The 2 ms reset of ESPHome's expander support (0.2.81) left the chip silent: "Calibration error" with the PCA9557
answering at 0x18. A component of smart_display's (elecrow_touch_reset.h, setup priority 700: after the I2C bus,
before the GT911 driver) writes the expander as Elecrow's V3.0 ESPHome example does: every pin an output and low,
20 ms, the reset released, 100 ms, the interrupt line back to an input. The driver's reset and interrupt pins are gone.
Xandrossian