Photon flashes white; is unresponsive

Hi,

I have an issue with a new Photon. I have opened the package and configured WiFI (using the beta web browser onboarding with Chrome on macOS), but it never came online. After rebooting, it is stuck in some weird undocumented mode, where it is flashing white after turning it on and doesn’t seem to recognize the setup button at all. After a while, it looks like it is doing something else, but still acts weird and resets to white flashing after a reset.

Blinking video:

Pressing buttons:

Any ideas?

Could you try a different USB cable / power supply?

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I already tried that; I also successfully set up 5 other Photons with the same cable and setup.

Waiting a few days seems to have made things better, suddenly the device is able to connect to the cloud. I flashed some random firmware, and after a cold restart the erratic LED flashing was gone. I am even able to (seemingly) enter DFU mode now.

But while the LED is flashing yellow, I still cannot seem to update the device, as I only get errors:

! An error occurred while attempting to update the system firmware of your device:

dfu-util:
Invalid DFU suffix signature
dfu-util: A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!

dfu-util: Wrong state after command "ERASE_PAGE" download

Sometimes it also says

dfu-util: dfuse_download: libusb_control_transfer returned -9

or

dfu-util: Error during download get_status

After replugging, it will only power the D7 LED and do nothing else.

Any idea? I also have access to an Particle Programmer Shield, if it helps. Or is this a warranty case?

Hello,

Let me ping someone that might be able to help, @rickkas7 are you able to assist?

Kyle

This error:

dfu-util: Wrong state after command "ERASE_PAGE" download

typically occurs when there’s a hardware failure. There’s a small chance it can be corrected by flashing the boot loader over JTAG/SWD, but usually it happens when the STM32F205 is damaged in some way, such as exposure to high voltage, ESD, or just a random failure.

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@rickkas7 do you know what

libusb_control_transfer returned -9

Could mean? I am having this error show up in our production right now. The devices go into DFU mode but this error shoes up when trying to flash new firmware