Green light flashing using pda.bell.ca APN and cellular_credentials_set

Troubleshooting
1

Hey everyone,

I just got a particle electron and I’m using a 3rd party SIM. The problem is that it is stuck in flashing green mode.

I’m in Canada, provider is Bell Mobility.

APN: pda.bell.ca

Followed the setup.particle.io process -> flashed with the custom firmware. Particle successfully connects and registers it. It flashes a very fast cyan at the end (I believe that means it works). When I power cycle and upload my code, it gets stuck in the flashing green mode.

As you can see I have the “cellular_credentials_set” line at the top.

My CLI command:

particle compile electron serial-test.ino --saveTo serial-test2-firmware.bin && particle flash --serial serial-test2-firmware.bin

Below is the code I have:

 #include "cellular_hal.h"
STARTUP(cellular_credentials_set("pda.bell.ca", "", "", NULL));

void setup()
{

  pinMode(D7, OUTPUT);
  digitalWrite(D7, HIGH);

  Serial.begin();

}


void loop()
{

  if(Cellular.ready()){
    Serial.println("Connected to cell network");
    if(Particle.connected())
    {
      Particle.publish("Connected to cell network!");
    }
  }
  else
  {
    Serial.println("Not connected to cell network");

  }

  if(Particle.connected())
  {
    while(1){
      Particle.publish("ledstatus","ON");
      Serial.println("Turn on LED");
      digitalWrite(D7, HIGH);
      delay(1000);
      Particle.publish("ledstatus","OFF");
      Serial.println("Turn off LED");
      digitalWrite(D7,LOW);
      delay(1000);
      Particle.process();

    }
  }
  else
    Particle.connect();

}

What should I do?

2

I had a similar situation because a sim pin was defined…

3

You should not keep calling Particle.connect() that frequently.
Change that bit for something like

  ...
  else 
  {
    Particle.connect();
    waitUntil(Particle.connected);
  }
4

Hey neurotrade could you clarify what you mean by a defined sim pin?

5

@ScruffR Ok I can remove it.

I got it to work last week by doing a firmware upgrade:

particle update

However it doesn’t work this week…

6

If you buy a sim card there is normaly a sim pin number defined.

Bud if id allready worked last week with the same sim card the sim pin can’t be the problem.

7

I’d always recommend to flash via DFU Mode and

particle flash --usb <your.bin>

rather than via --serial since the success message even appears when the code didn’t stick.

1 Like
8

Hi I’m sorry I forgot to reply.

The problem was I changed the bin filename in my compile command and not in the flash command string; so it kept uploading old code… lol silly mistake.

Here is my working command string for reference. It compiles the code, uploads to the device using @ScruffR’s suggestion and opens a PuTTY terminal for some Serial comms.

particle compile electron ModbusTempSender --saveTo ModbusTempSender/BUILD/debug/firmware.bin && particle flash --usb ModbusTempSender/BUILD/debug/firmware.bin && SLEEP 2 && ModbusTempSender/putty.exe -load "ModbusTempSender"
1 Like