Particle Argon issue when connecting to PSU vs computer USB port

Hi!
First of all, I’m really new in this particule world and don’t quite understand all the steps that I’m doing yet for making my Argon working with Air Quality Wing feather. So far, I’ve managed to get the Argon board and feather to work and I’ve been able to flash my Argon board from Particle Workbench within Visual Studio. I’m device OS 3.1.0 (confirmed to be working fine with the Air Quality Wing library & feather). The problem that I’m facing is that my Argon is working perfectly and I’m getting data from both USB serial console & particle cloud console in the event section but ONLY when the Argon board is attached to the computer via USB and if particule workbench is opened. I’ve been able to do local compile, local flash, and clould compile & cloud flash but as soon as the board is connected to a dedicated power source (PSU) and not connected through my computer, the device powers up fine, and is able to be seen from particle console (“Last Heard” is accurate,but last handshake is when the board was connected to the computer). When dedicated power source is used, the device eventually flashes cyan, same color as when it’s working from the computer, but I’m not getting any data anymore. I’m using the board in my sandbox and I have the feeling that when the device powers on on dedicated power that it’s using a different firmware than the one that I’m flashing through USB, but maybe I;m wrong. Any guidance would be really appricated! thanks!

The device can’t be running different firmware, but there is an important difference to be aware of:

If you don’t have

SYSTEM_THREAD(ENABLED);

in your code, whenever the device is not breathing cyan, your firmware will not run. If it was breathing cyan then went to blinking cyan, loop() would just stop getting called. Enabling system thread is recommended.

Is your PSU connected by the USB connector, or by the VUSB pin? And can it provide 500 mA at 5V?

Last handshake may be different than last heard. A handshake does not occur on every connection when the session can be resumed so that’s normal.

It will be a little difficult to debug what’s happening when running off the external PSU because the best way would be to use the USB serial debug, but then you’d be back to the device being powered by USB host. The first thing I’d try is a different PSU. A 2A USB tablet charger is a good thing to try.

thanks for the quick reply! the problem was in the code of the air quality wing library which had a snippet to make sure serial would be hooked up if not the loop wouldn’t start! thanks again for getting back to me !

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