Cannot setup a new Photon

Troubleshooting
1

I’m at a loss as to what to do next. A Photon continuously blinks blue and I cannot get past this stage. This is what I have done so far and I welcome any further suggestions (even if it is to throw it in the bin as I’ve wasted so much time already):

  1. Started by trying to setup wifi credentials using my android phone - phone could not disconnect from the photon once it had the wifi settings.

  2. Updated the firmware (it was very old) using dfu-util and tried again. Same result.

  3. Tried a different usb cable and computer and used particle cli to update firmware - update worked. Then tried particle setup and failed after receiving wifi settings (yes, the settings are correct). Still flashing blue.

At this stage I have exhausted all my knowledge. Just to double check I took a new photon out the packaging and it set up perfectly. I now have 11 working photons and 1 obstinate one. Any suggestions from the gurus before I bin it?

2

Since you’ve got the CLI, could you place it in DFU mode and issue particle update, as well as particle flash --usb tinker, and then use particle serial wifi in listening mode? If you could post a screenshot of the output of those, that’d be great.

1 Like
3

Thanks for the reply @Moors7

Particle update finishes with no problems - after the update the photon goes into blue flashing mode:

C:\Users\Peter>particle update

> Your device is ready for a system update.
> This process should take about 30 seconds. Here goes!

! System firmware update successfully completed!

> Your device should now restart automatically.

After particle flash --usb tinker: again no problem. Completes and then flashes blue.

C:\Users\Peter>particle flash --usb tinker
Found DFU device 2b04:d006
spawning dfu-util -d 2b04:d006 -a 0 -i 0 -s 0x080A0000:leave -D C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\particle-cli\binaries\photon_tinker.bin
dfu-util 0.8

Copyright 2005-2009 Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
Copyright 2010-2014 Tormod Volden and Stefan Schmidt
This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
Please report bugs to dfu-util@lists.gnumonks.org

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
Invalid DFU suffix signature
A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!

Flash success!

Finally ran particle serial wifi and entered my wifi credentials - particle accepted them and is now flashing cyan for a few seconds and then ends with a solid red colour for a brief moment. Then back to flashes cyan and then solid red again.

Thanks for the help so far. Any further suggestions - seems we are getting somewhere.

4

Finally solved the problem. Ran particle identify in listening mode to get the ID of the device and then ran particle keys doctor on the device ID - all is well and connected back to the cloud breathing cyan - now to claim it. :slight_smile:

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