So I find the cloud compiler to be somewhat unreliable. I’m no fan of flashing over the cloud. I would like to compile a binary locally and flash it over to the photon via USB. (similar to what any arduino board does). I’m on the Windows platform if that is helpful. Also- I’ve been a software developer (some hardware dev.) for the last 30 years, so I know my way around compilers and make utilities. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
-gene
The current stable version of Dev does not allow for that (yet).
You can however download the toolchain (or set up your own), and compile the firmware with that. There’s a neat windows installer over here, with netbeans included. Take a look 
If you are using Particle Dev, you can use this alpha setup: https://github.com/spark/particle-dev-local-compiler
Thanks… is either this approach or the alpha local compile (see other reply) preferred? These will allow me to create a binary and then flash over to the photon device directly with USB instead of using the cloud, correct?
Personal preference really. Some like Dev, other like whatever other IDEs there are. Both will give you a .bin file. The local toolchain can automatically flash that using DFU-UTIL, and DEV requires you to do that manually. If the USB flashing is the only thing you’re interested in, you can create your code in the web IDE and then download the .bin file from there. Using the CLI, you should be able to flash that then.