Log 2

Spent multiple days chasing two problems that both turned out to be things I did to myself.

First one, the new board came in (after breaking the camera on the other board i was using) and the camera kept failing with a frame buffer malloc error on every single boot. I assumed the replacement board was bad too and started genuinely worrying I had cooked the hardware AGAINN but it urned out I had the generic ESP32 Dev Module profile selected in Arduino IDE instead of AI Thinker ESP32 CAM. That profile doesnt enable PSRAM so there was literally no memory for the camera to allocate a frame buffer from. Switched it and the camera initialised first try. So long debugging that for a dropdown menu.

Second one was worse. The screen sat blank white, flickering, occasionally flashing the correct image for about a second before going back to the annoying white screen. I rewired the whole thing so many times, reflashed it constantly, swapped libraries, tried different SPI speeds, checked every pin against the datasheet. Nothing.

After days of testing i found out the problem was the battery… My lipo setup could not hold voltage once the camera and the screen were both pulling current at once, so the board was browning out and resetting over and over. Plugged it into USB and it was rock solid immediately. (i was using the same battery to troubleshoot for days btw)

now for next time i know that If a screen is doing something stupid and the wiring checks out, check your power before you touch anything else guysss