Hi,
I've done the following:
- Checked the voltage with my multimeter - it is indeed 5.12 VDC (Just to be save - I checked the battery voltage for the RTC and it is ok as well).
- Removed everything and made a sketch to print "Hello World". It prints as expected. No issue there.
- I've looked to see if all grounds are correct - it appears so.
- RX and TX don't appear to be shortcut anywhere. .... if this were the case, then I would not be able to run the simple LED blinking sketch. But I can run that sketch just fine.
- I've checked the contacts and they seem fine too.
There is no other device plugged in that uses I2C communication - So I am not sure what 0XE8 is...?