Cannot Flash anything to Particle Photon

Troubleshooting
1

I cannot flash anything onto my new Particle photon, even though it breathes cyan, I can see my photon on the build IDE, and the Photon will cycle colors when "Signal"ed on the IDE.

I opened a new Photon that had been bought ~1 year ago. I set it up by connecting the USB to my Mac and using the particle-cli particle setup

Flashing Methods tried:

  1. Flashing via web IDE
    Result: flash unsuccessful: Request Timed Out
  2. Flashing via USB/cli by Downloading the Binary .bin and and particle flash PhotonName1 firmware.bin
    Result: Flash device failed. Timed out.

I read something about flashing tinker via DFU mode, that failed too.

dfu-util: Invalid DFU suffix signature
dfu-util: A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!
Deducing device DFU version from functional descriptor length
Opening DFU capable USB device...
ID 2b04:d006
Run-time device DFU version 011a
Claiming USB DFU Interface...
Setting Alternate Setting #0 ...
Determining device status: state = dfuIDLE, status = 0
dfuIDLE, continuing
DFU mode device DFU version 011a
Device returned transfer size 4096
DfuSe interface name: "Internal Flash "
Downloading to address = 0x080a0000, size = 3952
Download [=========================] 100% 3952 bytes
Download done.
File downloaded successfully
dfu-util: Error during download get_status

Error writing firmware...dfu-util: Invalid DFU suffix signature
dfu-util: A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!

dfu-util: Error during download get_status

Lastly, I tried using screen /dev/SERIALPORT to find the firmware version, and while the photon returns the coreid and MAC address, typing s gives me modular: no and typing v returns nothing (I wanted to see the firmware version.

This is a completely new device. It should not be this difficult to flash a simple blink code.

2

Looks like tinker was flashed correctly. When you power on the Photon, does it show the tinker functions in https://console.particle.io/devices?

3

Placing it in safe mode before flashing often also helps when devices (user code) are being stubborn.
Doing a particle update in the CLI wonā€™t hurt though.

4

Thanks for the suggestions, but I cannot update the my photon firmware with the command line:

Your device is ready for a system update.
This process should take about 30 seconds. Here goes!
! An error occurred while attempting to update the system firmware of your device:
dfu-util: Invalid DFU suffix signature
dfu-util: A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!
dfu-util: Error during download get_status

I noticed this morning that I cannot get my Photon to "stay" in Safe Mode. Once I release the Setup button after the LED turns magenta, it will briefly turn white and then enter blinking blue listening mode.

I have a hard time believing this is a user code error, because this is a fresh Photon out of the box.

5

It had been on there before the problem fixed itself.

However, after a failed particle update and 5 more ā€˜particle setupā€™, the photon started behaving.

Strangeā€¦

Thanks for help

6

I donā€™t know how a ā€œfailedā€ update command helped, but after I tried (unsuccessfully) to update the firmware, a subsequent series of particle setup commands seemed to knock the sense into this microprocessor.

thanks!

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