I have a waveshare SKU:24159 paper display, which I have not been able to get my raspberry pi 3b+ to run.
For my project I wish to make a data recording, temperature reading device. I’m not sure which screen will suit my project best. Something around the 4’’ mark will be ideal. Any advice would be much appreciated!
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Hi @raymon270154, welcome to the forums!
This seems like a good choice of display for this project and should be comparable with your Raspberry Pi 3B+.
Would you be able to share more about your setup? If you could share the setup steps followed as well as some photos of how you have this all connected we may be able to figure out how to get this working for you?
Thanks Sam!
my hardware is as follows
- MLX90614 (IR sensor)
- RFID RC522 (NFC reader, only have 1 fob to test with at this point)
- RPi 3B+
- waveshare SKU:24159
eh
here’s a bit more of a neat display of what I have going on here. I have tried to install drivers and followed the instructions on the waveshare document, but the HDMI screen goes black when the ribbon cable makes contact. I try and power up with the screen connected, can’t get past dark screens.
any advice on drivers/hopw to get the screen to work?
I can send my code for how everything is coming along so far if you’d like?
Thanks!
Hey @raymon270154,
Thanks for those photos, your connections between the display and the pi look sound. Having a look at the product wiki. It seems like there is a known issue when running this display on a Pi5. While this isn’t the same Pi you are using it may be worth trying out the fix for that issue.
The steps are:
- Check the system version using “uname --all”.
- If it’s kernel version 6.6.20, run “sudo rpi-update pulls/6050” to fix it.
Hopefully, this makes a difference. Otherwise, I would have a poke around that product wiki and see if any of the other commands get through to the display. Something like changing the brightness to max may change something.
Best of luck! 
here is what terminal delivers when i put he pull/6050 command in
aymon-pastor@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo rpi-update pulls/6050
*** Raspberry Pi firmware updater by Hexxeh, enhanced by AndrewS and Dom
*** Performing self-update
*** Relaunching after update
*** Raspberry Pi firmware updater by Hexxeh, enhanced by AndrewS and Dom
FW_REV:
BOOTLOADER_REV:816bf7c594a4c117ab2815f443ad3d535be475a6
*** We’re running for the first time
*** Backing up files (this will take a few minutes)
*** Remove old firmware backup
*** Backing up firmware
*** Remove old modules backup
*** Backing up modules 6.6.51+rpt-rpi-v7
WANT_32BIT:1 WANT_64BIT:1 WANT_64BIT_RT:0 WANT_PI4:1 WANT_PI5:0
Downloading bootloader tools
Downloading bootloader images
*** Downloading specific artifact revision (this will take a few minutes)
curl -L https://builds.raspberrypi.com/github/linux/3e965c22a1879b2097a99baa48cc952fbfee66a8/bcmrpi | zcat | tar xf - -C //root/.rpi-firmware --strip-components=2
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:–:-- 0:00:05 --:–:-- 0
gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:–:-- 0:00:04 --:–:-- 0
Invalid artifact specified. Response: 404.
raymon-pastor@raspberrypi:~ $
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Hey @raymon270154,
Looks like that command didn’t run as expected but this shouldn’t be an issue as your kernel version looks to be more recent than 6.6.20 (6.6.51 by the look of your output).
I would try and follow the waveshare setup instructions without the display connected, then power off the Pi and connect only the waveshare display to see if that changes anything.
The most important part of this setup looks to be adding some lines to your config.txt file which tells the Pi what type of display this is. Have you been able to add these lines to your config.txt file?
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-dsi-7inch
This config.txt file used to be located at boot/config.txt but has changed in recent OS versions to boot/firmware/config.txt. If you open boot/config.txt you should see a comment line indicating if the file location has changed or not.
Let us know how you go with this!
An E-paper display like your Waveshare is good for ultra-low power (especially for battery-operated devices that just wake up once a minute), but bad if you need live, fast updates.
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