Argon not returning to listening mode, blinking blue/white

Troubleshooting
1

Hi there,

I got my Argon working with the mesh network, and now I’m afraid I’m back to square one again.

My Argon is flashing blue at 2Hz and white at 1Hz. I can’t find what this means on the support page. I can move into DFU mode, but not to safe mode. It doesn’t reconnect through the mobile app.

I’ve tried:

  • Changing to DFU mode, and reflashing the Argon firmware and Tinker. After flashing the LED changes from DFU yellow flashing to blue/white as described above.
  • Connecting through the mobile app - the Argon is not discovered by my phone.

Any thoughts on how I could progress with this?

Many thanks!
Jamie

2

This verbal description is not clear.
How often does it blink each individual colour?
Are the colours alternating or interleaving?

However, this is not a known signal. Can you share a video of that (min. 30 sec).

Could it be one white followed by a few blue - rinse - repeat.
In that case I'd suspect some power issue causing the device to permanently reset.

3

I think he’s maybe referring to this pattern: https://photos.app.goo.gl/foTA4tjbAP5ZRDHFA

(That link will die soon enough, so here’s a description of my Xenon: 12 blue blinks at 2Hz, followed by a single 500ms white flash.)

In my case, this happened after the device tried getting online for 30 minutes or so, but it’s mesh gateway didn’t get online correctly (it required a reboot to properly join the wifi). The power supply is USB, although I have added a battery in hopes that might do something.

The device’s app firmware and deviceOS (v1.4.4) is the same as it was last night. When I unplugged it before bed it was working correctly.

It seems to be “bricked”, in the sense that it will likely take physical intervention.

Any idea what it is?

4

Since there was 5 months radio silence after the initial post I doubt the issue was that pressing for the original poster :wink:

With the video I’d still suspect a power issue. Try taking the device out of the breadboard and see if that changes anything.

Can you put the device in DFU Mode to run particle update -v?

5

Agreed. The alternative was to start a new thread with almost the exact same title and symptoms.

It's a hard balancing act between polluting search results and resurrecting old threads. I'm happy to go either way, lemme know if the general preference is to start new threads.

I had previously power cycled it several times. Just for giggles, I removed all power and then popped it out of the bread board-- no joy.

This feels like a bit of a bandaid, doesn't it? I'm sure I can get it working again with physical intervention, but before going that far it would be nice to know why this happened. The only clue I have right now is the status LED. I suspect that the white light is indicating at reboot, but that's only a guess and it does't follow why the device would reboot.

I'm wary of the link between no internet connection and device bricking, and it's probably worth a little more digging on my part. This device is going at the top of a sailboat mast, so there's a serious safety concern about sending someone up there to retrieve the unit if it bricks itself. (In our sailing program, we typically only do masthead work when the mast is horizontal at ground-level.)

6

So it seems.

The interesting thing is why the device is in Listening Mode to start with.
Or is this actually cyan?
What is your code doing?

7

It's blue, but it sure is hard to tell the difference with the camera!

I don't think my code ever runs. It should boot, publish something on the mesh, and go to sleep. I have a serial write at the beginning and ending of setup() (firmware/Nexus/Nexus.cpp · master · Kenn Sebesta / Afloat · GitLab), so either it's crashing before Serial.println() can write to the port, or it's never beginning my app.

8

The story was:
This was what it looked like: https://photos.app.goo.gl/twLWFWGkhpkC1ag27

And in the end it was bricked and was replaced.
Hope you have more luck with yours!
Thanks,
Jamie