Photon Troubleshooting Guide (as of Firmware v0.4.6)

21

Sorry to hear you’re photons are not working as expected. Have you taken any troubleshooting steps so far?

22

@mdma thanks for helpin. did you read my precedent posts in this thread ? Yes, I’ve spent hours in troubleshooting. I’ve spent also some time with Harisson from your support team by email, but I have no news from him since 5 days.

23

So it seems you’re suffering from fast blinking cyan with blips of red/orange in between? Having a short video of that would be great, since the colors are easily confused (as experience has shown).

If you’re willing to give it another shot, could you try the following?

  • update the CLI using npm update -g particle-cli
  • put the device in DFU mode
  • issue particle update using the CLI.

That should get you on the latest firmware. Should problems proceed to exist, give the following a try:

If that doesn’t help;

If possible, could you try setting up a hotspot with your cellphone to rule out unforeseen router issues. For some reason mobile hotspots are ‘simpler’ and tend to work well.

24

Please @christine I tried following your steps but i got stucked at the point of flashing the part 1 and 2 as whenever i tried, it keeps displaying “dfu-util: Could not open file system-part1-0.4.6-photon.bin for reading: No such file or directory”. I don’t know if I will need to create a new file and download the firmware binaries into it. Please can you assist me in this?
Thanks

25

@luckygodswill There are clearer instructions here. If you have trouble even after trying these things, email hello@particle.io for more help.

26

You should first CD to the directory the downloaded .bins are in, or the command line won’t be able to find them, and thus report that they don’t exist.

Alternatively, you can follow the steps in my post above, and use the Particle CLI, which should do the same thing.

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27

I’ve spent a couple of hours trying to resolve a problem that showed up after I was happily programming my Photon. My Photon has the latest firmware. The problem showed up about the time I was attempting to use the random function.

Suddenly, I was getting some flashing that looked like a reset and attempt to connect to the cloud, but instead ends with a red SOS flash, followed by 5 error flashes. This is “Usage fault,” but I have no idea what I should do to fix this.

I attempted to do a factory reset, but no matter how long I hold down the setup button, I don’t get past the DFU rapid yellow flashes.

When I attempt to reflash the firmware using dfu-util, I get the following message:

$ dfu-util -d 2b04:d006 -a 0 -s 0x8020000 -D system-part1-0.4.6-photon.bin
dfu-util 0.5

> (C) 2005-2008 by Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
> (C) 2010-2011 Tormod Volden (DfuSe support)
> This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY

> dfu-util does currently only support DFU version 1.0

> Filter on vendor = 0x2b04 product = 0xd006
> Cannot open device 

However, dfu-util can find my photon:
~$ dfu-util -l
> dfu-util 0.5

> (C) 2005-2008 by Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
> (C) 2010-2011 Tormod Volden (DfuSe support)
> This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY

> dfu-util does currently only support DFU version 1.0

> Found DFU: [2b04:d006] devnum=0, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=0, name="UNDEFINED"
> Found DFU: [2b04:d006] devnum=0, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=1, name="UNDEFINED"

How do I un-bricked my Photon ?

28

Looks like your using a very old version of dfu-util have a look for a later version, i think 0.8 came out 18 months ago

29

try safe mode since most likely the error is in your application. there should be no need to reflash system firmware.

30

Thanks for the responses.

@Hootie81 -
When I used dfu-util 0.8, I get the following error messages:
dfu-util: Invalid DFU suffix signature
dfu-util: A valid DFU suffix will be required i a future dfu-util release!!!
dfu-util: Cannot open DFU device 2b04:d006

@mdma - I really wish I could get my photon into safe mode. However, no matter how long I hold down the setup button, and no matter how much a plead, beg and threaten my photon, it will not progress past DFU mode.

Further suggestions please? Or is it time to send my photon off to the big brick yard in the sky and maybe appeal for a replacement?

31

Have you installed the DFU driver using Zadig?
maybe just double check the libusbk version.. see here

32

That might be because Safe mode comes BEFORE DFU mode. Thus, if you're at DFU mode, you're too far already.

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33

Head slap!

Yes, @Moors7, problem solved.

Thanks.

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