ESP8266 Color Weather Station has white screen

Question

I ordered the Squix ESP8266 Color Weather Station and it did work (sort of) when I received it.

I was able to only program my WiFi and Timezone.

It would only display the time. There was NO weather data displayed due to being unable to program an API key.

Since Weather Underground is no longer issuing API keys I have been trying to use the guide located here:

https://blog.squix.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/esp8266weatherstationgettingstartedguide-20180530.pdf

From the first time I finished the update, the screen is completely white.

It does not even appear to boot.

I have tried a couple different versions of the weather station sketch from GitHub but every time I get the white screen.

Like I said before, the unit does not even seem to "boot", it just gives the white screen as soon as I plug it in.

It appears to flash fine without any errors.

Any help would be appreciated.

Comments

Let's establish what you've got:
- ThingPulse Color Kit, what is your order number i.e. when did you order it?
- it used to work but just w/o weather data from Wunderground
  -> it's unlikely we're looking at a hardware defect
  -> also, it's probably correctly soldered

What irritates me is you mentioning the PDF guide for the Classic Kit. The guide you should be following is this: https://docs.thingpulse.com/guides/wifi-color-display-kit/

Am I missing something?

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Hello,

I'm sorry for irritating you. That was not intended.

I purchased a fully assembled unit from Ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Esp8266-weather-station-wifi-wunderground-open-source-github-AZSMZ-TFT-2-4-TOUCH/263682504856?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

I also likely pasted the incorrect PDF as I likey was not following that guide exactly.

At this point, I am attempting to reprogram the unit for OpenWeatherMap. It did boot completely fine out of the box and I was able to connect to my WiFi network but not display weather data. It had all "?" where the data would have been.

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Hi Glen4Cindy

We can only give support for our own hardware. This is a clone by someone else. Please contact your seller to ask for support. You know, we invest a lot of time developing hardware and software, then cloners try to make a buck from our hard work and in the end we are supposed to give support... This hardly seems fair to me...

Answer 1

Have you monitored the serial point in your IDE to see what diagnostic messages are being displayed? This will give you a good indication of where things are going wrong, or if all appears normal then it points to a wiring problem.

Comments

Did you make sure line 38 is uncommented the other commented out so it’s the right board type. Try the Adafruit ili9341 display test to ensure it’s working would be useful.

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So, I certainly think I must be using the wrong code.

The version of the color weather station that has the Open Weather Map code in it has the following lines you referenced which I believe must refer to a different board:

32 // Pins for the ILI9341

33 #define TFT_DC D2
34 #define TFT_CS D1
35 #define TFT_LED D8


37 #define HAVE_TOUCHPAD
38 #define TOUCH_CS D3
39 #define TOUCH_IRQ  D4

The code that does have the lines you referenced has the Wunderground code and quite a bit of the rest of the code with "void" in it and I got a compiler error.

I tried the example Adafruit ili9341 graphics test and at the end of the flash got a white screen as well.  I suppose the other piece is how the Arduino software is setup to program the board.

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I've finally achieved success!

I am using a Feather Huzzah ESP8266 with FeatherWing from  Adafruit.

No problems flashing at all.

I'm still going to work at getting the other one working but, this is very satisfying. :)

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I have the Adafruit version and downloaded the latest version from Squix78. I have the problem with the unit hanging at "Updating Time".

What did you do different?

Below is the output from the serial monitor:

cksum 0x2d
13:50:08.790 -> v951aeffa
13:50:08.790 -> ~ld
13:50:08.790 -> 13
13:50:09.093 -> Connected...Initializing touch screen...
13:50:09.093 -> Mounting file system...
13:50:09.266 -> SPIFFS opened: OK
13:50:09.443 -> ................................................................................................................................................

The dotted line goes forever.

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I worked extensively with the seller of the board I purchased.

He sent me several revisions, the last of which finally worked.

He would only provide finished .bin files not the complete versions I needed to compile my own.

The case I printed didn't print completely properly so I haven't put mine to full-time use just yet, but it did finally work.