Arduino Metro + 1.8" Color TFT Shield w/microSD and Joystick

[andymessier]

Hello, I'm having trouble getting the 1.8" Color TFT Shield w/microSD and Joystick to work with an Arduino Metro. I try the example called "seesaw_shield18_test" and the display responds to the "ss.setBacklight()" commands but none of the tft.* commands (I get no characters to appear). I have two Metros, and two shields and I tried all combinations. I inspected all my soldering under a scope and retouched-up both shields.

This is the serial output (seems as expected):

seesaw started
Version: 24FF
TFT OK!
Initializing SD card...failed!


I'm using IDE 1.8.16
Adafruit GFX Library: 1.10.12
Adafruit ST7735 Library : 1.7.4
Adafruit seesaw Library 1.5.0

I can include "Adafruit_TFTShield18.h" in my code but honestly I don't see where that library came from using library manager .. (is that a clue?)

I have no other shields or peripherals attached.

These defaults seem appropriate based on the documentation:

Code: Select all

#define SD_CS    4  // Chip select line for SD card on Shield
#define TFT_CS  10  // Chip select line for TFT display on Shield
#define TFT_DC   8  // Data/command line for TFT on Shield
#define TFT_RST  -1  // Reset line for TFT is handled by seesaw!

I see in the troubleshooting page something about a delay before tft.begin() ... but the example doesn't even have a tft.begin() and it doesn't compile if I add one (not sure what library that is, the default Arduino TFT library or the Adafruit_TFTShield18 ... maybe that confusion is my problem ...

Is there something funny about the Metro SPI that I'm missing?

If anyone has any debug ideas, or experience getting this combination of hardware to work I'd really appreciate some help. Thanks so much!

[andymessier]

SOLVED

OK, Silly me. I failed to realize that the hardware SPI signals connect through the 6 pin ICSP header. Doh! All these years of playing with Arduinos and I've never used that before. The shield came with a female connector that I needed to solder to connect to the male Arduino pins.

All is well!