have :

> pip3 show inky
Name: inky
Version: 1.5.0
Summary: Inky pHAT Driver
Home-page: http://www.pimoroni.com
Author: Philip Howard
Author-email: phil@pimoroni.com
License: MIT
Location: /home/evolmonster/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages
Requires: numpy, smbus2, spidev

The other prebuilt examples also return the same sort of error :

> python3 name-badge.py --type what --color red --name "Hello"
Inky pHAT/wHAT: Hello... my name is:

Use Inky pHAT/wHAT as a personalised name badge!

Failed to detect an Inky board. Trying --type/--colour arguments instead...

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/evolmonster/Pimoroni/inky/examples/name-badge.py", line 18, in <module>
    inky_display = auto(ask_user=True, verbose=True)
  File "/home/evolmonster/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/inky/auto.py", line 74, in auto
    return InkyWHAT(args.colour)
  File "/home/evolmonster/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/inky/what.py", line 39, in __init__
    inky.Inky.__init__(
  File "/home/evolmonster/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/inky/inky.py", line 86, in __init__
    raise ValueError('Colour {} is not supported!'.format(colour))
ValueError: Colour None is not supported!

I have tried attaching the inky to the raspberry pi both orientations, and it is seated correctly. I have not soldered the pins, as I am using a press-in header that came with the inky. But all looks correctly connected to me. But I cannot get the screen to be detected!
Can anyone help?

2

First, the reason the examples fail even when specifying the Inky type is that you’re spelling color wrong (it expects colour!) - that should get you over the initial hump.

It’s worth double checking that the Inky is fully seated; I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “a press-in header”, but it might be worth dropping a (in focus!) picture of the Hat on the pins.

Please don’t “try attaching in both orientations”; plugging a Hat in upside down definitely won’t work, and potentially damages it (because voltage ends up getting sent to places that aren’t expecting it).

3

Its funny you mention Colour vs Color. I am a brit living in america, and I used to constantly chastise people for spelling it wrong. Now I am ding the same! lol

I figured out what was wrong with my display. When I ordered the PI, I did not get the GPIO pins installed.
When connecting the inky screen to the PI, I was sandwiching it in between the header that came with the board. I have since learned that the GPIO pins have to be soldered into the board to make the proper connections. So I got a new set of GPIO pins and soldered them correctly, connected the inky screen to that, and it worked first time.
My bad! This is my first rasbperry PI, so I am learning slowly.

Thanks for your reply!