Bangle.js 2 display ghosting + cradle assembly

Got my Bangle.js 2 today, very nice :)
Some things I figured might be helpful to mention:

• The wooden charge cradle is a little hard to figure out how to assemble without instructions, and the charger itself is very hard to fit into the cradle. Not a big deal, I did manage to assemble it after some effort, and it looks nice, I just thought it was worth mentioning.

• The display seems to "ghost" a lot.. it becomes a lot more obvious with the black background theme (chose it because with the white theme, the display just looks under-saturated - first picture, so I thought maybe with the black theme it'd help). The ghosting does begin to fade away after a few seconds, but it's the first time I've seen a display do that, so it was surprising. Is it normal?

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Thanks! Yes, I've been meaning to add an instruction video for the cradle but things have taken a bit longer than expected this week! There are some tricks to make it easier, but the the slot for the charge cable does seem a big tight now - I moved onto a new batch of wood and I think it cuts a bit different, making the hole tighter than before. I'll made some changes before I cut the next set, but realistically the first half of KickStarters at least will have a tight cable.

I have seen ghosting, but not that bad.. When the Bangle hasn't been moved in a while it'll go into a lower power mode, refreshing the screen only about once a second, so I guess that might be it - but even small movements should really be enough to wake it up from that mode.

Is the watch itself very cold? Looks like you're not wearing it, so I guess the cold might have some effect.

I've just swapped mine to dark theme and I'm really struggling to reproduce any ghosting right now at all though.

Hi Gordon,

Some further experimentation seems to show that it's linked to the screen not refreshing as much - if I open the About app and leave it for a minute, there's basically no ghosting when I go back to the time display, but if I open the Settings app and leave it for even ten seconds, there's ghosting. I'm guessing this is because the Settings app doesn't refresh the screen unless it's actually changing something, while the About app is refreshing every time the backer pixels segment scrolls, so there's no ghosting in areas where the screen contents are fixed (MAC address, firmware information).

That said, it also doesn't happen when going from the clock display to the app switcher, despite the time being a fairly static thing on-screen.. I can reliably reproduce it in the settings app and going -from- the settings app to anything else, but I can't reproduce it easily in anything else. Weird!

Edit: After some more futzing around, I've managed to reproduce it going from the clock face to the app list, but it seems specific to the backlight being on.

Thanks - it's a really odd one. At least it sounds like a software issue so if we can reproduce here I can fix it.

Cradle assembly video is now live at https://youtu.be/M1T2oitL85I

Just a note that I'm not totally sure how I reproduced it, but I did get it to happen once or twice.

Am I right in thinking that it happens right after the 'Loading...' message disappears?

If so, I'm pretty sure it's because the LCD gets refreshed on 'idle', but while an app is loading the watch never idles (sometimes for almost a second) and so the screen doesn't refresh. If so, fixing that should be super easy.

I have similar Ghosting issues sometimes - it almost seems as if the screen driven correctly - the watch being cold makes it way worse. that isn't the cause tho.

To me it seems like its some kind of bug that gets triggered then goes away again by some mechanism (reset? sleep?). It is more noticeable in the light theme when it happens.

Is it mainly after you change app as I mentioned above? If so I'd be pretty sure I know the issue

Update: after reading the whole thread it just might be what you describe. all in all its not that bad, tho.

no, it is not at all what you describe. it is honest to god ghosting that takes minutes to go away. Of course it happens after / during the loading message as well when it does ;)

There will be other times when the Bangle's is busy enough it doesn't get around the idle loop for a while, so it may be those times where you're seeing the ghosting in addition to the loading screen.

I've filed an issue for it at https://github.com/espruino/Espruino/iss­ues/2097 and I'll try and get a fix in when things calm down here