Core stuck blinking white/magenta

Troubleshooting
1

I decided to play around with my spark core today and got a notification with the IDE saying that i should perform a deep update. I allowed it to do its thing until it got suck pulsing white. I let it do this for about 20 minutes. Obviously something went wrong, so I unpluged and pluged it back in. The pulsing white continued. I performed a Factory reset by holding the MODE button, but it began pulsing white again.

Finally i decided to flash the firmware via my computer. I used the following command:

spark flash --usb cc3000

The output was as follows

FOUND DFU DEVICE 1d50:607f
checking file  /usr/local/lib/node_modules/spark-cli/binaries/cc3000-patch-programmer.bin
spawning dfu-util -d 1d50:607f -a 0 -i 0 -s 0x08005000:leave -D /usr/local/lib/node_modules/spark-cli/binaries/cc3000-patch-programmer.bin
dfu-util 0.7

Copyright 2005-2008 Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
Copyright 2010-2012 Tormod Volden and Stefan Schmidt
This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
Please report bugs to dfu-util@lists.gnumonks.org

Filter on vendor = 0x1d50 product = 0x607f
Opening DFU capable USB device... ID 1d50:607f
Run-time device DFU version 011a
Found DFU: [1d50:607f] devnum=0, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=0, name="@Internal Flash /0x08000000/20*001Ka,108*001Kg"
Claiming USB DFU Interface...
Setting Alternate Setting #0 ...
Determining device status: state = dfuERROR, status = 10
dfuERROR, clearing status
Determining device status: state = dfuIDLE, status = 0
dfuIDLE, continuing
DFU mode device DFU version 011a
Device returned transfer size 1024
No valid DFU suffix signature
Warning: File has no DFU suffix
DfuSe interface name: "Internal Flash  "
Downloading to address = 0x08005000, size = 25068
.........................
File downloaded successfully
Transitioning to dfuMANIFEST state
Error during download get_status
Flashed!

This made the core immediately start blinking magenta forever. After a half hour of no success, i reset the device again via a Factory reset where it began pulsing white again.

My last attempt was performing:

spark flash --usb deep_update_2014_06
spark flash --usb tinker

The deep_update turned the LED back to pulsing white and the tinker command did the same.

Any other ideas? I’ve been at this for the better half of the day. I’ve tried looking through the forums but nothing seems to work.

Thanks,
-Brent

1 Like
2

Havin’ no actual clue, I just guess into the blue :wink:

Jokes aside, till someone else answers, you could try something that did help with some similar troubles I had under some obscure circumstances.
Although these colors mostly mean other things I experienced:

  • Steady magenta when entering WiFi settings via USB with the wrong security settings (e.g. WEP instead of WPA2). Clearing the credentials and making sure to do it correctly did solve this. One common case of doing this is if you enter your credentials between factory reset and deep update, since then you only get WEP and no choice of other security options.
  • Breathing white also appears with my Cores in SYSTEM_MODE(SEMI_AUTOMATIC) (possibly in connection with WiFi.off()). Calling Spark.connect() brings the green - cyan blink - cyan breath back.

I know this doesn’t seem to apply to your case, but maybe it opens some new avenues of looking at your own problem.

Even if you’re already fed up with doing this over and over again, try

  1. factory reset
  2. spark flash --usb deep_update_2014_06
  3. enter WiFi credentials via USB serial (make sure to use the correct security options)
  4. don’t need to flash tinker, since it’s usually part of the factory firmware
3

@missleboy,

perform a factory reset and make sure the core enters blinking yellow —> rapid flashing white and eventually revert to blinking blue.

You should either see a blinking blue or breathing white. Let us know? :wink:

4

I put the core into the DFU state (blinking yellow) and performed the command

spark flash --usb deep_update_2014_06

The core flashes yellow while its being flashed, then immediately goes into breathing white. It does not rapidly flash white at any point, nor is there a blinking blue.

Any thoughts??

–edit

I also performed the standard factory reset by entering blinking yellow —> rapid flashing white. It then transitions into breathing white. It hasn’t changed since.

-Brent