the debug board was… a flop

let’s get the bad out of the way first:

• the screen won’t work and the wires heat up. i don’t know why, i followed the pinout and checked for shorts on the circuit board. only the backlight goes on. i think i might try another raw screen, but plan for another failure and have a slot for a pre-built module.
• no audio. i followed the schematic of a pre-built module and, when testing, i couldn’t figure out why audio wouldn’t come out of the speaker. there are no shorts on the amp, all the pins i used to wire it up are valid. maybe it’s a programming issue, or everything i just listed into one. all i know is that i might use another pre-built module for the sake of shipping my project in time. the final version will have an embedded screen and amp, im just starting to get on a strict time frame with only a month left of this challenge.

okay, those are the failures. im happy to announce that the buttons and gpio expander work fine! i didn’t test out the flash memory yet, as well as the micro sd card slot. a few issues with the pin configuration for the controller (image 4), but so far it’s working good.

in short: im going to shoot my shot with another raw screen, but if that doesn’t work, im using a pre-built module, as well as the same for the amp. we’ll see if the micro sd card works tomorrow when i get the slot in, as well as flash.

im almost finished with the breadboard mallow configuration, it’s just the pcb that’s driving me nuts.

ps: the esp32 s3 module on the main board is a temp solution. im getting another s3 wroom 1u, the one without the antenna.

as always, thanks for reading. i hope to come back with good news next devlog