We are buying a bunch of Internet Buttons (IB; Photon inside) and giving them to testers to test our firmware and overall application while are production products are in development. The user is required to download the Particle app and configure the IB.
Well, most users have a problem most of the time. It doesn’t matter if the iOS or Android version although most users have Android. The place where there is has a problem most of the time is the step “connecting to Photon”. When it finally errors out, we remove the Wifi (left button like 12s), then reset (right button), then put into setup again (left button) – just to be sure – and start over again. It’s not uncommon for the user to do this cycle 5-10 times before it starts working.
However, for one user in the field we are completely stuck. After an hour of going through the steps over and over, it is now saying “cannot disconnect from Photon” after the user types in his SSID and password. What the heck does that mean and how to get around it?
If we start the application from the top, we go to the main menu, hit “+”, then Photon. We ensure the photon is in setup mode (medium speed blinking blue) and wifi is working on the phone, and hit Ready. The photon is listed on the next screen (so it’s in set up mode). We select the Photon and it says “Connecting to Photon”. After a few minutes, it errors out. We then remove the Wifi on the device (just in case), reset it, and put it back in Set up mode and start all over again. And again. Sometimes it works the first time and sometimes the 10th time. Our testers are very frustrated.
On this last user, we cannot get it to work even after 10 tries because of the “cannot disconnect from Photon” error which means the user will have to ship the device back to us.
@kennethlimcp Yes that would be helpful as an alternative. I avoided the USB cable route as I thought the testers would have to download multiple apps like I did to get the CLI to work. Also we assumed all of our testers would have a mobile phone but not all would have a laptop.
Setting the credentials can be done without the CLI over a Serial connection. It therefor doesn’t require the involved CLI install process and can be done with simple terminal programs (Putty for example).
And yes, that page should allow you to configure the credentials. Should be usable with anything that has wifi and a browser. Laptops, tablets, Windows devices, etc.
