white screen no display, SPIFF not available only OTA,

Question

I followed the plans but when i get the part to set the ram, my only options are OTA and no SPIFF,

When it writes the file it gets stuck on this.

"Leaving...

Hard resetting via RTS pin..."

and all i get is a white screen.

Anybody have any advice as to what i did wrong?

Comments

update, my screen flashes for a split second every 30 seconds or so and you can see something but then it goes all white.

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"my only options are OTA and no SPIFF" - please provide a screen shot of the Arduino IDE menu settings.

"my screen flashes for a split second every 30 seconds" - can you provide a video demonstrating this behavior?

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Here is a screen shot of my IDE settings. i posted the image at the link below.

https://ibb.co/r2NQR1s

Here is what i get when uploading to the arduino. It gets to the end of the code and seems to stall and not do anything.

Executable segment sizes:





IROM   : 415232          - code in flash         (default or ICACHE_FLASH_ATTR)





IRAM   : 27776   / 32768 - code in IRAM          (ICACHE_RAM_ATTR, ISRs...)





DATA   : 1424  )         - initialized variables (global, static) in RAM/HEAP





RODATA : 3448  ) / 81920 - constants             (global, static) in RAM/HEAP





BSS    : 27768 )         - zeroed variables      (global, static) in RAM/HEAP





Sketch uses 447880 bytes (42%) of program storage space. Maximum is 1044464 bytes.

Global variables use 32640 bytes (39%) of dynamic memory, leaving 49280 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 81920 bytes.

esptool.py v2.8

Serial port COM3

Connecting....

Chip is ESP8266EX

Features: WiFi

Crystal is 26MHz

MAC: 84:f3:eb:de:0e:06

Uploading stub...

Running stub...

Stub running...

Changing baud rate to 460800

Changed.

Configuring flash size...

Auto-detected Flash size: 4MB

Compressed 452032 bytes to 282763...



Writing at 0x00000000... (5 %)

Writing at 0x00004000... (11 %)

Writing at 0x00008000... (16 %)

Writing at 0x0000c000... (22 %)

Writing at 0x00010000... (27 %)

Writing at 0x00014000... (33 %)

Writing at 0x00018000... (38 %)

Writing at 0x0001c000... (44 %)

Writing at 0x00020000... (50 %)

Writing at 0x00024000... (55 %)

Writing at 0x00028000... (61 %)

Writing at 0x0002c000... (66 %)

Writing at 0x00030000... (72 %)

Writing at 0x00034000... (77 %)

Writing at 0x00038000... (83 %)

Writing at 0x0003c000... (88 %)

Writing at 0x00040000... (94 %)

Writing at 0x00044000... (100 %)

Wrote 452032 bytes (282763 compressed) at 0x00000000 in 6.9 seconds (effective 522.3 kbit/s)...

Hash of data verified.



Leaving...

Hard resetting via RTS pin..

The screen will flash like it loading something for a split second but then stay all white.

Any help is much apperciated.

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Your settings seem correct, well done. The ESP8266 Arduino Core team keeps changing the names of those flash options; different names for one and the same thing. I now updated our documentation: https://docs.thingpulse.com/guides/wifi-color-display-kit/#select-flash-mode-and-flash-size

From what I can tell uploading the app to your device is completed successfully.

> The screen will flash like it loading something for a split second but then stay all white.

Did you verify that you soldered all the pins properly? No cold solder joint anywhere?
Can you please open the Arduino IDE serial console via Tools -> Serial Monitor and report the output you see there (at 115'200 baud). Once the serial console is open you need to hit the small reset button on the WeMos D1 mini.

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This is what i get in the Serial Monitor. I deleted the junk in the middle to be able to post this.

........................
Current time: 1589809889

DST Rules Updated:
DST Start: Sun Mar 29 01:00:00 2020
DST End:   Sun Oct 25 01:00:00 2020

Time difference for DST: 7200
[HTTP] Requesting resource at http://api.openweathermap.org:80/data/2.5/weather?id=xxxxxx
[HTTP] connected, now GETting data
start document
[HTTP] Requesting resource at http://api.openweathermap.org:80/data/2.5/forecast?id=xxxxxx
[HTTP] connected, now GETting data
start document
Free mem: 23344

 ets Jan  8 2013,rst cause:4, boot mode:(3,6)

wdt reset
load 0x4010f000, len 3456, room 16
tail 0
chksum 0x84
csum 0x84
va5432625
~ld
15
Connecting to WiFi NETGEAR/******
.......Connected...Initializing touch screen...
Mounting file system...
SPIFFS opened: OK
...................................................
Current time: 1589809929

DST Rules Updated:
DST Start: Sun Mar 29 01:00:00 2020
DST End:   Sun Oct 25 01:00:00 2020

Time difference for DST: 7200
[HTTP] Requesting resource at http://api.openweathermap.org:80/data/2.5/weather?id=xxxxxx
[HTTP] connected, now GETting data
start document
[HTTP] Requesting resource at http://api.openweathermap.org:80/data/2.5/forecast?id=xxxxxx
[HTTP] connected, now GETting data
start document
Free mem: 23344

Exception (0):
epc1=0x402305a1 epc2=0x00000000 epc3=0x00000000 excvaddr=0x00000000 depc=0x00000000

>>>stack>>>

ctx: sys
sp: 3fffed60 end: 3fffffb0 offset: 0190
 
3fffffa0:  3fffdad0 00000000 3ffef878 4020ad54  
<<<stack<<<

 ets Jan  8 2013,rst cause:4, boot mode:(3,6)

wdt reset
load 0x4010f000, len 3456, room 16
tail 0
chksum 0x84
csum 0x84
va5432625
~ld
15
Connecting to WiFi NETGEAR/******
.......Connected...Initializing touch screen...
Mounting file system...
SPIFFS opened: OK
...................................................
Current time: 1589809968

DST Rules Updated:
DST Start: Sun Mar 29 01:00:00 2020
DST End:   Sun Oct 25 01:00:00 2020

Time difference for DST: 7200
[HTTP] Requesting resource at http://api.openweathermap.org:80/data/2.5/weather?id=xxxxxx
[HTTP] connected, now GETting data
start document
[HTTP] Requesting resource at http://api.openweathermap.org:80/data/2.5/forecast?id=xxxxxx
[HTTP] connected, now GETting data
start document
Free mem: 23344

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i checked every solder joint with a volt meter, all are good.

it will flash the image on the screen for about a 10th of a second then it goes all white. It will stay all white until it refreshes and will again flash for a split second but continue to be white. I'm starting to wonder if it is a programming error.

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Every time it updates and refreshes in the serial monitor, it will flash the weather screen for a split second and then go all white again.

Anyone know whats going on?

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Here is a video of what it is doing.... Can someone please help me figure out why it is doing this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvLCmaDPAtk

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Thanks for the console log and the video. Both are very helpful.

"I deleted the junk in the middle to be able to post this" - that "junk" is the stacktrace that can be decoded using the Arduino ESP8266/ESP32 Exception Stack Trace Decoder from https://github.com/me-no-dev/EspExceptionDecoder. It is extremely useful to debug crashes. Having the decoded output available would definitely help.

However, the video indicates we are likely dealing with a hardware issue. When the app boots the first thing you (should) see is the ThingPulse logo even before you see "Connecting to WiFi" on the console.  It then updates continuously showing what it's doing (WiFi connection, updating time, fetching data, etc.).

It is very difficult to diagnose hardware issues remotely. Do you happen to have alternative or spare components you could test against? Furthermore, we are having difficulty tracing this back as you didn't enter customer or order number in the provided field of the original post. Did you get your kit through Amazon?

P.S. I redacted your OWM API key and your WiFi password from the comments you pasted above.

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Yes I did purchase this kid from Amazon. I  bought it about two weeks ago now.  Would you recommend i not purchase from them and do so directly from you?

I can repost the full read out from the serial monitor if you' d like.

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The exception decoder has to be executed on the machine that built the binary (i.e. yours). Buying on Amazon is equivalent from buying through our own shop - given you got it from our Amazon store and not some copy-cat. That's one of the reason we're asking people to enter their customer/order numbers upon posting a Q here.

To rule out any hardware issue on your end I'd like you to flash a pre-built binary.

1. Download and save https://transfer.sh/3zVFd/esp8266-weather-station-color.ino.bin
2. Download and run our App Fairy from https://github.com/ThingPulse/app-fairy/releases
3. Select the .bin file you downloaded in step 1 and flash it to your device.
4. Hit the reset button on the device.

It should boot, display our logo and start connecting to a WiFi with an SSDI that likely doesn't exist (mine). If the app gets this far we know it must be a software issue.

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I did exactly what you described above. I downloaded the file, installed it using the app-fairy. The screen flashes white and stays white while trying to connect to wifi.

I opened the serial monitor and saw it was trying to connect to the internet but the screen stay white the whole time with no change.

Do you think I have a  hardware issue now?

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I am quite convinced now we're dealing with a hardware issue. However, although it looks like a problem with the display we can't rule out it's the WeMos device. Please send us an email with your complete address and we'll send you a spare display.

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Sorry to learn you didn't take us up on our offer to replace the display. We aim to make every customer a happy customer. We are sorry we failed this time.

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app-fairy identifies as a trogen virus to my virus filter

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Unfortunately virus detection is not an exact science. Please take a look at the virus reports we published at https://github.com/ThingPulse/app-fairy/releases.

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test binary file link says not found