Function call failed Something went wrong calling this function: TimeoutError: message Describe reached maximum number of retransmissions

Troubleshooting
1

I'm using the Particle command line interface, trying to wake up an Electron that seems to be offline.

The system gives me this error message after I repeat a particle call command from the command line a few times:

Function call failed Something went wrong calling this function: TimeoutError: message Describe reached maximum number of retransmissions

What precisely does this mean? I started looking at the API docs and found this page of error codes

https://docs.particle.io/reference/api/#errors

but there was no obvious match.

(It's working now so I am not stuck, just curious as to what I saw.)

2

You can’t call a sleeping/offline Particle device’s Particle.function().
Since the device is asleep or offline, it can’t respond to the call(s) and hence the call will timeout.

The closest would be #408, but that is not actually the case here, since your request to instruct the cloud to call the device function didn’t timeout, but the request originating from the cloud towards the device did, so you didn’t get a HTTP error response, but a success response of the cloud containing the extra information that the device didn’t reply appropriately in time (didn’t return an int return value).

1 Like
3

Thanks @ScruffR , that is useful info.

At the time I did that call, the device was marked by particle list as online, but did not have any functions listed. So I think that means I interpret that as sleeping.

4

That false online-report is a common problem due to the UDP communication of Electrons.
When you make a GET request at https://api.particle.io/v1/devices/[DeviceID]?accessToken=[YourAccessToken] you should get a response that contains a last_heard field that is a better way to tell.

1 Like
5

I Have this issue but my device is online.( looking at it and connected on serial to it, whenever i get a command, i echo it on the serial) any thoughts?

6

found the issue, was doing the code for my other device. definitely too late for me