Wanted to update this post with some additional information hoping someone would be willing to read through and maybe give me some ideas what I could try next. Been having a heck of a time trying to get my Nextion screens working on my 2 HotSpots. For some background, I have two hotspots consisting of a raspberry pi 3b +, a Zumspot v 0.6 from HRO, and a Nextion enhanced 2.4” screen with one of Mich’s tft files. The hotspots have been working fine for about 3 or 4 months with the screens hooked up to the serial port on the Zumspot. In this configuration, when I first hooked them up there was no bi-directional communication with the screen. Only one way TO the screen. I also had tried using a USB to TTL adapter, which worked, but didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t hook that up inside my C4labs case so decided to go with the serial port on the Zumspot board settling with one-way communication instead. Recently, I read that with newer firmware the Zumspot is supposed to allow bi-directional communication with the Nextion screens. I tried updating the firmware on my Zumspot and have not been able to get my screen to communicate with the pi since. I even tried using the USB to TTL adapter and even taking the Zumspot off the pi and just use the USB to TTL adapter by itself with no success. The Zumspot will function as far as the radio portion goes if I set it up it’s just the screen that I can’t get working. What I am doing is loading a fresh version of pi-star, (tried everything from 3.4.17 all the way to 4.1.0-RC2), then following the instructions provided in the post in this thread, sudo su, rpi-rw, sudo pistar-expand, reboot, sudo pistar-update, sudo apt-get install bc, cd /tmp, git clone
https://github.com/on7lds/NextionDriverInstaller.git, sudo NextionDriverInstaller/install.sh. At this point I can connect to the pi and in configuration change the MMDVM display type to Nextion, the Port to /dev/ttyNextionDriver, and Nextion Layout to ON7LDS L3 HS. I then go into MMDVM host section and change the NextionDriver section to show modem. When I save those changes and go back to the configuration page the choice for /ttyNextionDriver is no longer there. The only way I can get that choice back is either to start from the beginning and burn a fresh copy of pi-star or the other way I found is to ssh into pi-star and change to the /dev directory. I then have to do a dir command to list the files, after that I can go back to the configuration screen and the choice is there again, but as soon as I select it and apply the changes, leave that screen and go back, it is gone again. Also, if I go into the /dev directory but don’t issue the dir command to list the files and then go back into the configuration screen, the /ttyNextionDriver choice is not there, even though it is physically in the /dev directory. Not sure what this has to do with my screen not working but it certainly is something that’s not right. I’ve tried changing the screen from the serial port on the Zumspot to the USB to TTL adapter and in turn changing the Nextion section in the MMDVM Host to either modem when connected to the Zumspot to /dev/ttyUSB0. Another thing that might be helpful is I went into the Live Logs and the only thing that seemed out of place was the last two lines that said, “
Opening the MMDVM, Unable to read the firmware version after six attempts.” Not sure what that means but sounds important to me. Hope someone has some advice. I’ve reformatted and reloaded pi-star on different micro sd cards about 100 times, each time trying a new or different setting and for some reason the only thing that seems to be common with everything is that the Nextion Driver doesn’t want to load correctly.
I also printed out the Nextion Driver services log with these results.
Nextiondriver.service – NextionDriver service
Loaded: loaded (/lib/system/system/nextiondriver.service; enabled/ vendoe preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2019-08-10 03:07:57 BST; 39s ago
Main PID; 3146 (
code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Aug 10 03:07:57 pi-star NextionDriver[3146]: Disk size : 29296 MB (26664 free)
Aug 10 03:07:57 pi-star NextionDriver[3146]: Started with screenLayout 4
Aug 10 03:07:57 pi-star NextionDriver[3146] Started with verbose level 2
Aug 10 03:07:57 pi-star NextionDriver[3146] Display will sleep when no data received for 600 seconds
Aug 10 03:07:57 pi-star NextionDriver[3146] opening ports
Aug 10 03:07:57 pi-star NextionDriver[3146]/dev/ttyNextionDriver (=dev/pts/2) modem
Aug 10 03:07:57 pi-star NextionDriver[3146}
Unable to start. For using a display connected to the modem, you have to enable ‘Transparent Data’ and ‘sendFrameType’!
Aug 10 03:07:57 pi-star system[1]
nextiondriver.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1Failed with result ‘exit-code’.