Photon Unresponsive, Solid Green Light

Troubleshooting
1

I received my Photon last week, and at some point during setup, the LED went to solid green. I searched through the docs, and support pages to see what solid green meant, but there doesn’t seem to be anything specifically about this issue. I am able to enter DFU mode, but that is the only thing I can do.

I have tried on multiple occasions to update the firmware through the command line using dfu-util, but even the latest firmware (0.4.3) does not solve the issue. After flashing, the Photon returns to a solid green state.

I contacted Particle support and have received a few responses, their advice was to flash the latest firmware which, as I said above, does not resolve the issue.

Has anyone encountered/solved this issue?

Thanks!

2

Can you try holding down setup for 10 seconds to clear wifi credentials?

3

Yes, I have tried that, but the Photon never starts to flash blue rapidly. And then when I release the SETUP button, it returns to the sold green state.

4

I just receive my two photon, One of them doing same thing.

5

Hi @mbelly - could you try updating to the latest system firmware. While the outward symptoms might be the same as the original post, the cause may be different. Thanks! :smile:

6

Thanks, but yes I’ve tryed this and it still solid green ;-(

7

Hi,

Similar issue here. Two photons one does all as expected. Both updated to newest firmware. One when I press the mode button after three seconds I get the flashing blue for wifi setup. The other I press for three second and get solid green light, I then just waited for about 30 seconds and the blue light begins to flash, sometimes the wifi from the photon comes up on my phone sometimes it does not. I tried reflashing the firmware and I tried holding at least 10 seconds but it seems it does not fix this issue. I can use the strange one but both photons are behaving quite differently.

Best regards,
Clive

1 Like
8

Exact same issue here.
I did the 0.4.3 firmware update to no avail.
Also worth mentioning might be that the photon is able to walk through the entire process of adding the device using the tinkering app, but I never succeed to connect after successful addition.
Rebooting immediately results in solid green led.
When I reset holding the Setup button (and not the Mode button as stated in documentation!!!) releasing the button after about 2 seconds, the led will turn magenta, then white, then start flashing green after which it will become magenta again.

1 Like
9

Does it finish up with breathing magenta or flashing magenta?

10

Breathing magenta…

11

Breathing magenta is good! That means your device is connected to the cloud but isn’t running an application. You can flash an application from the WebIDE.

The devices are factory programmed with tinker, so they should be coming online with that initially. Seems this isn’t happening for a few. But you can write your app and OTA flash it to the device and things should be working.

12

OK, I see, and the green solid led after a reset, (or power on for that matter) is this also due to the fact that no application is running?

13

Hi my Photon definitely has an application on it. The blue light takes around 30 seconds to appear after being solid green. Even with the blue flashing light there is sometimes no network from the Photon to connect too.

Best regards
Clive

14

Clive, does your photon start up if you put it in safe mode?

15

The solid green is an anomaly, I’ve never seen that on my photons. But you say it works when you start in safe mode?

1 Like
16

Hmm, I really don’t think it is online. It was correctly claimed with the Particle app, but it never showed up online after setting wifi settings for my local network.
Also Particle web build does not show these devices, while I have listed a core and a photon.

17

Have you managed to claim the device?

18

Hi @mdma,

Sorry I have had to deploy my Photon that is misbehaving I am in the middle of running trials so I cant get to it for around three weeks now (unless the system goes down which I really hope it does not!) Once I get through to registration it appears to work well.
I will see how the trial goes and once I have it back in my hands I will get back with more results.

Best regards,
Clive

19

Hi,
I’ve received my two photons yesterday. One of them is doing the same - solid green light. It looked fine at the beginning (tinker, setup bla bla bla) but after I connected it to wifi it started to blink amber and then solid green light appeared.
I’m able to put it in bootloader mode (DFU) using SETUP button (other modes seems not working cause i tried for example factory reset but without any result) amber led is blinking and using dfu-util (v0.8):

C:\Users\pzaluzny\Downloads\win32-mingw32>dfu-util -l
dfu-util 0.8

Copyright 2005-2009 Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
Copyright 2010-2014 Tormod Volden and Stefan Schmidt
This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
Please report bugs to dfu-util@lists.gnumonks.org

Found DFU: [2b04:d006] ver=0200, devnum=3, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=1, name="@DCT Flas
h   /0x00000000/01*016Kg", serial="00000000010C"
Found DFU: [2b04:d006] ver=0200, devnum=3, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=0, name="@Internal
Flash   /0x08000000/03*016Ka,01*016Kg,01*064Kg,07*128Kg", serial="00000000010C"

So i tried to flash tinker but at some point it gets solid green light with an error:

C:\Users\pzaluzny\Downloads\win32-mingw32>particle flash --usb tinker-photon.bin

Found DFU device 2b04:d006
Apparently I didn't find a DFU device? util said  dfu-util 0.8

Copyright 2005-2009 Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
Copyright 2010-2014 Tormod Volden and Stefan Schmidt
This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
Please report bugs to dfu-util@lists.gnumonks.org

Found DFU: [2b04:d006] ver=0200, devnum=3, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=1, name="@DCT Flas
h   /0x00000000/01*016Kg", serial="00000000010C"
Found DFU: [2b04:d006] ver=0200, devnum=3, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=0, name="@Internal
Flash   /0x08000000/03*016Ka,01*016Kg,01*064Kg,07*128Kg", serial="00000000010C"


checking file  tinker-photon.bin
spawning dfu-util -d 2b04:d006 -a 0 -i 0 -s 0x080A0000:leave -D tinker-photon.bi
n
dfu-util 0.8

Copyright 2005-2009 Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
Copyright 2010-2014 Tormod Volden and Stefan Schmidt
This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
Please report bugs to dfu-util@lists.gnumonks.org

Invalid DFU suffix signature
A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!
Opening DFU capable USB device...
ID 2b04:d006
Run-time device DFU version 011a
Claiming USB DFU Interface...
Setting Alternate Setting #0 ...
Determining device status: state = dfuIDLE, status = 0
dfuIDLE, continuing
DFU mode device DFU version 011a
Device returned transfer size 4096
DfuSe interface name: "Internal Flash   "
Downloading to address = 0x080a0000, size = 3952
Download        [=========================] 100%         3952 bytes
Download done.
File downloaded successfully
Error during download get_status
Error writing firmware...

Same thing when trying to flash it with new firmware 0.4.3.

Any Ideas, anyone? Or maybe it’s just broken?

Regards,
Patryk

Edit

It’s weird as hell but …it’s working now and i’m not sure why cause i tried same steps few times without results. Here is what i did few 5 minutes ago:
Writing this post i tried once again to flash tinker. I sent post and after that (photon led was solid green) i taped RESET buton, nothing happened so i hold both SETUP + RESET buttons for 2-3 seconds then release them and it came to life. Don’t know why but I’m happy it’s working:)

20

Sounds like you’re running in safe mode. You’ll see the LED flash magenta before you release the setup button.