I’m trying to install an Adafruit 2.8 inch PiTFT Resistive on a Raspberry Pi 3 B without success
I’ve installed Raspbian Buster May 2021 and did the usual update and upgrade on the Pi3 which is working fine.
I then plug in the Adafruit PiTFT and went to Overview | Adafruit PiTFT - 2.8" Touchscreen Display for Raspberry Pi | Adafruit Learning System and did the Install Script and then Console Install Commands from the Easy Install page of Overview | Adafruit PiTFT - 2.8" Touchscreen Display for Raspberry Pi | Adafruit Learning System.
Rebooted when it asked, but then nothing happened. The Pi3 is connected to a monitor via HDMI which showed a cursor on the top left hand, no desktop. The green activity light blinked for a while and then stop, the PiTFT stays blank. It seems to have corrupted the OS somewhat as I need to re-flash the micro-SD card to get it working again.
Did I miss something?
Hi Beginner,
Welcome to the forum 
Could you send through some photos of your setup just in case we can spot something out of place? It’s quite odd to get the cursor on your HDMI display and nothing on the TFT display.
If we can’t spot anything in your photos we’ll set one up here in the support office and see if we can replicate the issue.
Progress! There must’ve been something loose, I unplug and plug in the unit on the GPIO again and re-started the installation with a re-flashed micro SD card. This time the PiTFT screen lit up (it never did before), went through the installation again. Rebooted, the monitor flashed the Raspberry Pi logo as usual and the PiTFT now showed a terminal screen! The HDMI screen in blank which I think is expected, next I did the FBCP Install Commands and it worked with the Pi desktop displayed on the PiTFT ok.
Fun fun! Incidentally I did plug and unplug the PiTFT several times before when I couldn’t get it to work and double check triple check that it is seated properly.
Hi Trent,
As I mentioned in my reply at the forum, I now managed to get it working. In fact I now managed to set it up to display both the HDMI (actually to an old VGA monitor via HDMI to VGA adaptor as my HDMI monitor complained the resolution is too low) and the PiTFT and played the Big Buck Bunny video 
. When you asked me, I just unplugged and plugged in the unit one more time to check before sending a photo of my setup when it started to work! I must’ve done that at least 4-5 times in the last couple of weeks trying to get it to work, and each time the PiTFT stays black. However I noticed that now it actually lit up once I turn the power on. I’m not game to unplug it to check, in case I dislodged whatever it was that stops it from working before.
My next project is to setup one of the buttons to be a shutdown button.
Thanks for taking an interest in my problem.
-Philip Lee
Hi Philip,
Great to hear you got that one working, sometimes just trying to show someone it playing up seems to be enough to make things behave 
Thanks for following up in the forum, it’s always good to hear results.
A safe shutdown button will be a great addition to any Pi project!
Hey Phillip,
Just to add to trent’s post, here’s a guide from us:
Let us know if you have queries along the way!
-James
Thanks James, that is very helpful. All I need to do now is work out which switch on the unit is connected to which GPIO. I believe I saw a schematic drawing of it on the Adafruit website.
