Ever since I upgrade my iPhone (14 Pro / iOS 16.1 - Apply Fanboy - I know! ) my experience with activating Borons has become more error prone.
Here are the issues I see:
When scanning the QR code, the image requires me to pull the phone out farther from the device before it will focus. This makes the QR code much smaller on the screen and unless there is excellent light, it will not scan. This is noticeably different behavior than with the iPhone 12.
I then say no to Mesh (not sure why this question is still asked) and then push the button to activate the SIM - this goes smoothly. But then, almost instantly, a failure occurs saying the SIM card is taking too long to activate. This happened before but only occasionally and only after some time. This dialog comes up within a second of pressing the “activate SIM” button. Pressing retry will bring up this screen repeatedly.
Thanks for sharing @Chipmc. I personally haven’t used the iPhone app in a long time. I had to check to see if it’s still on my phone even. What’s making you want to use the iPhone app over the console.particle.io web browser? I found it much easier to just add all devices to my exiting console via desktop PC/laptop. If the only advantage is the QR code reader, I ended up just purchasing a USB 2D barcode reader from amazon and use that to scan in to a .txt file using notepad and then upload to the Particle console from there. Makes it really easy to scan in a bunch and add them all at once. I use this one: 2D QR Barcode Scanner If I were to do it again, I would of gone with the Bluetooth version. I hate cords.
What’s the main advantage of using the Particle app from a mobile device?
We do not recommend using the Particle mobile apps for setup. For product devices, the best method is to add the Device ID or serial number to your product, which will add the device and activate the SIM card.
When ordering in tray quantities from the Particle wholesale store, you’ll get an email with the Device IDs, and you can add them all at once. In the growth and enterprise plans, the device is not billable until it comes online the first time.
Thank you. I have used the bulk upload process for big orders but had developed a bad habit of using the mobile app for small orders <10 devices. Now that you mention it, it seems I just need to use the console for all my activations.
Perhaps we should update the Boron quick start to reflect the console approach as it still takes you to this page in this tutorial: https://setup.particle.io
Thank you for the tip on the barcode scanner. I have one that I use to scan the barcodes from Digikey as part of my electronics parts database. I had not thought about it but it would be helpful here as well.
