Setup didn't go so well so I could do with some help!

Setup didn’t go so well so I could with a little help to get started.

I received one of the original Photons back in 2015 and it’s been sitting on the shelf ever since waiting for me to get around to it. Well, I just have, and this is a way of saying it’s pretty old, which may be relevant.

I setup the Photon using the phone app, which appeared to work of sorts but the connection process was immediate, no update with accompanying flashing purple LED, so I’m not sure what state it’s in. The guide also says the app should be showing the Tinker screen at this point, but it didn’t appear and I can’t find it anywhere.

I’m using Linux Mint 17.1 with a wired network connection (no wifi). I tried using the USB serial connection to re-setup the wifi using particle serial wifi - auto wifi scan yields error ‘EHOSTUNREACH’ and manual setup returns repeated ‘Obtaining device information…’ and nothing else. But… the Photon is breathing cyan which sounds optimistic.

The troubleshooting guide suggests that maybe I should update the firmware manually since this appears not to have happened automatically - is this what I need to do? I’ve taken a quick look at dfu-util, mine is at version 0.5 but a post on the community forum indicates at least 0.8 is needed, so I’m reluctant to try.

Guidance will be appreciated!

Breathing cyan indicates a cloud connection, so that’s good.
‘Particle identify’ in the CLI while in listening mode, should give you the Device ID.
That ID can than be used in ‘particle device add [ID]’ while in breathing cyan mode to claim the device to your account.

Also make sure you’ve got most recent CLI installed (1.27.1) then put the device in DFU Mode (blinking yellow) and perform particle update to get to 0.6.3 system firmware, but updating dfu-util first might be a good idea too.

Apologies for the late appreciation of help. I seem to have overcome my problems and am now in good shape I think.

The main problem was that the computer does not detect the Photon unless it’s in listening mode - if it isn’t then the computer just doesn’t see it. I don’t think the instructions I read make this clear. Also dfu-util throws out a load of error messages which posts in this community suggest can be ignored. The system firmware is now up-to-date and I’m good to go! Many thanks.

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this should only be true for really old system versions.
In that case a particle update (as suggested above already) should fix the problem.