Cannot setup Photon

Hello all,

I’m having a bear of a time setting up my brand new Photon. Just got it in the mail and cannot get past the flashing blue. Here’s what I’ve tried:

  • Plugged into USB power and tried setup with the iPhone app. I can log in to the Particle cloud successfully, but when I get to the step where I connect to the Photon Wi-Fi, I connect then nothing happens. I see that I’m connected to the Photon Wi-fi, but when I go back to the app, it just sits at the instruction page. I also never get a notification from the Particle app as seen in the “Show Me How” video.
  • Changed wall warts, USB cables, etc. – still nothing.
  • Tried connecting directly through USB to my Windows computer. Got node.js and npm set up, particle-cli installed, etc. When I run particle setup, it finds the Photon connected through USB but then I get the following error: Potentially unhandled rejection [2] Unable to find mac address in response (WARNING: non-Error used). I can move past this, where it finds “Photon-xxxx” and it gets the “magical claim code” but then I get the following: Woops. Something went wrong connecting to Photon-xxxx. Please manually re-connect to your Wi-Fi network.
  • I’ve done factory resets, DFU mode, and nothing seems work (DFU mode is another issue, it doesn’t find the photon_tinker.bin file, but I’m in over my head with the libusb stuff). I just cannot get past the flashing blue.

Any thoughts?

Using the CLI, could you give this a try: particle setup wifi, and then don’t have it detect your security type automatically.

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Same here and I also tried the CLI “particle setup wifi” as suggested by Moors7. Sometimes I even get that serial comm doesn’t work.

My photon seems to randomly connect and disconnect from the web, and the compiler isn’t even working at this point, when I press the verify button I get “compiler timed out or encountered an error.” and all doing is void setup(){} void loop{}

I would suggest that we just wait until someone here posts answers, like I said I’ve tried everything: CLI, factory reset, etc.

Well would you look at that. I’d done that a couple times before and would always get a serial error after the I said: w part. I gave the device key and cloud key instructions at https://community.particle.io/t/photon-setup-flashing-cyan-with-a-quick-red-burst/12118/34 a shot and was running into the same issues with particle setup but now particle setup wifi worked. Thanks for bringing that up!

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So your Photon does work? If not, updating your system firmware might help.

That's currently being looked into, thanks for letting us know!

I don't know, I can't upload code it, I can only compile. If I run
"particle list" sometimes it shows that it's online, sometimes it shows that's offline. The LED is solid blue both times.

How do I do this? Do I have to download all the build tools and compile?

Strange behaviour indeed. Steps to upgrade your system firmware can be found over here: https://github.com/spark/firmware/releases/tag/0.4.3-rc2

If your device is online, you only need the CLI. if it isn’t you’ll also need DFU-UTIL.

The device is online, but this is what I get:

and the LED is flashing blue.

Have you downloaded those files, and is the CLI opened in that directory?

I hadn't, but I did now and I get this fail message:

Seeing as your connection is apparently irregular, would you mind trying to flash it over DFU mode?

Also, do perform a CLI upgrade if particle --version says < V1.5.18

@Moors7 mentioned:

  • Place the Photon in DFU mode
  • use the command
    dfu-util -d 2b04:d006 -a 0 -s 0x8020000 -D system-part1-0.4.3-photon.bin
    dfu-util -d 2b04:d006 -a 0 -s 0x8060000:leave -D system-part2-0.4.3-photon.bin
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My version is 1.5.19

This is what I get from “particle flash --usb system-part1-0.4.3-photon.bin”

Since that didn’t work (right?), I did the DFU part of the github page https://github.com/spark/firmware/releases/tag/0.4.3-rc2

and I get this error message after I sent this command “dfu-util -d 2b04:d006 -a 0 -s 0x8060000:leave -D system-part2-0.4.3-photon.bin”:

Download	[=========================] 100%       151192 bytes
Download done.
File downloaded successfully
Error during download get_status

The LED is solid green now, even after I remove power. Now I can’t talk to my photon via the terminal.

So you’ve updated system part 1, part 3, and then flashed the new Tinker from that page? Tinker should be particle flash --usb tinker-photon.bin

I put the photon in DFU mode, sent “particle flash --usb tinker-photon.bin” and got this error message:

The led went back to solid green.

Can you hold down the SETUP button, hit the RESET button and once it hits blinking magenta, release the SETUP button.

So I did:

1.) Hold SETUP
2.) Hit RESET
3.) Wait for blinking magenta
4.) release SETUP

the LED is still green. The photon is not connected to the COM port.

It seems like the flashing was not done properly.

Do:

  • dfu-util -d 2b04:d006 -a 0 -s 0x8020000 -D system-part1-0.4.3-photon.bin
  • dfu-util -d 2b04:d006 -a 0 -s 0x8060000:leave -D system-part2-0.4.3-photon.bin

Done.

The second command returns.

Download	[=========================] 100%       151192 bytes
Download done.
File downloaded successfully
Error during download get_status

Do I flash the tinker now using “particle flash --usb tinker-photon.bin”?

It’s ok we can leave it for now. Now perform this:

1.) Hold SETUP
2.) Hit RESET
3.) Wait for blinking magenta
4.) release SETUP