P1 loses connectivity in safe mode - blinking cyan followed by 2 orange blinks and restart

Hello,
I have a P1 which is losing WiFi connectivity. Here are the color codes:

  1. Breathing cyan after power up.
  2. Blinking cyan and then 2 orange blinks and then particle gets restarted.

The P1 ends up in blinking cyan after approximately 2 minutes. At this point I though that it is my code issue, but when I place the P1 in safe mode, same behaviour was observed. What does this mean?

Thank you
Dheeraj

https://docs.particle.io/support/troubleshooting/troubleshooting-support/photon/#error-codes

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If it is doing bad handshake in safe mode, what could be the issue?

Hi @dheerajdake,

Good question! Usually some blinking orange indicates an issue with the handshake. The most frequent cause of this these days is some kind of corruption of the private key on the device. The flash can be corrupted if there is insufficient voltage or current to the device when it’s writing to the flash region. I would check to make sure your power supply / power circuits are able to support the minimum requirements for the P1.

You should be able to restore the device using the particle keys doctor in the particle-cli. Grab the device id, and then run the doctor while the device is flashing yellow, in DFU mode:

particle identify
particle keys doctor DEVICE_ID

Thanks,
David

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Thank you for replying Dave. I don’t have a USB access on the device. Can this be fixed over the air given that this happens approximately after 2 minutes once the device is connected to the cloud? Maybe by flashing some sort of special firmware which re-install the keys.

Hi @dheerajdake,

Oh, maybe I misunderstood your post earlier. I thought it was doing the orange blinks during the handshake, and that the device wasn’t able to get online.

If you’re seeing blinks while the device is online, they would be red and not orange blinks. And they would be preceded by an SOS pattern. Is this what you’re seeing? -> https://docs.particle.io/guide/getting-started/modes/photon/#red-flash-sos

If you’re losing connectivity even while in safe mode, and you’re not seeing an SOS pattern, I’m guessing you’re having some kind of power loss or signal issue, that is causing corruption and the loss of the connection. Next steps would be to make sure your power supply is working well, and / or try to monitor traffic on your network, or transmit test data over something like a direct socket connection to see if things are being corrupted.

Thanks,
David

Hi @Dave
I am not seeing red SOS pattern. I see 2 orange blinks after approximately 2 minutes from the device being online. I can guarantee that it’s orange. I am seeing orange color blinks in safe mode too.

This behaviour has been seen on 1 board so far and is unable to recover even when I move it to a different location where there is good WiFi connectivity. I’ll do a test for network connectivity.

If it’s a keys problem, can it be fixed by flashing some special firmware? I don’t have USB access so no dfu-util.

Thanks
Dheeraj

Hi Dheeraj,

So, my comment about the keys issue doesn’t make sense if your p1 is getting online (breathing cyan).

As far as I’m aware, there’s no “normal operating behavior” where an orange blink would make sense during a session besides a corrupted session / power loss (modem operating in undefined state due to bad power supply, or some kind of hardware interference).

I would try your firmware on a photon to see if it’s having the same issue (disconnecting after 2 minutes), if not I’m guessing there is an issue with the board that the p1 is soldered to.

Thanks,
David

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