[solved] Running firmware on the Electron without a SIM card via DFU?

[ericye16]

I just got my electron and I tried flashing the “blink” program via USB, but the LED isn’t blinking. The red light is constantly blinking at a very high rate and the RGB LED is blinking blue at a constant rate. I put the board into DFU mode by pressing both buttons, letting go of reset and waiting until the LED blinked yellow, then letting go of mode (which seemed to work.) The code is from here: https://docs.particle.io/guide/getting-started/examples/electron/

I skipped a step earlier where the guide told me to set up my SIM card because I didn’t want to use my free three months yet. I don’t think this should affect it but I’m not sure. I’d prefer to be able to program it through USB since I might not always have internet access when I’m programming the board.

Does anyone know what I might be doing wrong?

[BDub]

Hi @ericye16! It sounds like perhaps you have not activated your SIM and connected your Electron to the Cloud. If you do not install a SIM card in AUTOMATIC mode, it will go into Listening Mode on boot. If you’d like to run your Electron without connecting it to the Cloud and without a SIM you can run your Electron in MANUAL Mode or or SEMI_AUTOMATIC mode and Compile and Flash apps locally and also Flashing over Serial for the Electron as an alternative to using DFU mode. Flashing locally is recommended on the Electron to minimize your data usage when iterating different user apps frequently.

That said, the Electron really shines when you can send it a 4KB app in a few seconds OTA and it starts doing a new thing that you just coded Definitely give it a try!

You can get setup quickly and activate your Particle SIM here: https://setup.particle.io/

If you have a 3rd party SIM (you can even use the one in your cellphone if it’s a Nano (4FF) size SIM) you can also use the same setup page to get started. You should know your SIM’s APN ahead of time though. Your cell provider can give you the APN credentials, and your ICCID is usually printed on the SIM card. Technically speaking the ICCID is not required if using a 3rd party SIM through the setup process, we just use it to know you don’t have a Particle SIM and then present you with a nice page that can create a custom firmware binary for you with the APN credentials.

Please let us know how it goes!

[ericye16]

It works now, thanks!

[BDub]

@ericye16 That’s great! If you could please share which part of the setup process you were originally blocked on that would be good feedback, thanks