Numerous Picade problems

Hi all,

Just bought the picade and spent some time putting it together. Love the way it fits together so perfectly. However, there are a lot of faults with the hardware components that were provided.

  • The screen driver board had a loose power connector . Despite it being so loose i plugged in the power cable and the screen works fine.

  • Two of the black buttons do not press properly 70% of the time the button presses are not recognised by the picade board.

  • the joystick does not work properly - only the up movement is registered on the picade board - so when i move the joystick down left and right nothing happens!

I bought the item from modmypi on amazon. I do not want to return the whole thing for a replacement as i dont want to go through the build process again. Would i be able to get replacement parts for the bits that dont work directly from pimoroni?

Many thanks

Rav

The buttons and driver board sound pretty cut and dry faulty, but I’m not so sure about the joystick- or, at least, which part of it is to blame.

The joystick not working can be down to the wiring loom being loose or incorrectly installed and not making the right ground or signal connections. Sometimes it could just need the spade connectors pushed on tightly, or the tinned wires pushed more firmly into the screw terminals- a photo of the wiring setup might help diagnose this.

Hi thanks i had a closer look and realised that i hadnt screwed down the screws - Oops me not paying attention. The joystick is working perfectly now!

I also had another issue which was getting very strong hiss/static noise from the speakers. However after adding some lines using notepad++ to the config.txt file this was resolved completely. The additional lines were:

audio_pwm_mode=2
disable_audio_dither=1

Im really glad the above issues have been resolved, would you be able to send out a replacements for the two black buttons and the screen driver board?

Regards

Yes, you should drop us an email to support@pimoroni.com with your shipping address and a link to this thread to explain the issue.

Do double check the wiring on those two black buttons, too, since they might not be faulty (I haven’t heard of any intermittent ones, yes).

Messaged support and got replacement screen driver board and replacement buttons sent out next day delivery - great customer service - all is working fine now :-) i have ordered a 12" screen - will the same driver board work?

The driver boards are usually specific to the display, so you might get one with the display you’ve ordered. I think I’m correct in saying that the one we supply with Picade for the 8 inch display will not work with a larger 12 inch display.