Is my Photon completely dead?

So I got a Photon about 7 months ago and have been running it ever since then to collect data from one of my storage sheds. It has worked remarkably well until about the last week. About a week ago I wanted to add some functionality using some sensors over i2c. For the life of me I could not get i2c to work…googled a bunch of stuff, tried a bunch of stuff but for some reason the photon would just not recognize the i2c device. I know the device works because I can hook it up to a wemos d1 and all is well. So now I tried a different i2c device(si7021), which is just a simple temp and humidity sensor. Instead of using the code I had been using up that point I just flashed the photon with a simple si7021 example of sorts just to see if it could read that. So immediately after it flashed that code, the Photon came back up and started reporting into Particle like it normally does, but it only lasted about 5 seconds and then it just started flashing green, like it was looking for a connection. I tried a bunch of stuff to try and get it to connect, but I was never able to connect to it after that point. This was yesterday evening. So at that point I called it a day, unplugged it and now this morning I go to plug it in to do some more troubleshooting. Well, today it won’t even get to that point, all it will do is flash red about 3-5 times and sometimes(if it’s cool enough) it will just keep flashing red. Most of the time though the flashing red stops and nothing happens. Though I did notice when I took it out of its breadboard that the chip was very warm, at one point probably enough to burn my hand if I kept it there. Also, I noticed this morning that when I plug it into either of 2 computers I’ve tried it on, it does not get recognized as a Photon…it was getting recognized properly last night. So I’m kind of at a loss…since it’s not recognized on either system and it won’t try to do anything am I just SOL or is there something else I can try? Thanks in advance for any suggestions and sorry for the long read.

@ruffledrooster, the issues relating to I2C may be due to the lack of pull-up resistors. This can be explored once you get your photon working again.

Your photon’s onboard 3.3v regulator may have overheated and failed, a condition which can occur with poor USB cables or some PC USB power connections (which cause the photon switching regulator to oscillate itself to death). The best way to check the health of your photon is to power it with a good 3.3v supply directly to the 3V3 pin of the photon. If powers up as expected then you can either a) replace the regulator on your photon, b) power the photon externally via 3V3 or c) get a new photon.

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