Odd Electron flash patterns

Troubleshooting
21

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

5 Likes
22

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.

23

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?

24

@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.

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