Flashing Cyan Annoyance!

Troubleshooting
1

Hello,

I have an original Particle Core from the kick starter campaign when they were branded Spark Core.
It has been running an application as a garage door opener for almost 6 months and has been accepting push commands via the cloud API to open and close the door for ages. Now however something has changed and I can’t figure out what the problem is.

Currently it is just repeatedly rapidly flashing cyan. Looking at the status documentation this is the state where it tries to connect to the cloud.

I did some reading which suggested first of all that the Access Key may have expired, so I generated a new one but this didn’t resolve.

I have performed:

  1. Factory Reset (lots)
  2. Reconnected to Wifi (Lots) via USB as the app doesn’t work for me
  3. particle flash --factory tinker
  4. particle flash --usb cc3000
  5. particle flash --usb tinker
  6. Flashed a app to find out what the mac code is
  7. Reflashed my original garage door opener app via USB as it fails via the cloud
  8. Created a two way port rule for port 5863
  9. Added the MAC to the DMZ on my router to avoid firewall issues

Still however it blinks cyan … I just don’t get it, very frustrating!

Does anybody have any ideas as to what to do next? I’ve read loads of topics on here but none seem to cover it.

I also tried the particle device doctor, but that doesn’t seem to work just returns name: Particle device Doctor and returns to the cmd line.

I’ve checked the router and the device shows as connected to the wifi .

The last log event shows the device online in the build IDE too, but it won’t accept a flash and fails if I attempt to.

Please help!

2

Does it give a few red blinks during flashing cyan or it turns red/yellow?

3

Hi, Yes there is an occasional red flicker. No yellow though.

4

Can you update CLI to the latest version and do a particle device doctor?

5

@kennethlimcp I’ve tried to do that but it just posts “name: Particle device doctor” and then goes back to the command line though - doesn’t seem to make any difference to the core.

6

hmm… I wonder if it is available to the core.

Can you place the Core in DFU mode and do:

  • particle keys server
  • particle keys doctor PASTE_DEVICE_ID_HERE
7

Here's the output, it failed though and just to confirm the core is blinking yellow:
Your environment has been set up for using Node.js 6.9.4 (x64) and npm.

C:\Users\josh_000>particle list
Garage_Door [xxxxredactedxxxxx] (Core) is offline

C:\Users\josh_000>particle keys server
Found DFU device 1d50:607f
checking file C:\Users\josh_000\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\particle-cli\keys\rsa.pub-padded.der
spawning dfu-util -d 1d50:607f -a 1 -i 0 -s 0x00001000 -D C:\Users\josh_000\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\particle-cli\keys\rsa.pub-padded.der
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

Opening DFU capable USB device...
ID 1d50:607f
Run-time device DFU version 011a
Claiming USB DFU Interface...
Setting Alternate Setting #1 ...
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
DfuSe interface name: "SPI Flash : SST25x"
Downloading to address = 0x00001000, size = 2048
Download [=========================] 100% 2048 bytes
Download done.
File downloaded successfully
Invalid DFU suffix signature
A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!
Okay! New keys in place, your device will not restart.

C:\Users\josh_000>particle keys doctor Garage_Door

Warning! - device id was shorter than 24 characters - did you use something other than an id?
use particle identify to find your device id

Found DFU device 1d50:607f
Found DFU device 1d50:607f
Error creating keys... Error: Command failed: openssl genrsa -out Garage_Door_rsa_new.pem 1024
'openssl' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Make sure your device is in DFU mode (blinking yellow), and that your computer is online.
Error - Error: Command failed: openssl genrsa -out Garage_Door_rsa_new.pem 1024
'openssl' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\Users\josh_000>particle keys doctor xxxxredactedxxxxx
Found DFU device 1d50:607f
Found DFU device 1d50:607f
Error creating keys... Error: Command failed: openssl genrsa -out xxxxredactedxxxxx_rsa_new.pem 1024
'openssl' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Make sure your device is in DFU mode (blinking yellow), and that your computer is online.
Error - Error: Command failed: openssl genrsa -out xxxxredactedxxxxx_rsa_new.pem 1024
'openssl' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\Users\josh_000>

8

Do you have OpenSSL installed? Try cd-ing into the directory where OpenSSL is installed and run the command again.

9

Ok that seemed to work, but the core is still flashing blue. I tried the device doctor again too but the same result. Here is the output.

C:\OpenSSL-Win32>cd bin

C:\OpenSSL-Win32\bin>particle keys doctor (xxxxRedactedxxxx)
Found DFU device 1d50:607f
Found DFU device 1d50:607f
New Key Created!
Found DFU device 1d50:607f
Found DFU device 1d50:607f
Saved!
checking file (xxxxRedactedxxxx)_rsa_new.der
spawning dfu-util -d 1d50:607f -a 1 -i 0 -s 0x00002000:leave -D (xxxxRedactedxxxx)_rsa_new.der
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

Opening DFU capable USB device...
ID 1d50:607f
Run-time device DFU version 011a
Claiming USB DFU Interface...
Setting Alternate Setting #1 ...
Determining device status: state = dfuIDLE, status = 0
dfuIDLE, continuing
DFU mode device DFU version 011a
Device returned transfer size 1024
DfuSe interface name: "SPI Flash : SST25x"
Downloading to address = 0x00002000, size = 608
Download        [=========================] 100%          608 bytes
Download done.
File downloaded successfully
Transitioning to dfuMANIFEST state
Invalid DFU suffix signature
A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!
Saved!
attempting to add a new public key for device (xxxxRedactedxxxx)
submitting public key succeeded!
Okay!  New keys in place, your device should restart.

C:\OpenSSL-Win32\bin>particle device doctor
NAME:
particle device doctor




C:\OpenSSL-Win32\bin>
10

Immediate blinking blue would indicate no stored WiFi credentials.

11

It’s odd though because if that was the case I wouldnt expect it to show up as online via the builder. But it does and intermittently drops out so I still can’t flash it.

Has started cycling green every few mins now then back to rapid blue.

12

Is it blue or cyan - that makes a big difference!

13

Cyan sorry.