Touchscreen issues

I’ve had a rash of problems with the touchscreens on bare Polarshields!

Over the last six months or so, I’ve noticed an issue where the touchscreen doesn’t work after booting. It looks ok, and updates fine, just no response to tapping.

I solve this by discharging the static from the device, while it is unplugged. I do it by either leaving it for a couple of minutes, unplugged, or by touching the metal USB socket housing, and rubbing an earthed piece of metal (it’s a wall-mounted shelving rack that I know happens to be screwed into the grounded metal studding in the wall). Handle it carefully, by the edges of the board while you’re plugging it back in.

I didn’t write anything about this until now, because until recently I was hoping this was a problem that only I was having! I think the touch IC must be being blocked during it’s boot process, or something like that.

I have handled hundreds of these, and the screens actually breaking down somehow is very rare. Having them rebel against their touch programming happens every day though, and I always fix it this way.

You can test your screen by using the UTFT and UTouch example sketches, but with these updated lines:

UTFT        myGLCD(TFT01_24_8, 38, 39, 40, 41);   
UTouch      myTouch(11, 12, 18, 19, 2);

Good luck!