07-08-2021, 02:39 AM
(07-08-2021, 02:13 AM)Flavor Wrote: This could be caused by multiple things. We recently had another builder experience a similar problem. I told him to try this, and it fixed it for him.
"I’d maybe try hooking it up to HDMI. Then, at the RetroPie menu, look for "Freeplay Change Display Driver" settings or some such. See if changing that helps anything."
That will likely work if it's a software issue.
If it's a hardware issue, that probably means that one or more of the connections between the Pi and the LCD aren't making a good connection.
An all white LCD basically means that the LCD is getting power but not getting initialized with any data.
The first/easiest thing to check is the LCD's ribbon cable attachment to the Freeplay board. I know that this is an old/poor video, but I think it gets the point across well. Check it out and make sure that the ribbon is fully inserted and the shoulders are locked down all the way. I have helped some people troubleshoot this issue where the shoulders weren't locked down. AND, it's a bit of a problem that sometimes it will work that way, so people have built it up and had a working unit and then it just stopped working all of a sudden. I think it was making a little contact and then something shifted and stopped working. Anyway, locking the shoulders should prevent any intermittent connections.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sch5ZW1idz4
With the Freeplay Zero, the connections between the Pi and the Freeplay board are always a top suspect. In fact, even some problems can be solved by just reseating the Pi on a the Freeplay CM3 builds.
For the Freeplay Zero, I would always closely inspect the GPIO header. For anyone troubleshooting this stuff, I almost always ask for a photo of the pins and solder on the Pi Zero.
For you, StonyYodelers, because if your other thread about buttons, I would not assume that the solder is a problem. For anyone else that comes along reading this, though, it's the most typical problem.
Your mention if it working for a while and then going white makes me wonder if it's a problem with the ribbon cable's shoulders not being locked. That's what I've seen in the past, anyway.
The ribbon cable and gpio headers were some of my initial checks before I reflashed the sd card. In my day job I deal with a lot of circuit boards and the like, so I've seen a lot of ribbon cables that I thought I had secured actually be loose or not fully seated, so that's what I thought was it for sure lol.
The solder could be an issue, but I've got a few active IPC certs, I'm pretty competent at soldering so I would be surprised if it were the issue. Just as an extra troubleshooting step however, I'll probably still touch up the solder on the pi and freeplay's gpio headers (but visual inspection under magnification looks good, no reason to think either is a problem).
When I get home from work today I'll check the display drivers. I have low confidence in this doing anything just because it had been working initially and I don't know why it would have lost the drivers.
I'm going to try and look into it more at a component level soon as well and see if maybe something busted. I'm thinking if it's hardware it's probably on the pi end. I'll post back with any results if I find anything. Will probably be a day or two tops.
I've also ordered another zero that should be here Friday, and I'll test that out as well when it arrives