I recently ordered a Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+, then ordered a Pi touchscreen display to go with it. After assembly and applying power I get nothing on the display. So I disassembled the Pi 3 A+/ touchscreen display unit and connected my HDMI display, with USB keyboard/mouse dongle and 8G memory card. I get a red/yellow/blue splash screen. Only the red LED is lit on the Pi 3 A+ PCB. There is no blinking light activity when power is applied.
I have moved the assembly back to my Pi 3 B+ (HDMI display, USB keyboard/mouse dongle and 8G memory card) and everything works fine on the Pi 3 B+ unit.
The same power supply is used in each setup. I think my Pi 3 A+ is bad. What’s your opinion? Should I try something else?
Hi Dave,
It definitely sounds like your new Raspberry Pi A+ is defective. Two quick questions before we get an RMA ticket set up (assuming you purchased the Pi directly from SparkFun). First, when you boot the malfunctioning Pi A+, do you see a small yellow lightning bolt on the display/screen? Second, if you have a multimeter available, try probing the 3.3V and 5V rails for voltage and let us know what you measure.
I do not see a lightning bolt on the display, my HDMI screen is now entirely black. Though previously I did have a splash screen.
I connected my Sparkfun Pi Wedge so I can easily probe the power supply pins. The 3.3 Volt supply is showing 3.300 Volts; the 5 Volt supply is showing 5.394 Volts. The red “PWR” LED is lit; no other LEDs on the PCB are emitting light.
Hi again Dave,
Thanks for performing those tests. Even though the SD card is working on another Pi, can you please try running a fresh install of either Raspbian or NOOBS and see if that helps anything? If not, I think it is safe to say the Pi is defective and we would be happy to assist you with sending that back to SparkFun and replacing the Pi. If that is the case, please fill out the form on [this page and in the “Why do you want an RMA?” box, fill in a brief description of the issue and link to this forum topic and we will follow up with further instructions on that process.](Return Policy - SparkFun Electronics)
After several days and numerous attempts at downloading the latest Raspbian image (2019-04-08-raspbian-stretch-full), I’ve finally succeeded! I placed the new SD image in the Pi 3 A+ with an HDMI display, dongle mouse and keyboard and it booted fine. I then moved the Pi 3 A+ over to the 7" LCD display and it also booted fine. Can someone tell me why going through “update” and “upgrade” is not equivalent to downloading the latest image then going through the update process?
It’s going to be a pain to update Tkinter and GTK+ that is on the old image.
Hi Dave,
That’s great to hear you were able to get the Pi A+ up and running finally. As for the difference between using the “update” and “upgrade” in the Pi’s APT, I believe it may be related to a change made in the Raspbian image that requires a manual update. This is covered briefly in [this guide from the Pi Foundation regarding updating and upgrading Raspbian. Most likely, there was something in the latest version of Raspbian that needed a manual update by downloading the latest image.
Let us know if you have any other questions or concerns about your Pi A+ and we would be happy to help as much as we can.](https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/raspbian/updating.md)