I successfully paired my first xenon as the gateway to a network, but when I try to add the second xenon to the network the phone app allows me to pair the xenon (LED blinking dark blue) with the iphone app, but it does not finish the setup and connect it to the network that was previously set up with my first xenon, and it does not add to the list of “Your Devices”. It just says, “Congrats! You’ve successfully paired xenon-GKB8T2”. It does not do anything else after that. It just waits. Was I supposed to do something with the first xenon to get it to link up with it in bluetooth? They are 6" apart from one another.
@TomEldredge, in order for the second Xenon to join a mesh network, the “assisting” device need to be put in listening mode (pressing SETUP for 3 seconds) when instructed to do so. The “assisting” device in this case is the first Xenon. Did you do this step?
Made a little progress....
The second xenon was the one that was originally on the badge. When I re-installed it onto the badge, it went a little further in the setup. Tonight, I first had that xenon installed on a white breadboard, and it hung up as described in last email. Then I installed it on the Spectra 2018 badge where it originally came from. I'll call this the badge xenon. After pairing with the iphone, the app moved ahead to the software update mode, and I could see the purple light start to blink on the badge xenon, but then it gave me an error: "The bluetooth connection was dropped unexpectedly. Please restart the set up and try again." I did this several times with the same result. So, I guess one of my xenons has a problem with bluetooth. I only have two xenons. I wonder which one has the problem. Do you know of an app that can measure the strength of a bluetooth signal? I could unclaim the first device and see if I could measure the bluetooth strength, and then do the same with the second one to see if one was weak.
Peekay123, I never made it to the step you described. It hung up in the software update mode.
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Hi Tom,
Having similar issues over here. I’m sitting at the Updating Device OS screen but never goes further. Still have the flashing blue light on the Xenon, it’s stuck. How long did it take you to go from Successfully pairing to updating device OS to actually showing some indication of updating the device starting?
I’m doing the same thing, I have the Xenon on the ethernet featherwing from Spectra up and running, this is my ‘badge’ Xenon. I unclaimed and now its more or less bricked (even though it’s not truly bricked).
For Spectra Xenons, you should be able to do the major system firmware upgrade by USB, which may help get past some of the bluetooth issues you are having.
- Go to the mesh firmware releases page.
- Download the hybrid .bin file: hybrid-0.8.0-rc.25-xenon.bin
- Put your device into DFU mode (blinking yellow)
- Flash the code:
particle flash --usb hybrid-0.8.0-rc.25-xenon.bin
Then go back to the mobile setup and it should go more quickly as the Xenon already has up-to-date firmware.
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Hi Rickkas,
When I followed your instructions, the CLI gave me an error saying that it did not see any serial devices in the dfu mode, even though I have my xenon flashing yellow. I have flashed a number of Electrons in dfu in the past. I am familiar with the sequence. So, I reinstalled the CLI for the third time since having all these device driver issues. The device manager lists the xenon DFU mode driver, but it has a yellow caution flag over it, indicating that it is not working. This is the same indication I have received from trying to install the xenon CDC driver. The driver would list, but with a yellow caution flag on top of it. It also did not work.
Windows 7 professional, 32 bit operating system
Hi Johnathan Stone,
It began to show that it was entering the update mode within a few seconds, I recall. The LED flashed purple a few times, then the xenon reset (my pc beeped), then the badge blinking LEDs blinked, and the little musical routine started, then it hung and the phone app said the blue tooth communications were interrupted, retry. (wording of the errors not exact). (That was last night!).
@TomEldredge, did you setup the zadig driver for the Xenon in DFU mode? Without it, DFU will not find the device.
Hi peekay123. I have not done anything with the zadig driver. I just re-installed the CLI again. I don’t recall instructions on setting up the zadig driver. Can you direct me? The setup procedure in the CLI only talks about photons, so it is no help.
Hi Rickkas7,
Now I have installed the zadig driver successfully, but I do not see it listed as a zadig driver in the device manager. Then I followed your particle flash command, but it cannot find the hybrid etc. file. It is in my download folder. Do I need to get it into some specific folder so that the particle flash command can find it? I am not an experienced user of the modern software tools. Most of my programming experience is pre-2001.
I have installed the zadig driver, and now this is what the CLI says:
C:\Users\Tom>particle flash --usb hybrid-0.8.0-rc.25-xenon.bin
Error writing firmware: file does not exist and no known app found.
@TomEldredge, you need to make sure that the DFU directory is in your windows PATH. Once you add it, if you haven’t already done so, follow these instructions in regards to configuring the zadig WinUSB driver for the device. You can ignore the rest of the instructions.
If the file is in your Download directory, you should be able to:
cd Downloads
particle flash --usb hybrid-0.8.0-rc.25-xenon.bin
Hi peekay123, I used the windows "search programs and files" window to search for a DFU directory, but could not find a directory named DFU. I found a file named "windows" but did not see any sub-directories named DFU.
Hi Rickkas, I changed directories to the Downloads directory and observed that when I did the download of the hybrid file, it downloaded under the file name “bootloader-0.8.0-rc.25-xenon.bin”
Should I flash the particle with above the file named “bootloader…”? I do not want to mess anything up.
No, just flash the hybrid file. Now that you’ve done that, try doing the mobile app setup again.
Hi Peekay123,
At Joh Gallant’s website, he links to: “http://bit.ly/photon-driver”.
That link no longer works.
Hi rickkas7,
I will try to download the hybrid file again. When I followed your instructions, the bootloader file downloaded instead of the hybrid file.
Hi rickkas7,
I guess I had not read the file name correctly on my original downoad. I re-downloaded the correct file (hybrid…) and successfully flashed it to my xenon while it was in the DFU mode.
It reported:
C:\Users\Tom\Downloads>particle flash --usb hybrid-0.8.0-rc.25-xenon.bin
Flash success!
C:\Users\Tom\Downloads>
Then I simply reached over and picked up my badge with the xenon on it that I just downloaded to, and pressed the reset button to start to get the blue LED flashing again to try to use the phone app to install it, and after a brief white led flashed, the LED turned off, and now the xenon is totally unresponsive to any push button presses, and it appears to be totally dead. Even the badge is dead. The badge was working up until that reset. Nothing works on it anymore. I guess it is DEAD.
I produced no static or anything else. I have been working on electronics since 1966. I guess it just died, or it is totally hung up. I guess that’s all we can do for now.
Thank you all for your support. I’ll have to wait for a shipment of new xenons.