sudomod

Hey everyone,

First of all I want to thank everyone in this forum for all the nice guides and topics. They've really helped me a lot with building my gameboy.

So I have a question about the gearbest screen that most people use.

I've just finished my 2nd gameboy zero, I've tested it a couple of times, and a couple of days ago my screen went black all of a sudden. I tried checking if I had a short somewhere (which would surprise me since everything is glued down). I also checked if my cables were connected well. Everything seems to be in order...

One thing I noticed is that even after a few seconds of being powered on, something gets very hot on the board, and I mean burn your fingers hot. So after reading a bit on the forums I'm pretty confident my board is fried up, and I've ordered a new one. My question to you is, whether you guys think I just had bad luck, or if there is something I could have done wrong which caused the board to fry? I would really hate to repeat the same mistake. The only thing I can think of is that maybe a small piece (1-2mm) of copper wire got into in the gameboy shell before I closed it and shorted something, but I couldn't find anything.

Some info on the wiring:
Yellow wire to tv pad on the pi zero W
GND wire to the gnd pad beside the tv pad on the pi
White wire taped off
Red wire to power strip

I also read on Tinkerboy's website a different way of wiring. Which involves using 2 ground wires. I tried this, but my board was already broken so... Do you guys recommend this to the way I did it?

I hope this was a clear explanation.

Best of luck to you all in your projects!

I think just bad luck. I recently had 2 gearbest screens do the same thing. I've used 20+ and 2 have failed recently, just like you said. Worked for a bit. Then stop and get scorching hot.

In both cases I contacted gearbest and got new screens send out free of charge. I have no idea why they failed since nothing out of the ordinary happend at all.

I've seen it mentioned a few times now...I wonder if there is something going on with the manufacturing of these boards....

The LED driver circuit in this module uses cheap unshielded inductor which is probably the main cause of some heat/unstable issues.

Thank you tinkerboy and rodocop for your fast replies.

I will contact gearbest to see if I can get a refund for this screen.

So if I'm correct my wiring was OK? Or should I try to do it tinkerboy's way next time with 2 ground wires?

Best regards

Your wiring is fine, and so is tinkerboys. Up to you what method you use.