Open box, upgrade, dead watch?

[ahaplesshappenstance]

Hi all,

Received my first 2 sealed PineTimes today. One I was able to open, sync to, upgrade and is operating happily (it is SO COOL!)

The second however:
Powered on when I placed it into the cradle to charge (from PC USB port). I connected to it, began the upgrade process (Infinitime 1.6 -> Infinitime 1.9), and got called away. Returned hours later, grabbed the cradle+PineTime from the computer and began commute home. But: I cannot wake the screen. The device appears dead - screen is black/no backlighting, and unresponsive (I've tried holding the button for durations ranging from a single click to >60 seconds; no apparent change in state).

Did I somehow break it? Is there a timeout to successfully completing InfiniTime upgrades? Is it a DOA unit?
I tried searching online (although not yet in the Discord chats) but didn't find anything related to this sort of problem.

Any advice please is welcomed, thanks

[ahaplesshappenstance]

Additional information:

In a completely darkened room I was able to see that the screen IS cycling on/off at something like 2-4 Hz.

[BronzeBeard]

My brand new PineTime is doing pretty much the same thing.

Give the screen a good smack with the palm of your hand. It should start working after that.


Sadly, mine works for about 5-10 minutes and then does it again. Sometimes it completely freezes. An RMA would probably cost as much as just buying a new one. I'm disappointed by Pine64 quality again. :\

Hopefully, someone knows why it's doing this. I'd hate to crack open a sealed unit, but it's better than having a brick on my wrist.

[wibble]

It may just be a connector that needs reseating as a few people found with the devkits. Be gentle with the FPC ones. Screen is the flat one in the bottom left. The FPC above it is the touch sensor, and the one at the top is the heart rate sensor that's stuck to the back of the battery. The battery has double sided tape on the back so lift it carefully to avoid damaging whatever bit below it may be stuck to - there's at least one report of having ripped the accelerometer off the board. I've not tried opening a sealed one, but sealed a devkit with B-6000 glue.
https://wiki.pine64.org/images/2/29/Pine...cation.jpg

[BronzeBeard]

It may just be a connector that needs reseating as a few people found with the devkits. Be gentle with the FPC ones. Screen is the flat one in the bottom left. The FPC above it is the touch sensor, and the one at the top is the heart rate sensor that's stuck to the back of the battery. The battery has double sided tape on the back so lift it carefully to avoid damaging whatever bit below it may be stuck to - there's at least one report of having ripped the accelerometer off the board. I've not tried opening a sealed one, but sealed a devkit with B-6000 glue.
https://wiki.pine64.org/images/2/29/Pine...cation.jpg

Thanks for the tips and the pictures. I've got it bookedmark. A bad ribbon connection is what I expected, considering if you smack it just right, it works fine. Speaking of which, after the last smack, it's been working fine for 36 hours. So I will probably pop it open if it starts doing it again, and I get annoyed enough to bother. Your picture gives me a good idea of what I am looking at. I'll be sure to document it, as from what I've seen on search, I'm not the only one with this issue on the sealed units.

[ahaplesshappenstance]

Thanks for the feedback BronzeBeard and wibble.

In this case, I don't know exactly what went wrong, however, allowing the device to discharge completely (~7 days) and the plugging it in seems to have allowed it to restart appropriately. I'm not experiencing any screen flicker at all at this time, so luckily I don't appear to have the loose connection.

Now that it's up, I've updated from Infinitime 1.6 -> 1.9 and completed the Validate step this time. At this point the PineTime appears to be working as expected.