Flash success but actually not

Troubleshooting
1

I have an electron and an app compiled locally and flashed via serial port. The compilation finished successfully, however there is a problem with the flashing. After I issue the following command:

particle flash --serial firmware.bin

I get:

Flash success!

But the app is still functioning as it would with an older version. I did flash an older version into the electron a while ago. but suddenly I can’t flash any new build.

Anyone has this kind of things happened before?

2

Try the more reliable

particle flash --usb firmware.bin

in DFU Mode.

You can also do

particle binary inspect firmware.bin

to see what kind of binary you’ve got there :wink:

3

Unfortunately the same, this is what I get from running the inspect:

firmware.bin
CRC is ok (6fb6d674)
Compiled for electron
This is an application module number 1 at version 4
It depends on a system module number 2 at version 21

Any problem with it?

4

What was the output of particle flash --usb firmware.bin?
What does particle serial inspect give you in Listening Mode?
What does the RGB LED do after flashing?
Can you try to flash another binary (e.g. simple blink)?

2 Likes
5

I did an ota to push blink, the app did update. and then I did locally flash using:

particle flash --usb firmware.bin

output:

Found DFU device 2b04:d00a
checking file /home/build/firmware.bin
spawning dfu-util -d 2b04:d00a -a 0 -i 0 -s 0x08080000:leave -D /home/build/firmware.bin
dfu-util 0.8

Copyright 2005-2009 Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
Copyright 2010-2014 Tormod Volden and Stefan Schmidt
This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
Please report bugs to dfu-util@lists.gnumonks.org

dfu-util: Invalid DFU suffix signature
dfu-util: A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!
Opening DFU capable USB device…
ID 2b04:d00a
Run-time device DFU version 011a
Claiming USB DFU Interface…
Setting Alternate Setting #0 …
Determining device status: state = dfuIDLE, status = 0
dfuIDLE, continuing
DFU mode device DFU version 011a
Device returned transfer size 4096
DfuSe interface name: "Internal Flash "
Downloading to address = 0x08080000, size = 5832
Download [=========================] 100% 5832 bytes
Download done.
File downloaded successfully

Flash success!

The app did switch to my app, but it is an older version…

So I think there might be a problem with the build caching. I did run “make clean” and delete all the previous build files. Here is my script:

#!/bin/bash
echo
BUILD_TYPE="build"
FLASH_SERIAL="no"

if [[ ! -z "$1" ]]; then
  BUILD_TYPE=$1
fi
if [[ "$2" == "flash" ]]; then
  FLASH_SERIAL="yes"
fi
echo build type: $BUILD_TYPE
echo

BASE_DIR="$(cd "$(dirname "")"; pwd)"
APP_DIR="$BASE_DIR/src"
OUT_DIR="$BASE_DIR/build"
OUT_FIRMWARE_NAME="firmware"
echo output dir: $OUT_DIR
echo

CURRENT_DIR=$(pwd)
FIRMWARE_DIR=$BASE_DIR/firmware/main
echo change working dir to: $FIRMWARE_DIR
cd $FIRMWARE_DIR
echo

ERROR=0
continue_to() {
  if [[ "$ERROR" == "0" ]]; then
    ($1)
    ERROR=$?
  fi
}
if [[ "$BUILD_TYPE" == "clean" ]] || [[ "$BUILD_TYPE" == "rebuild" ]]; then
  continue_to "make clean"
  continue_to "rm -rf $OUT_DIR/*"
fi
if [[ "$BUILD_TYPE" == "build" ]] || [[ "$BUILD_TYPE" == "rebuild" ]]; then
  continue_to "make PLATFORM=electron APPDIR=$APP_DIR TARGET_DIR=$OUT_DIR     TARGET_NAME=$OUT_FIRMWARE_NAME"
fi
if [[ "$FLASH_SERIAL" == "yes" ]]; then
  continue_to "particle flash --usb $OUT_DIR/$OUT_FIRMWARE_NAME.bin"
fi
echo change working back to: $CURRENT_DIR
if [[ "$ERROR" != "0" ]]; then
  echo build error
fi
cd $CURRENT_DIR

I ran

./build.sh rebuild flash

Is there any command that I missed to clean up build?

6

You should use the Particle make files.

make clean

would be the cleanup command

7

I did… the md5sum of the firmware.bin is always the same no matter how I change my code.

Sorry, I know I sound silly now

8

Have read through the docu here?


You need to put your app code in a designated directory or reference the path correctly and you need to execute the command from the correct folder too.

9

I did read it.

It seems that the build.mk doesn’t detect source files outside of the folder. While I can do:

make APPDIR=/path/to/application/source [TARGET_DIR=/path/to/applications/output] [TARGET_FILE=basename]

to target my source files. But the “make clean” doesn’t delete the build/target folder under the firmware root folder probably doesn’t make sense.

After deleting the firware/build/target folder I can see something else now. My code builds but there is a make error. probably I should start another thread.

1 Like