Sparkfun OLED Shield

[Karl]

Hi guys,

I bought a Sparkfun Photon Micro OLED Shield weeks ago, but that one didn’t work. (See Sparkfun Photon Micro OLED Shield - doesn’t work)

Thanks so much @Graham and @Sam , kindly sent me another one. I received it 2 days ago and gave it a go. I couldn’t believe that this one still didn’t work for me! It was so frustrating! I didn’t want to give up so I kept trying. I changed another Photon, another USB cable, tried both Particle Build and Particle Dev… no luck. I then went out and came back after couple hours, decided to try again. As soon as I plugged the power in and the Cloud connected, magic happened. It was working! I didn’t know why but it’s good that it was working.

The second day, when I came back from work, I plugged the power in straightaway. Nothing was changed, I didn’t flash any new firmware, didn’t change the USB cable, didn’t change the power source. But this time, it didn’t work, again. So I started trying again. This time, another USB cable seemed to do the trick. The screen finally started working, only with this USB cable. I carefully packed it up and didn’t feel good.

Well today, it didn’t work at all. Again, I tried everything I could do. I cannot get it worked.

I’m totally lost now and really need your help.

Thanks,
Karl

[Graham]

Hi Karl,

Sorry to hear you’ve run into issues! Given we’ve done everything we can on the logistics side, it would be best to get in touch with the Sparkfun support forums for a deeper dive into this. Head over to their forums, let them know you’ve had a replacement.

FYI, we’re not hearing any issues from other OLED Shield users.

[Karl]

Thank you Graham! Hopefully it’s me did something wrong. I’ll let you know how it’s going.

Regards,
Karl

[Sam]

Hey Karl,

Something to consider as well, is that I noticed you mentioned that when it worked, that the RGB LED indicated cloud connection. With Particle boards, they won’t run your code until they connect to the cloud. So perhaps ensure that your Photon is ‘breathing’ cyan.

[Karl]

Thanks for your help Sam! I actually was going to post an update at lunch time as I have to be working in the office now. So I’ll make the story short here:

It’s working!

The thing that caused the problem was bit embarrassing and surprising to me: the sponge!

That’s right, the sponge comes with the OLED shield is somewhat conductive. I had no idea about that. I didn’t remove the sponge when I was testing the OLED shields, never thought about that. Even when I took a close look at the board, I took off the sponge, looked, then put it back! It’s actually my habit to keep the sponge on the PCB boards, to cover/protect the pointy pins on the PCB boards. And that has never caused any problems to me.

Anyway, when the multimeter reading went crazy, I took off the sponge and wanted to test it more carefully… everything works like a charm.

So yes, both of the boards are working well, not broken. I’m so sorry about my stupidity and poor experience.

Please let me know how do you want me to return one of the boards to you.

Thanks very much for your time and help!

Regards,
Karl

[Sam]

Hi Karl,

You live and you learn, plenty of people have been caught out by that before. Glad to hear that you got them working, you can keep the 2nd display, just make something awesome with it!

[Karl]

That’s very kind of you! Really appreciate it!

Regards,
Karl

[Graham]

Glad to hear everything panned out Karl!

Don’t forget to share your project with us for a store credit!

[Karl]

Thanks so much Graham!