Hi,
New to this game!
Have the pico explorer base and have flashed the pimoroni firmware to the pico and trying to run some of the micropython examples. The audio elements are working fine in e.g. explorer_noise.py and explorer_demo.py so I think the communication to the explorer board is fine. BUT I have seen absolutely nothing printed to the display. Am I missing something obvious or is there any way to check whether the display is functioning or not aside from running the example scripts?? (am not getting any errors back from the example scripts and the display is backlit)
Cheers…
The demo.py example should definitely show things up on the screen.
How does the soldering look on your Pico? Try running this:
import picoexplorer as explorer
width = explorer.get_width()
height = explorer.get_height()
display_buffer = bytearray(width * height * 2)
explorer.init(display_buffer)
explorer.set_pen(0,0,0)
explorer.clear()
explorer.set_pen(255,255,255)
explorer.text("Hello world!", 20, 20, 100, 4)
explorer.update()
It was probably a missing explorer.update() It catches us all out.
Hi,
Thanks for your replies. Still no joy unfortunately.
Shoe - copied across your code (including explorer.update() !!) into a new program to run but no response from the display.
Can still run e.g. explorer_noise.py example and get audio from the speaker.
Can’t see anything visible on the board that might be problematic, the connection of the flexible circuit at the back for the LCD seems intact and sound.
Would appreciate any other thoughts.
Cheers.
Is there a command to query the pico which specific version of firmware it thinks it is running?
I have exactly the same problem. Flashed it with the latest version of the pimoroni-pico firmware (v0.0.8 Alpha)…no joy…
Shoe - copied across your code (including explorer.update() !!) into a new program to run but no response from the display.
That’s a bad sign. Can you see the backlight underneath the edges of the screen coming on at all? I’ve tested the demo code I posted under the v0.0.8 firmware and it is fine.
It might be worth contacing Pimoroni support about it: support@pimoroni.com/
Version 8 is here:
Release Version 0.0.8 Alpha · pimoroni/pimoroni-pico (github.com)
Hi, I contacted Pimoroni and they suggested re-soldering…I did… and it now works!
There must have been a loose joint on the board!
My bad!
cheers
David
Hi All,
Thanks again for all suggestions. Just flashed with v0.0.8 in place of v0.0.7 and the display has come to life!
Now to get playing…
I had problems with my Pico Explorer Base display as well using the current pre-release bootloader version 1.18.9.
Downgrading to current latest release 1.18.7 (pimoroni-pico-v1.18.7-micropython.uf2) makes the display work again.
v1.18.9 has big changes st7789 display driver wise. It’s a Beta release in a way. And it states the following in the description.
If you’re looking for your code to keep ticking along as usual then please grab v1.18.7
The examples likely need a bit of editing to work with the new unifying driver. I’m using 1.18.8, but then, I’m partially responsible for 1.18.8 and 1.18.9.
I was after dual display support and a smaller frame buffer as i was using up the 264kb of RAM.