kit received! kit assembled! now to make it work!

[truthcult]

hey everyone, i got my kit last week and assembled it over the weekend. assembly went very smoothly (i think). i'm unfortunately having the following issues that i'm trying to sort out:

- phone turns on with a green LED under the dial (no white light near the bell). OLED displays STARTING. after this, phone becomes largely unresponsive. manipulating the dial does not display digits or trigger any lights (visually and audibly confirmed that the limit switch is triggering). buttons don't cause any visible changes. at one point, holding the phone button got the OLED to display CALLING (since trying to reflash firmware this is no longer the case, however). when turning the phone off, there is a delay and then the OLED says GOODBYE
- others have mentioned the e-ink display showing things on startup. mine does not. i've tried reseating the connector to no avail. screen does not appear physically damaged in any way.
- another thread suggested updating the firmware. i followed the instructions in the build documentation and ran into two issues. first, the IDE _really_ thinks that the phone is an ATmega 2560, not a 1280. As such, i can upload a sketch if the settings are set to 2560 but not 1280. i get green and amber lights near the bell during this process, but nothing particularly changes.

would love some thoughts on where to start looking to start getting this to work!

[truthcult]

Also worth noting that I had a longer, and much more detailed version of this post written last night, but the forum ate it. Happy to provide documentation and describe tests I've run in more detail.

[morningphyre]

I've also completed assembly and found the device unresponsive with dial and buttons. Haven't tried updating yet, will go there next. My eink does show the initial RUSP message (the one with all the fonts), but I've found it's distorted when the case is assembled, normal with the case open. Not sure what's up with that.

[truthcult]

Ah, my eInk display does nothing at all. I'll try fiddling with (and maybe replacing) that.

I'd be curious if anyone could disconnect their eInk display and test to see if that stalls boot or prevents the rotary dial from registering digits. My guess (hope?) is that the answer is yes.

[imyxh]

The chip should indeed be a 2560. Some documentation may be out of date....

As for troubleshooting first check:

• do you see anything over serial?
• can you send AT commands over serial? https://github.com/skysedge/rusp_firmwa ... atsheet.md

[badgeguy]

Okay, never mind that below, but the firmware updating issues still exist. It appears that one of the battery leads was not completely seated into the connector on the mainboard and after another quite a few hours of charging, I was able to get the phone to shutdown and allow me to charge it fully with it off. Now it will turn on and off, accept a phone call and play a tone when a text message comes in, but it still will not let me update the firmware.

Now, after turning the phone one and letting STARTING clear out, I will start the upload and STARTING and the green light will reappear for about 9 seconds and then both disappear again with an amber light near the bell that will blink a couple of times and then stop. After another 30 seconds of no activity the following error appears:

ERROR:===============================================================
Sketch uses 48218 bytes (18%) of program storage space. Maximum is 253952 bytes.
Global variables use 4691 bytes (57%) of dynamic memory, leaving 3501 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 8192 bytes.
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_getsync(): timeout communicating with programmer
Failed uploading: uploading error: exit status 1
======================================================================

Just as reference, the list of items not currently working: The white light in the bell alcove at startup (I think the green light is the new white light though), no numbers appear on the OLED display if attempting to dial, the bell does not ring, the eInk Paper show the static RUSP info text, there is no contact list, non of the functions (alpha, beta, lamda, Fn, C) do anything, Local/Alt/NonLocal switch appears to do nothing (but I am unable to call in any way shape or form, so how would I know). Things working: I see calls coming in with all the flashing lights, I can answer and hang up calls with the phone button, the speaker and microphone work for incoming phone calls.

Any assistance or advice that could be suggested would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Badgeguy

System: Win 11 Pro / Aurdino IDE 2.3.7 / SD 1.3.0 / Adafruit GFX Library 1.12.4 / GxEPD2 1.3.3 / Firmware from GitHub downloaded as of 2025-12-21


PRIOR POST EDITED:
I am having a similar problem except that I can not keep the phone active long enough to be able to update the firmware.

Regardless whether the phone is in the on or the off position, the phone shows an amber charging indicator. It will show "Starting" on the OLED display and a green status light for anywhere between 3 and 9 seconds, then the green light and the "Starting" message disappear for about a half second, then they come back.

While plugged into the computer, I can hear the tone of disconnection and re-connection each time the green light goes out.

While the green light is on, I can attempt to start a firmware update, but it takes longer than the green light will stay on and this results in timeout errors in the update (see below).

Without power supplied to the device, no lights appear whether it is in the on or off state, almost as if the battery is not even attached.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[ERROR MESSAGES DELETED]