My two Electrons are only about 1000 feet apart. Normally, the cellular signal strength wanders between Fair and Good (per Device Vitals) on both. Both had been very stable for about 3 days with only one or two brief disconnects. But yesterday one of them dropped the connection and refuses to reconnect. Its RGB LED is rapidly flashing cyan as is always does just before it connects to the Particle Cloud, but it never starts ‘breathing’.
Nothing has changed in the physical environment. Neither the Electron in question nor its antenna has been moved or even touched. The cell towers, wherever they are, haven’t moved either, of course. I have removed all power and reconnected it, but no change. The other Electron remains functioning normally.
The only thing that I suspect might be a factor is the following: I flashed a slightly-modified version of my app onto that Electron and it was soon thereafter that I noticed that its cellular connection had been lost. Is it possible that something in my code (definitely no infinite loop) has overwhelmed the on-board processor to such an extent that it cannot ‘focus’ on the handshake process with the cloud? If so, should I perform a factory reset and start over? If not, what else can I do to get my application running again?
If it is rapidly flashing cyan, that seems to suggest to me that it is struggling to establish a connection to the Particle cloud.
I would recommend running https://github.com/rickkas7/electron-clouddebug on the device. This should hopefully allow for some more insight into why it’s having a difficult time connecting.
Once you get cloud-debug running, I’d recommend posting the output logs here so we can take a look.
Many thanks Mathew. I’ll go retrieve the Electron as soon as daylight arrives and get that done.
Mathew:
It is not clear from Rick’s instructions for his debug tool whether it starts to run immediately and whether it continues to run repeatedly. Here’s my issue:
The Electron in question is normally installed in an outdoor enclosure on the north side of the small mountain I live on. There is GSM cellular signal on that side (although minimal in strength). I live on the south side where there is no GSM signal (just CDMA). It is very cold outside, so I brought the Electron to my house to flash the debug tool here and then take it back to its normal location to collect the logs. My question, therefore, is this: if I install the tool at home and then return the Electron to its normal location, will the tool start to run as soon as I power it up? Will it run continuously until removed?
BTW, I find this perplexing: although there is no GSM signal at my house, the Electron continues to rapidly flash cyan here. What might I conclude from that?
Hi again, Mathew.
An update: before I was ready to install and run the debug tool per your suggestion, I decided to revert to the version of my app that was running when the Electron in question was last connected to the cloud. Once I did that, the handshake with the Particle Cloud occurred almost immediately and everything has been running fine since. Clearly there was something about the code pertaining to PaperTrail that hosed everything up.
In case someone might want to try and figure out what the problem with the code might be, here are the only lines of code (provided by others) in my app that were added to the previous version of that app (that is now running fine):
#include <papertrail.h>
...
PapertrailLogHandler paperpapertrailHandler(“logs7.papertrailapp.com”, 45358,“PumpStatus”).
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If the device is rapidly flashing cyan but is unable to connect–so long as you don’t have any keys issues, that seems to suggest that you just have a weak connection. The connection is strong enough to handshake with a tower, but not strong enough to manage a handshake with Particle cloud.