Non-working pygamer screen

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gkw
 
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Non-working pygamer screen

Post by gkw »

We just got a pygamer and holder for Xmas; it worked for a day and we were able to download a game onto it. The next day the screen wouldn’t go on - the 5 red lights turn on when we turn on the on switch, but that’s it. I’m not tech savvy but can’t think of anything else to do. Thoughts?
Thanks.

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neilgrr
 
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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by neilgrr »

We also gave a pygamer starter kit for Christmas with the same symtoms, ie there's 5 leds below the screen that stay red and D13 fades on/off. I verified that the battery is charged with a multimeter.

Thanks

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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

The red LEDs are indicating that the PyGamer can't see your PC's USB for some reason. Verify the USB cable being used is good and not a charge only cable. Try using the cable with something else and verify it can move data.

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gkw
 
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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by gkw »

Thanks. That’s not the issue. The cable isn’t charge only. The issue is that the pygamer screen won’t turn on at all - it’s not plugged into the computer anymore and has no reason to be. I turn the pygamer on and the screen stays dark.

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gkw
 
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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by gkw »

I’ll add the, like the other poster with the same problem, the d13 light goes on when the pygamer is turned on.

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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

Try double pressing the reset button to get into bootloader mode. Any change in the LED behavior?

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gkw
 
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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by gkw »

No change on double pressing (or single pressing) the reset button. The 5 LEDs still turn on and stay on when the device is turned on. The D13 light also goes on (it flickers a little when the device is on, and goes off when the reset button is pressed). Thanks.

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neilgrr
 
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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by neilgrr »

The 5 LEDs stay on on my pygamer as well. I verified that the battery was charged and repeated tried pressing the reset button.

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gkw
 
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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by gkw »

And to clarify again, the D13 light goes off only briefly while the reset button is pressed - only for the second that it’s actually pressed.

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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

it’s not plugged into the computer anymore and has no reason to be.
We should do this for troubleshooting. The current state of the PyGamer may be corrupt and preventing things from running.

Make 50000000000000000000% sure the USB cable is good. Use the cable with something else to verify it can move data. Bad USB cables are a *huge* issue.

Then, with known good USB cable, plug PyGamer into PC and double press reset button. Do you still get all red NeoPixels?

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gkw
 
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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by gkw »

Thanks - plugging it in turned the screen onto the bootloader mode, so it looks like the screen still works - that seems to have jumpstarted it (hopefully). So I loaded the sample game onto the pygamer. Just to clarify so I don’t know if there’s another issue - can the pygamer store only one game at a time? When I loaded the new game, the prior game is no longer on the device (we’re using Make Code Arcade). I can’t find any information indicating whether that’s how the device is supposed to work, or whether there can be more than one game loaded at a time and there’s some way to select among them. Many thanks.

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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

Just to clarify so I don’t know if there’s another issue - can the pygamer store only one game at a time?
Yep.

The "game" ends up being just another firmware image that gets written to the PyGamer. When the board is powered up, the bootloader runs. If the nothing is done in terms of button presses, the booloader then runs the loaded firmware. In general, there is only one firmware loaded at a time. That firmware could be a MakeCode game, an Arduino sketch, CircuitPython, etc. But in general, only one thing at a time.

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Re: Non-working pygamer screen

Post by gkw »

Got it, thank you.

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