I was just claiming my core for the first time. I entered my Wifi credentials, and the iPhone app was spinning for a while… During this I noticed the lights on the core change, and it started breathing. So I think it’s connected to the Spark cloud, but then this error message appeared on my iPhone app.
The cause of this problem could be that someone else has already claimed it. My colleague at another location sent it to me.
It appears that the iPhone app failed to claim my core because it doesn’t appear under my web site account.
When I power-cycle the core, it reconnects happily to my wifi and starts to breathe. How do I claim it?
Hi @phadley
Your colleague has to unclaim it first (or the Spark team can override this but they want to know the details of how you got the core).
Your colleague can do this on the build page under cores (the target symbol). Click on the little exposure triangle to the right of core name to see the core device id and the remove button.
If you cannot get your colleague to unclaim it, you will have email hello@spark.io for help.
Thanks @bko. I was able to get the credentials from my colleague to access the account that had claimed it. It seems like the “internal error” on the iPhone app could have been a bit more descriptive tho… 
How about this?
This core has already been claimed by another account: someone@else.com.
I certainly agree the error message could be improved! I am not sure I want email address leaked to anyone who can type in numbers from the public event stream, though.
Created issue 175 under core-firmware (since there isn’t a category for the iOS app on github).
@phadley thanks for bringing this issue up here, agreed, the messaging could be much more useful. I’ve added a lot of details to the task in our backlog to fix this from these suggestions.