Particle Core glowing white – did I brick it?

Troubleshooting
1

Hi, my Particle Core begins to glow white as soon as I connect it to power. Factory reset did not help, also not flashing the firmware via USB. The issue is described exactly in this unresolved question from @lloydo.

I suspect I bricked it while soldering a VCC wire while it was powered on?
How can I make sure it’s or it’s not? Thank you very much.

Addendum

What happens when I follow steps from Spark Core Common Issues, “Very old Spark core and want to update stuff”:

  • (DFU mode) particle flash --factory tinker
    • “Flash success!”, then blinking yellow
  • (DFU mode) particle flash --usb cc3000 or particle flash --usb cc3000_1_14 (see)
    • “Flash success!”, then blinking magenta, more than 15 minutes

More things I tried

1 Like
2

Are you able to place it in DFU mode?

3

Yes, I can put it in DFU mode.

4

Can you do:

  • particle flash --factory tinker
  • particle flash --usb cc3000 (it should blink magenta and revert to yellow)
  • particle flash --usb tinker
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5
  • particle flash --factory tinker goes through, LED blinking yellow afterwards
  • particle flash --usb cc3000 blinks magenta indefinitely
  • (particle flash --usb tinker after flashing: breathing white)
    I read somewhere that breathing white signalled faulty communication with the cc3000 chip. So is my cc3000 bricked? Hm…
6

Sounds like the case

7

@akrusen, did you redo the wifi configuration ?

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8

I did a particle serial wifi.

$ particle serial wifi
? Should I scan for nearby Wi-Fi networks? Yes
? Select the Wi-Fi network with which you wish to connect your device: WIFINAME
? Should I try to auto-detect the wireless security type? Yes
> Detected WPA2(PSK/AES/AES) security

From here, the Core hangs. I quit this after ten minutes.

(Now I remember that I had been having this kind of issues for half a year. Then, only a wifi configuration reset helped: holding MODE until the LED blinked blue.)

Holding MODE now for 20 seconds or so only freezes the white breathing.

9

Help with this topic was friendly, but:
With a heavy heart I accept that my beloved Particle Core is gone. Farewell!