Screen not working. How do I debug? [SOLVED]

Hi all,

I’ve followed the guide until the screen is supposed to work, but, well, it doesn’t.

Most likely I’m doing it wrong myself, either my shoddy soldering or I broke some component in some way, but I have no idea how to figure it out.

I do have a multimeter, but I have fairly little idea how to work it.

Here’s a bunch of pictures I made, maybe one of you can see what I did wrong visually:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_HyGHPrxgpNUjVTbEpmODdzT28

Any idea or help would be greatly appreciated.

I’m almoust sure it is becouse of bad soldering. Your solder joint look bad. Make sure you heat both the pad and the part you want to solder.

Look how joint should look like:

Find some soldering tutorial.

I have the same problem, and while I am no soldering expert I have soldered before, did this on an ok soldering saation, and Im pretty sure solder joints arent the problem for me… How much QA is done on the components in the kit? Like the screen unit…

I would take a guess at this and say probably none?.

Have you tried this?
It might also be advised to solder resistor R3 (10K) to the board in step 13 of the build guide.
As I have noticed that R3 is connected to the RESET line for the microprocessor, if the reset line is not pulled high then the microprocessor pin will be floating and could be in a constant RESET.

I’ve been fiddeling with it on-and-off for a while now.

I’m sure that the ATMEGA and the screen work - I’ve hacked it together with an Arduino Uno to ensure that. (there’s another thread on how I did that, for whoever’s curious)

I’ve gotten to the point where, when I turn the switch on and off, the screen sometimes shows the MAKERBUINO menu for a split second before it dies down again. I did solder the extra resistor of step 13, but I’m still getting the same result. Any ideas?

That sounds familiar. Have you tried the hard reset yet? Hold button C, switch on then after 3 seconds release button C.

Well, I haven’t even soldered that button yet heh.

First I go on holiday, then I fiddle with this fiddle some more.

@Gemberkoekje, what is the status of this? Did you make your MAKERbuino work?
I think we’ve talked via Twitter about this problem too.

We did talk about this on Twitter. I soldered, resoldered, soldered back and soldered some more, but always with the same result: Either the screen doesn’t work at all, or the screen flicks on for a microsecond when I flick the switch then turns off again.

I redid the soldering of the base of the chip with my father in law, I redid the soldering of the base of the Nokia screen as well as was possible, I redid the soldering of the on-off switches as you pointed out after I made the video… I still have no idea why it’s not working, but it’s not working.

I’ve requested a new board and a new set of components (as discussed on Twitter), and this time with the help of my father in law, I’ll try again and hopefully succeed.

@Gemberkoekje, we’ve sent you the requested components today. I’ve updated you with a tracking number via PM.
I will mark this topic as [SOLVED]. In case something goes wrong, create a new topic in the support section.

Hang in there, you’re going to make it this time :slight_smile:
We’ve updated the build guide completely, it might help you in the assembly process this time:

Keep us updated with you progress and don’t give up!