I am laboratory testing a telemetry system that utilizes the electron paired with a m2m booster. To maintain a small, solar powered footprint I am turning the electron and booster on via a supervisor microcontroller for 2 minutes every 28 minutes. I am controlling power to the electron & booster via a low-side n-channel switch. Everything is powered from a 12V SLA which is down-converted to 5V on my carrier board. For bench testing the battery is connected in parallel to a linear benchtop supply capable of supplying approximately 50mA to simulate a solar cell. I am fully aware of the data penalty the device incurs when connecting to the cloud, but can tolerate the higher data expense to save power.
This configuration has been working flawlessly on the bench for almost a week with 100% data return. However, yesterday, the electron stopped connecting to the cloud. The data limit has not been reached, and everything else is exactly the same. When powered on the electron blink sequence is:
Green Flash -> Cyan Flash - > 2 Cyan Breaths -> Green Flash
I have removed & reinserted the sim card with no luck. I have also removed the booster, replaced the antenna, removed the electron from the carrier board and powered it from a lipo battery, all with no luck. I have also successfully re-flashed my user firmware to the unit via USB with the same outcome. The device firmware is 0.6.0. I have another electron on the neighboring test bench that is functioning normally.
If I replace the electron with a fresh unit I’d say it is likely to start working. However, I would like to know what the failure mode is and how to prevent it. I would like to get this system out in the field for testing ASAP. Thanks for any help you may be able to provide!
Lower input voltage to the Electron can cause longer than normal connection times from my experiences. Monitor the voltage feeding the Electron to see if that is holding steady during the connection process or not.
i was seeing the same sequence from LED and i put it off as a cellular provider issue in my town. i tried several things and then i read a few posts about keys failure or corruption so i did a command to reset or rebuild the keys and that seems to have fixed my problem. i think it was put electron in dfu mode and then “particle keys doctor” but i would suggest a search on that to verify. in my case the keys became corrupted somehow and the keys doctor fixed it so maybe it can help in your case.
@dkryder - Thanks for the suggestion. I just ran the device doctor. It has changed the behavior of the electron, but hasn’t solved the problem. The electron flash sequence is now:
Green -> Slow Cyan -> Fast Cyan -> 1x red -> Slow Cyan -> Fast Cyan
It never breaths cyan and doesn’t connect to the cloud.
I’m at a loss here - I hate to just replace this device with a new one and hope the same problem doesn’t occur again.
Update: I was able to successfully run the keys doctor. My OpenSSL path variable was not set so the key generator was not working from the device doctor utility. The electron is back up and running normally.
That being said, I am still very interesting in understanding exactly why the electron stopped working in the first place and required the keys to be rebuilt.
ScaleFree, i never positively determined what caused my situation. but, i have read several reports of electron owners saying there might have been a power related factor involved. things like electron with no battery losing power all of a sudden or related. in my case, i never ran the electron without the battery however there were times the charge may have been too low like having the usb power supply off for several days and not making a connection to the LED patterns