Since yesterday, I find that all of my Photons are taking a very long time to connect to the cloud. By long time I mean 2-4 minutes. They flash cyan rapidly during this time. Every once in a while, they’ll briefly flash red and then green (I mean like 1 flash each or so) and then go back to flashing cyan rapidly like they’re about to connect. Then randomly, everything seems to work normally for a while (a couple of hours or more), then back again. The rest of the Particle Build site works during this time. That is I can change code and compile and even download the firmware.
I’ve tried a couple of Wi-Fi routers (my own and a neighbor’s) as well as my Karma hotspot. It’s the same no matter which router I try and connect through.
I’ve had this issue as well, thought it was just weak signal in the places I have them, they worked fine when I installed the system, but now they take awhile after updating firmware.
I looked into things cloud side, and things are looking normal since yesterday. Any chance you could send me a device id or two for your devices that are misbehaving, and rough times of when they weren’t able to connect?
My guess is based on your description that you might have something localized that’s broadly interfering with Wi-Fi signals near you? (An old microwave, fluorescent lights, some other transmitter, etc)
You could check this by running some firmware on your photon that does a wifi scan and tries to measure signal strength to all networks it can see without connecting. Or you could just use your computer to do the same, see if the signal quality gets very bad when the devices aren’t able to connect, etc.
Yesterday morning between 8am and probably around 11am or so. Prior to that, Friday evening/night (can't be sure of the times). Then later in the afternoon as well. Then sometime in the evening things worked at they normally do. I'd been downloading the firmware and flashing it locally so I don't know when exactly things started working. Also, There have been times, when the device goes online and I see it online in the Web IDE (yes, I refresh the status and also wait a few minutes till the IDE see's it online) and then flash and it has not worked numerous times. So resorted to downloading and flashing locally.
I'm building Bluetooth applications currently, so I did think they might be interfering so I turned off the Bluetooth modules and still had the same experience for hours. Since last night, around 9pm onwards till 3am and even this morning, I've had no issues whatsoever, and the Bluetooth devices have been on the whole time (they don't turn off during the firmware update cycle either). My work area is pretty controlled, in that things that are running (Wi-Fi router, PCs, laptops and various other devices) are pretty constantly on and running. So nothing is changing on my end. As I said, I even tried at one of my neighbor's home and had the same issue yesterday morning. During this time, my other device's (phone, tablets, Blu-Ray players, Receivers, TVs etc.) don't have issues connecting to the router and getting out on the internet.
photon that does a wifi scan and tries to measure signal strength to all networks it can see without connecting.
Yes, I did both (Friday night and Saturday morning), and didn't see any difference in signal strength. My Wi-Fi router is in the same room I work in and hasn't moved since I installed it many years ago. I did re-boot the router yesterday but that didn't help matters.
Any chance you could send me a device id or two for your devices that are misbehaving, and rough times of when they weren't able to connect?
How do I do that? Here, in the forum? Or privately?
If you want you can PM me on the forums with your device id, it’s not particularly sensitive info but that’s probably the easiest. Or you can email me at david (at) particle.io.
Hi, just to add my experience to the topic.
I’ve 3 photon installed in my place, and 2 of them stop connecting to the cloud and to wifi yesterday evening (11 PM CET).
I can’t see them neither connected to Particle Cloud neither to my local network (from router settings i can’t see them logged in, neither i can’t see their message in my local mosquitto broker).
They used to work well (not awesome, but still working). I’m quite sure that one of them shouldn’t have wifi signal problems, since it’s placed a meter away from the access point…
In general, in the last few weeks i’ve problem making my photon work with the cloud, infact i’ve switched cloud connection off on another photon i’m using for light controlling since it was continously trying to connect to the cloud without making it.
I sent @Dave the device Ids. Apparently during one of the period when I was having issues there was something going on on the Particle servers. So that might explain the issue somewhat.
However, since then I’ve noticed that one of my Photons does take a long time to connect. Not sure what it different in this Photon. I’ve tried flashing various applications include Blink and LED and and empty sketch. The behavior is the same in all cases. This particular Photon also looses the keys and frequently boots in Listen mode (flashing Blue LED). I then have to set up the WiFi credentials and then generate new keys to get this Photon to connect to the cloud (when that happens).
Looks like we had a window on Saturday when new connections were taking longer than normal. We responded and fixed a few services that were misbehaving, so you might have noticed that Saturday. We’re looking into the cause behind these, and working to avoid this going forward.