Can't setup photon _

[TTimo]

Hello,

I’m having difficulties setting up the photon board:

The mobile app doesn’t work:

I have the board blinking blue, I can see the Photon-… wifi network, I can join it on my phone, the app gives me a notification but never goes to the ‘next stage’ to claim the device or set it up to recognize my main wifi like the videos suggest it should. (iPhone 5, current iOS 9.x)

particle-cli doesn’t work:

Installed nodejs/particle-cli on MacOS X (10.11). The board is blinking blue, and connected via mini USB.

If allowed to scan networks, it never returns:

? Would you like to manually enter your Wi-Fi network configuration? No
▀ Asking the Photon to scan for nearby Wi-Fi networks...

(Even if my wifi had a config problem, there’s half a dozen other wifi network in range that should at least pop up on there?)

If I enter wifi details manually:

> Wi-Fi Network: ******
> Security: WEP SHARED
> Password: ******

? Would you like to continue with the information shown above? Yes

> Obtaining device information...

It never gets past Obtaining device information. Just keeps on looping that same status message.

I’ve put it into DFU mode, ran ‘particle update’. It reported success. The operations above are still failing afterwards.

Any suggestions? Is WEP support broken maybe? Bout out of ideas here.

[nrobinson2000]

Hi @TTimo,

While the device is blinking blue, try getting it onto wifi with:
particle serial wifi

Put the device into listening mode (blinking blue) again, and get the device id:
particle serial identify

Make sure you are logged into your Particle account:
particle cloud login

When the device is breathing cyan:
particle cloud claim DEVICE_ID
To claim the device.

[ScruffR]

Is this the same issue as here?

Particle - IOS app on IOS 9

Yes. Can’t setup legacy Core using the legacy core app on iOS nine. Get stuck in the same place as described. I realize the description is referring to the photon and the new app but the old app is behaving the same way for me with legacy core

WEP support is not broken, it's just a bit tricky to provide the key properly
See here

How to setup WEP secured network on the Photon

WEP networks are a little special, as well as insecure! When specifying the password, the WEP hex key needs some additional details beyond just the basic hex key. To setup WEP on the Photon requires you add some extra information to the WEP password that’s required by the WiFi module. The WEP key should be provided with this additional information: the index of the WEP key (0-3) as configured in your router. (in your router administration pages it’s probably labelled 1-4, so just subtract 1) …

If you use WEP you can leave your WiFi open just as well

[TTimo]

Thank you!

Those problems were indeed due to the WEP key format. I was able to get it connected to WEP eventually, and switched over to a WPA2 now.

I think it would be better to not support WEP at all, or to add clear information in the tools about the key format. I feel that would be preferable than having tools in a broken state like this.

[ScruffR]

I agree!
The thing is that this special need for WEP was apparently only realzed after the tools have been designed and so the workaround is the best we have till (if ever) a better design pattern will be incorporated.