So after messing around with the giga display shield for a while, I've run into problems with it suddenly going black and not responding, for no apparent reason. It's happened three times now; every time I've been able to get it back working again, although it can take a while. Worse, I can never troubleshoot it down to a consistent root cause. I've seen posts and replies for similar/same issues, but in my case at least, I've never been able to troubleshoot it effectively - it just starts working again. This last time, I thought for sure it was my code, because I could get the examples to run, but apparently that wasn't correct either; after running a few examples, and trying my (same) code again, the display works without problems (again). Anyway, I'm curious if others are having a similar experience:
blank, unresponsive display;
code still compiles and works, even simple examples;
display works again later;
no clear root cause.
I'm worried that if I deploy something to users built on this otherwise cool display, it may prove unreliable, and I can't let that happen. Any similar experiences to share?? If so, what was your ultimate outcome?
Hi Dozie, Yes - I've been doing that for about a month or so with different libraries, using the latest board packages (except for lvgl 9, for reasons documented in other posts). For various reasons, I eliminated lvgl, emWin, etc., and settled on just the Arduino_GigaDisplay_GFX library (based on the relatively simple / tried-and-true Adafruit_GFX). I've always gone back to the board examples in the IDE when this trouble crops up. Sometimes the display responds to them, sometimes not. Regardless, I can't troubleshoot it now, because the display is working. My purpose in this thread was not to necessarily to troubleshoot the issue, but to clarify the symptoms and see if others are experiencing the same thing.
Here's an update. Since the op, at some point I started working on adding a standard USB keypad to the project. One day I didn't bring a USB keypad with me, and ran into a similar looking situation as discussed above, except this time, the display worked with demo code, but not with mine. I started going back through my successively older versions to see if the display would work again with one of those sketches. Nothing, until I came to one that didn't include USBHostGiga.
So it's a classic case of operator error: physical connections not complete. If no keypad / keyboard is connected, then you get nothing on the screen (and no other hints). l guess USBHostGiga looks for a valid device indefinitely. I doubt this would explain everyone's troubles with blank displays discussed in other posts, - but it might help someone/somewhere.
Yes, I sometimes forget how single threaded and blocking things can be too. I had a similar thing happen when my code waited forever for the serial port to connect. Things worked great when connected to my computer but appeared dead when powered from a USB brick.