Odd Electron flash patterns

Unfortunately neither of these helped.

Does anyone know what the fast and very fast cyan flashing means?

When you tried squeezing the SIM, did you do it from power off. I.e. Disconnect sub and battery, squeeze sim against the circuit board, while squeezing it connect power, keep holding it tight until you get cyan breathing.

It is a weird error condition, I have been working with Brett in support to give them error logs and a copy of my firmware.

@BDub

Just tried that again and still the same :frowning:

I just wish this page listed all the modes so I knew what it was doing.
https://docs.particle.io/guide/getting-started/modes/electron/

There is a fast cyan blink which indicates cloud handshake, but I don’t know if this would qualify as “very fast” and usually (when happening over extended periodes) comes with the occassional orange/red burst, indicating the said keys issue.

For more keys issue remedies you could search for “red burst” or “orange burst” - even when intended for the Photon they might work for the Electron too.

e.g.
Photon setup flashing cyan with a "quick red burst" (now orange burst) [Solved]

It has randomly started working so I don’t think its an issue with keys.
Not sure how long it will last but its getting frustrating!

And its gone again, I guess 12 minutes is better than nothing

I have been frustratingly experiencing the same problem (it seems) - see: Electron G350 connectivity (flash sequence)

Just curious - what Country and What Electron (2G/3G?)

UK and the 2G device.

My flash sequence is a little different to yours, my red portion is only a fraction of a second and I get a bit of green in their to.
Otherwise I think its simmiler.

I think it’s an issue connecting to the particle cloud I just have no idea how to debug it.

my red/orange lasts between 0.5 and 3 seconds - it varies.

Often times i just see green flashing forever, sometimes so long it reverts to blue.

I have had it breathing only a few times. I thought I logged a support ticket (email) but nobody got back to me :frowning:

I have just raised a ticket as it seems from your thread this is a bigger UK issue.

I wish there was some kind of debug output so I knew what it was trying to do.

And I have just seen a big period of flashing red so its probably the same problem as you.

Ah - so are you UK? What electron - 2G, 3G?

I have also tried to open another ticket - see if i have more luck with replay this time.

Yes, UK with the 2G device

OK - same boat as me (and others).

I must say - I have more luck getting to flashing Cyan when I hold a little pressure on the SIM, so there is obviously a physical issue there somewhere, unless my body being near just helps reception of antenna.
Still - I also have a gut feel there is a carrier issue in there somewhere…

Yeah, a carrier issue seems likely or perhaps the additional latency from the UK to the US wasn’t catered for with timeouts or the switch to UDP.

Kind of worrying as they may not be easy to fix.

Hi All!

This thread is awesome! Lots of questions here about blinking lights, I’ll try to provide the answers where I can:

  • How to - electron safe mode

    • This is just like for the photon or core, but the electron takes longer to restart. So it’s normal for it to go through the startup / connection sequence (white, blinking green, slow cyan, fast cyan, then breathing magenta)
  • Electron fast flashing red while fast flashing cyan, can’t count the blinks

    • This does indeed sound like a key issue. Make sure you update your copy of the CLI, and try the keys doctor with the CLI ( https://github.com/spark/particle-cli#particle-keys-doctor ). The electron key is slightly different than for the other boards, and the newer CLI knows how to fix it. :slight_smile:
  • Electron factory reset?

    • Safe-mode has replaced factory reset to help free up more space for applications for both the Photon and the Electron, so you won’t find factory reset while cycling through the bootloader modes.
  • Electron is flashing solid blue (listening mode / setup mode)

    • We’ve noticed some of the SIM card holder pins can become bent down, and don’t make good contact with the sim card. You can (very gently!) ever so slightly bend these pins up a tiny bit, and that should help make contact with your SIM card.
  • Electron is flashing green forever

  • Electron is flashing cyan forever

(I’ll edit this in place as I add more)

Thanks!
David

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Well, timeouts can be catered for in new firmware.
Switching to TCP would help determine (diagnose) basic carrier connectivity as its a more resilient protocol (at expense of bandwidth). I did notice however that switching protocol through the CLI seems more involved than a simple protocol change - it looks like maybe also addresses of particle servers need modifying?
I also thought it maybe a UDP fragmentation issue during handshake, but the fact that I got a breathing Cyan a few times seems to rule that out.

I have an old (10yrs) 2G soap-bar phone nearly that runs over giffgaff and it reports 5 bars, i use that as my “signal tester”.

I “may” try the 3rd party sim switch in a few days if I dont get particle help.

I have the same problem. 2G in UK. After power on it flashed green for a while until it found a signal, then I get fast cyan flashing (approx 4 blinks a second). that goes on for 20-30 second and then the flashing gets faster (cyan again approx 8/second), then it flashes red for about 250ms then it goes back to flashing cyan (approx every 250ms).
I did manage to get breathing cyan if I left it going for about an hour (which lasted long enough for it to register and I claimed it on my account), so the device does work, but I think it must be a problem with the UK carrier (O2?)

Any updates anyone?

@Padge,

sounds exactly like my scenario over here: Electron G350 connectivity (flash sequence)

I just get the feeling (in my scenario) its a composite problem of SIM connection (holder), carrier signal, and data provision. MVNO’s often get a worse deal if the tower is busy and at certain times of day - this makes testing a problematic issue for me, although my 2g phone is able to send TXT its so old it cannot do data :(. My proper phone is 3/4G so its not a good comparison for Electron G350.

Check out my new update here for the latest: