A week ago (or so) I debugged the kitchen clock which is doing this:
I tried swapping out everything else except the screen itself, but no dice. And then a commenter confirmed that these screens are indeed flaky (or at least some production runs are), so I got a new one.
Which arrived a couple days ago:
Unboxing:
Lots of little doodads…
And the screen.
Yes! It’s the same as the one I had — Waveshare have many similar ones, so I wasn’t 100% sure I was buying the right model.
The inside view of the old one.
OK, the old screen is just fastened with double sided tape, so using a prying kit should do the trick…
No! Man, this tape sticks hard. Gotta use a screwdriver to bend it off.
Done! Look at my expert jigsawing skills…
I should probably check the new screen before I mount it… seems to work? And no flickering:
Yay.
So the lesson is: It’s not always the cable.

