SOS mode electron

I have a new electron, tried to set it up. SOS mode. Tried device doctor, no go, fails. It will not go into any other mode. Tried flashing tinker…no go. Tried update, no go. Seems like a dead electron.
Any ideas?

SOS is usually followed by a numerical code. Which numerical code do you see?

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How? Error output?

How? Error output?

How? Error output?

More information is usually better than less information when it comes to debugging issues we can't see.

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OK fair enough I thought I covered it all…ha not really. It has the 1 blink so a hard fail I think it’s called. The device doctor just says failed, see community forums. I tried it several times as some said it fails them works, no luck. Tinker the same just says it failed and refers to forums. It says it’s working but then it fails. I have to put it into the flashing yellow, try the device doctor, it starts, the electron goes back to blinking red, I put back into yellow flash then the device doctor fails.
Is this thing dead?

If your Electron came on an anti-static sponge you need to remove that.
If it came in a breadboard remove it from that one too.
You have plugged in the LiPo and uFL antenna?
What does the device when you try putting it in Safe Mode?
How did you update the device? Try particle update -v (verbose)
Also when flashing Tinker you should use particle flash --usb tinker -v
Some time ago the default output was limited to reduce noise when skripting setup hence you may see commands without the -v switch.

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The fact that you can put it in different modes indicates it shouldn't be dead. Go through the steps @ScruffR mentioned and please post screenshots of the actual output. It's better for us to see it verbatim than some transcription of it.

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Ok will do. Thanks for the ideas so far.

Yes battery and antenna are connected. This isn't my first device. The result of the update was the same no difference, except I got this of course....

Updating system firmware on the device...Opening DFU capable USB device...
ID 2b04:d00a
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 = 0x08060000, size = 78368
Downloadng syste[=========================] 100% 78368 bytes
Download done.
File downloaded successfully
▌ Updating system firmware on the device...Invalid DFU suffix signature
A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!
! System firmware update successfully completed!

Your device should now restart automatically.

It just came back to SOS mode 1 blink.
It cannot get into safe mode.

Anything else to try?

the flash tinker result.....

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

Opening DFU capable USB device...
ID 2b04:d00a
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 = 0x08080000, size = 5776
Download [=========================] 100% 5776 bytes
Download done.
File downloaded successfully
Invalid DFU suffix signature
A valid DFU suffix will be required in a future dfu-util release!!!

Flash success!

Not really..LOL...still SOS

The output of particle update isn’t really convincing me.
Is your CLI most recent (currently 1.39.0)?

Maybe download all three individual system parts for 1.0.1 and flashing them one-by-one followed by Tinker may make a difference.
If you can’t get into Safe Mode you probably can’t get into Listening Mode either.
If you can, you may also want to update the bootloader and post the output of particle serial inspect