Boron 2g/3g doesn't reconnect to cloud after a disconnect event

Hi Starships.

I’ve not heard any customer concerns of the issue coming back up for any customer on v1.3.1-rc.1

I encourage you to run https://github.com/rickkas7/boron-clouddebug on your device to capture debug logs so that we can see what may be causing issues.

It’s unclear to me why your units are disconnecting so frequently. Feel free to direct message me your device IDs and I can investigate on our client side why they may be disconnecting so frequently.

Boron 2G/3G and Boron LTE make use of different operators, technologies, and towers. It could be a coverage issue or it could be something else. I can potentially provide more insight once I am able to view cloud side logs for these devices.

I’m still having issues. I think there needs to be more testing done with sim cards that are not Particle sims?? from my understanding all the testing is with a particle sim?
I kinda have just given up to be honest. I should have never changed from the Electron to the Boron. :frowning:

Hi ric.

Correct, we do not do testing on third party SIMs. The number of SIM configurations and regions are vast, making this difficult to test for. As such, we only do formal testing on our own first party SIMs.

With that said, the primary cause of third party SIM failure is likely around keep alive values not being properly set. I highly encourage you to experiment with the keep alive for your device to ensure it is appropriately set. A keep alive that is too high is likely liable to make the device all in and out of flashing green as the operator is closing the connection.

I highly suspect you would see this issue as well on the Electron and that this is not a Boron specific issue.

For preliminary testing, I encourage you to set the keep alive to a very low value, such as 30 seconds, and monitor activity over the course of an hour. Do keep in mind that this will consume more data than usual so do not let it run indefinitely.

To more deterministic-ally figure out the keep alive value for your third party SIM, it may be worth exploring my keep-alive-tester tool. It is a two part tool (user app and Node application) that sets up a simple user application with an intentionally high keep alive timeout. In that time, you can use a pub-sub model that is set up with the node application to send and receive data from the device. The tool can be run several times to help determine what the keep alive value for your device should be for its particular SIM in that particular region.

Just want to point out that I’m having the issue with the particle SIM in Canada. @mstanley I will dm you my device IDs shortly. As I mentioned before, I ran the cloud debugger for over a week and the connection was solid throughout. The flashing green bug only happens in normal build for some reason.

Understood. That suggests there may be something going on either in your user application or API usage that could be having issues then. We can certainly take a look once I have device IDs. :slight_smile:

Hi there, I am facing the same issue for 2g/3g Boron in New Zealand with Particle SIM.
I have done DeviceOS update to 1.4.4 but didn’t help.

I know that coverage in some of the locations is not good. What I have discovered is if I keep the device for long time in location with no coverage, after moving to good coverage area, yet it will keep trying to reconnect forever until I press the reset button.

Any though on this issue and how I can sort it?

Hi @vanda

Would you be able to provide clouddebug logs that reproduce this behavior? I’d like to look into this further.

I ma having the same issue here, I am using the internal sim card from particle and device is being tried with both OS 1.4.4 and 1.5.0. The device once disconnected from cloud doesnt reconnect back. How to resolve this issue, My rest of the code behaves as we want it to be.

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also to note that even after i restart the device, I have to press the mode button for approx 4 seconds to make it blink green and then it tries to connect to the cloud. Our product is hanging because of this feature, please help us to resolve this issue.

@sushil I can confirm Particle has subsequently reintroduced this issue after seemingly fixing it in 1.3.1-rc1. Don’t use 1.5.0. See Stable cellular reconnection newly ruined with Boron 2.0.0-rc1, and perhaps earlier

It’s very frustrating and making me reconsider whether I can stick with Particle. They are such nice people, but their LTE product simply is dysfunctional because it disconnects and then never reconnects, unless if you get extremely lucky (such as I have two stations using 1.3.1-rc1 that have been up for months and are great) (and I have other 1.3.1-rc1s that have never reconnected)

Hi Paul_M,
Thanks for reply, I can understand frustration, I have more than 40 pcs of particle that need to go on a product and now we are realizing the disconnect events are too frequent on few devices and if disconnect they dont reconnect back and we need the real time data as events are happening. (critical time based application). Now can I say there is nothing that I can do to fix this ?If there is then please suggest.
Alternatively I am planning to save the data in external flash memory, littleFS, would be great to know from you what would be the best way to implement this. I want to save my sensor data with timestamp and when device reconnect then all data is sent to the cloud. Would you be able to guide on this?

We would like to understand this issue better, @sushil - are you able to provide us with clouddebug logs that reproduce this behavior? Without a device-side accounting of the issue, our visibility and ability to troubleshoot and resolve is limited.

Hi Sushil, I would say get Marek your logs and simply use an SD card module for the purpose you described. Now what Device OS version are your never-reconnecting Borons? As long as they are 1.3.1-rc1 and not newer, they should reconnect.

Hi Paul_M,
Thanks for suggestion, I have one limitation that the PCB and the hardware is already made for this! So basically now I have only option of using the inbuilt flash memory.
Can I downgrade from 1.4.4 to 1.3.1-rc1? What commands do i need to run to get my existing borons back to 1.3.1-rc1.

I would really appreciate the help I am using boron 2g/3g.
regards
sushil

Hi Mark,
Yes I will provide with the clouddebugs. Can you guide me on few points:

  1. Device physically connected to system and then run which command?
  2. need to run this in DFU mode?
  3. I should run this is with my final firmware version running on particle boron ?

any other guidelines please tell me , i can run it an share it with you tomorrow as i dont have particles with me right now.

regards
sushil

Hi Sushil,

Of course I can provide more guidance!

First, please upgrade your device to Device OS 2.0+ by following the instructions here: https://github.com/particle-iot/device-os/releases/tag/v2.0.0-rc.2. You will need the Particle CLI in order to proceed.

Next, please download Boron Cloud Debug (link) from the repo link. We’re especially interested in the .bin file.

From there, open your computer’s Terminal (cmd.exe - Windows or Terminal - Mac), navigate to the directory to which you downloaded your file by using the cd command.

Connect your device to your computer and place it in DFU Mode.

Then run particle flash --usb boron.bin. The device will restart and start trying to connect. What we are really looking for is not documentation of that first success, but documentation of a failed reconnect following a disconnect event. Depending on how frequently you experience this issue, this may take awhile.

The best way to produce logs for us is with particle serial monitor --follow in the Terminal of your choice (Mac - Terminal, Windows - cmd.exe, etc…). Please copy and paste the results of logs that document the failed reconnect event either into this post or into a direct message to me.

Cloud debug will give me a lot of insight into the state the device thinks it is in from a low level; your efforts in this this respect will allow us to zero-in on root cause.

Hey @sushil - instead of using the linked Cloud Debug binary, please use this one after you upgrade your OS. Thank you!

(And please unzip it first :slight_smile: ).

@marekparticle

  1. is the little FS exposed to the user for saving data?
  2. especially when device goes offline and data can be saved with time stamp so it can sent later when device reconnect ?
  3. If not little FS what are the other ways to achieve this saving of the data with timestamp.
    This is very important feature for us because we need to aware all the time what has happened to our IoT device. The event that might happen during offline are also very critical in making the business decisions.
    Note: we have already finalized the hardware with particle boron and have no external flash build on our PCB.
    regards
    sushil

I have use the above method and ran the terminal after flashing the boron.bin file, my device is blinking green non stop. and unable to connect to cloud.

Hi @sushil - can you please create a support ticket (support.particle.io) so I can be in touch more directly? We will update this page once we have some results.

I am specifically looking for logs printed to the Terminal (which become available only after running particle serial monitor --follow in your Terminal).