My Photon stopped working and only the D7 light is dimly lit… nothings else works.
I contacted Particle support 2 weeks ago and an engineer emailed me back with some questions. I replied and got no response…
have since sent 4 emails and logged another request, but have been met with silence…
anyone home?
Hey there,
Sorry to hear you’ve been having issues. With all the excitement around the Photon fulfillment, I suspect your mails have gotten lost in the big pile. That said, I’m sure the nice folks at Particle will help you out wherever/whenever they can.
That aside, what can your photon still do? That is:
With the last one, if you do that and the LED turns to blinking Magenta, try releasing it. It should then go into “safe mode” wherein it runs no uses firmware, but still connects to the cloud. That should allow you to flash new code onto it.
Let me know how it goes 
Hi! Thanks a bunch for the reply.
Im hoping the support channels will open up a bit after release of product.
So my photon is doing abosolutely nothing beyond a dimly lit blue D7 light…
buttons dont do squat… D7 is lit dimly, and thats it… nothing happens when I push any buttons…
I have another Photon (bought two) and it works perfectly fine…
@kdupreez In your top comment you said the Photon ‘stopped working’. Can you remember what you were doing with it at the time? Any chance something was shorted out when you were working on it or anything? If you’ve got a multimeter handy, what do you measure between the 3V3 pin and GND when it’s on?
I wasnt home, i left it running in the garage and played with it from the office… then it became unresponsive. when i got home the D7 light was lit but nothing else.
I’ll hook it up to USB on my computer quick and check 3.3v and GND and report back.
It reads 4.55v on the 3.3v pin when hooked up to my computer USB… very interesting!
any ideas?
@kdupreez It does sound like the 3V3 regulator on your board could be damaged. Just to be sure, there’s no way anything is shorting between pads on the board? Is it mounted on a breadboard or standalone?
Yeah, I also thought a short, so i pulled it from the breadboard and put it back on the foamy it came with… still the same.
That foam is conductive… You don’t really want to put it in there when it’s powered on…
I thought it was anti-static, not conductive? I check with multimeter, no meaningful conductivity on foam.
either, way its the same with or without foam.
UPDATE - The team at Particle replaced my Photon at no cost.
I’m super thankful for them doing that and I received the replacement unit and everything is back on track!!
thank you!
Yeah they’re pretty good! I had a similar issue and my replacement came yesterday 
I got the same issue within minutes of taking it out of the box. Pretty unhappy about it. What do I need to do to get it replaced? I now own a small useless brick.
Send a message to support - these guys are actually really helpful which sadly is rare these days!