Hmmm, I changed this:
while(mySerial.available() == 0);
to this:
while(mySerial.available() <= 0);
now I'm getting blue backgrounds repeatedly.
Still no white circles.
But it should also be noted that the board LED is still flashing even when the display is unplugged :unsure:
EDIT: interesting, I got the circle to show after i added a 2 second delay after the line, dostuff(arr, sizeof(arr));
recall the background function seems to take a while to execute for whatever reason. So I added a delay to give the function some time to complete, and then the circle seemed to execute just fine. i suppose that thoroughly means my response function doesn't work at all.
EDIT2: I was having some issues with color distortion,but according to here that happens with high contrast (blue background white circle) Hopefully, that will go away when i start using regular images beyond just tests.
wow, today has been a productive day.