Hello! I just got a Unicorn Hat Mini and Pi Zero 2 W. I’ve been able to successfully get everything working, but I noticed some issues with the colors and have been wondering if it’s normal, or if maybe my unit is defective.
Setting all leds to all red, all green, or all blue looks great. Each light appears the same as its neighbors. However, when I start mixing colors, differences start to appear. For example, here are two images (one with diffuser, one without) of all pixels set to r:255, g:48, b: 0. Notice how is some LEDS the red light dominates, while in others, the green light dominates.
Image without diffuser: (new users can only embed one image) IMG-2421 — ImgBB
Is this normal? I’m not sure if this is just a natural side effect of the construction, or if there is a problem somewhere. Thanks!
No, I would say that’s not normal. I have two and neither one does that. I get nice consistent colors. Did you have anything else installed on that Pi that uses SPI?
Doing up a fresh install of Pi OS would rule out a possible software glitch.
No, I would say that’s not normal. I have two and neither one does that. I get nice consistent colors.
Ok, that’s good to know.
Did you have anything else installed on that Pi that uses SPI?
I don’t think so. I installed Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) based on Debian 11 when I got it, and then installed some python libraries (unicornhatmini) and a few other utilities like tmux, vim, and git.
Doing up a fresh install of Pi OS would rule out a possible software glitch.
I can try that later.
Soldering the 40-pin header was the first time I’ve soldered something to a board, could bad connections from an amateur soldering job have an impact here?
Did you solder the header on, is usually one of the questions I ask. Looking at the pinout, I was thinking, if you get all red , green, blue, that’s likely OK. Unicorn HAT Mini at Raspberry Pi GPIO Pinout
But now that you’ve mentioned it, posting a picture of your soldering wouldn’t be a bad idea.
I was going to take the picture of the soldering job when I remembered I had another RPi 3 B+ lying around, so I put the hat on that to see if it behaved the same way. It does, so maybe I just got a defective one?
Yeah, if was a soldering issue I would have expected it to just not work at all, or be totally messed up no matter what code was run. I’d say its defective?
There is a contact us link on the shop page that will let you e-mail tech support to get a replacement. Put a link to this thread in the e-mail. Contact Us for Raspberry Pi Technical Support - Pimoroni
