I have a Photon that was working fine and all of a sudden went into what appears to be a boot loop with an SOS message of red blinking lights that according to the documentation is indicating a hard fault. I have tried using the DFU with particle update through the CLI as well as the online device restore tool and it fails once the device is trying to start back up into normal mode after writing new files. Basically this thing is a brick unless I can get some help on how to get it going again. Im fairly tech savvy but really struggling with this one! Anyone else got an ideas or other things to try?
Will not boot into safe mode, or normal mode. I can only get it into DFU mode manually.
I'm sorry, sounds like a real hardware fault and it's possibly dead. But we can try a last thing. Are you able to put it into listening mode and perform a serial inspect? If yes, please share the output.
Can you get into listening mode from DFU? If not, then no because it won’t load into anything other than DFU. Trying to load normally or into safe mode just results in a boot loop with the SOS LED message.
I have tried that process already several times with no success. When I run the particle update command, it appears to be doing something, gets to 76% complete and the log message then states that it’s trying to switch into normal mode. The device then reboots, and immediately goes back into the boot loop with the SOS LED signature. Thus, I can never make it far enough to complete the particle update process and can’t get the tinker firmware to flash.
I think I saw this (on a P2) and got fixed with a flash of an older device firmware. Try flashing 5.3.1 or 5.3.2. I was never able to flash anything more recent than 5.3.2
I have a couple of old boxed photons doing the same thing. When I 'particle update' , photon-system-part2@2.3.1.bin fails at 76% (and other target versions too).
Did you manage to get these working?
"particle serial inspect" gives me a couple of FAILs
Platform: 6 - Photon
Modules
Bootloader module #0 - version 2
Size: 16.28 kB
Integrity: FAIL
Address Range: PASS
Platform: PASS
Dependencies: PASS
System part module #1 - version 2302
Size: 241.492 kB
Integrity: PASS
Address Range: PASS
Platform: PASS
Dependencies: PASS
System part module #2 - version 207
System part module #2 - version 2302
Size: 260.98 kB
Integrity: PASS
Address Range: PASS
Platform: PASS
Dependencies: FAIL
System part module #1 - version 2302
Bootloader module #0 - version 1003
User part module #1 - version 3
Size: 5.32 kB
Integrity: PASS
Address Range: PASS
Platform: PASS
Dependencies: PASS
System part module #2 - version 6
When I do a 'particle serial identify' I see v.2.3.1:
Your bootloader may be corrupted (integrity check failed), I'm a bit surprised the device can boot at all in this state, but since it appears to boot I'd try using the web-based Device Restore USB. The reason is that the bootloader is tricky to update, and Device Restore USB uses a different technique to upgrade it than particle update does, so it may be able to do it successfully.
