Hi folks, I received my Tachyon yesterday and am now on my 3rd hour of trying to get something going.
I had a long time trying to get the particle CLI running and detecting the device (it was a struggle to get it past the point of ‘Now let’s get the device info’, this step mostly just hangs for me — if you unplug the device it detects that and tells you to plug the device in, but doing so did mostly not do anything..)
However eventually I did get the CLI setup wizard complete!
But my Tachyon powers on to a glowing green LED (Linux running), but the display doesn’t come on, it doesn’t appear to be responding to my keyboard and it’s not coming on the network.
I thought I’d reflash it on to a different WiFi network in case that’s the problem, but when I get to ‘Step 8 Now let’s register your device on the Particle platform’, it gives me a HTTP 500 error for https://api.particle.io/v1/products/38739/registration_code
I have tried going through the flow again whilst registering a new ‘Product’ but still no luck — same error.
Kind of disappointed that this requires a cloud account to setup to begin with, but doubly so that it seems to be hard blocking me and there’s nothing I can do about it
Any chance there will be a cloud-free install option in the future?
Sorry you’re having trouble setting up your Tachyon.
What operating system are you using? How did you install the CLI? We recommend using the CLI installer documented here. Also let me know the version of the Particle CLI you’re using with particle version. It should be
Did you select the desktop variant during the setup process? If the monitor still doesn’t come on at boot, can you tell me how you connect the monitor (like an USB-C HDMI adapter)?
Thanks, the HTTP 500 error is indeed now fixed. I did a reflash and it successfully came online to my laptop in hotspot mode.
I was then able to SSH in and use nmtui to add my home network and it successfully joined the network now. Peculiar, but I’ll take it.
Still no display but I haven’t had chance to dig into this just yet, now I have at least SSH access I should be able to try and see what’s going on here.
For ref, though, the platform of particle CLI:
originally I tried the packaged version in NixOS, but it doesn’t work for flashing Tachyons (seemingly a packaging issue) — fair enough I guess. NixOS is kinda weird so I wouldn’t entirely expect it to run here, just someone had packaged a sufficient version so thought it’d be worth a shot
then I tried the normal version in a debian trixie (13) VM and subsequently a podman container.
I installed this with bash <( curl -sL ``https://particle.io/install-cli`` ) and had version 3.39.0.
This was showing the symptom whereby it would stall at ‘Now let’s get the device info’. But oddly, when you start the CLI and unplug it after waiting at this stage, it then prints some instructions about plugging in the Tachyon — in other words, it actually can detect the Tachyon is plugged in, but for some reason doesn’t (appear to) do anything. (If the Tachyon is unplugged from the start, the instructions are printed immediately). Would be really nice if there was more feedback about what it’s doing on this step.
Later I tried this in a debian trixie (13) live-USB (i.e. no virtualisation). Although I had the same problem above a few times, after enough dumb retries this is ultimately what got it to work. I’m not sure what (if anything) changed to get it to finally work other than blind luck
I’m not usually the biggest fan of Docker/Podman but if that was a supported and tested installation method that might be pretty nifty.
Aside: the particle wifi command doesn’t seem to do anything for Tachyons (or maybe I’m holding it wrong) — not sure if this is what you expect or not.
I am using a HDMI display through a USB-C hub. I will do some more debugging and report back later
Well, I guess the reflash sorted it out — now the desktop comes up with no problem!
Only thing I haven’t got working yet is the mobile connection. I was expecting a Kickstarter plan to be provisioned and was hoping to use this to confirm the hardware all works :).
The documentation makes it sound like this all just works by default out of the box.
It might be, that all my attempts at (re)flashing have messed something up on the Particle Console — I see that I have at least 2 eSIMs in there. On the Particle Console, one eSIM claims to be ‘Installed’ and one claims to be ‘Enabled’.
I will try to pre-empt some of the diagnosis questions, but note I can’t figure out how to use esim list:
root@midori:~# particle-tachyon-ril-ctl status
root@midori:~# particle-tachyon-ril-ctl state
Enabled
root@midori:~# particle-tachyon-ril-ctl esim list
Command queued
root@midori:~# particle-tachyon-ril-ctl esim profiles --follow | (sleep 1; particle-tachyon-ril-ctl esim list)
Command queued
^Croot@midori:~# particle-tachyon-ril-ctl esim help
Invalid value: 'help'. Use esim [download|enable|disable|delete|status|list|profiles --follow]
root@midori:~# particle-tachyon-ril-ctl esim status
root@midori:~# systemctl status particle-tachyon-ril
Unit particle-tachyon-ril.service could not be found.
root@midori:~# systemctl status particle-tachyon-rild
● particle-tachyon-rild.service - Particle RIL Service
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/particle-tachyon-rild.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2025-07-29 18:41:23 UTC; 1 day 13h ago
Main PID: 3402 (main)
Tasks: 5 (limit: 5763)
Memory: 2.6M
CGroup: /system.slice/particle-tachyon-rild.service
└─3402 /usr/bin/particle-tachyon-rild dbus
Jul 31 08:33:41 tachyon-f6c7d61f particle-tachyon-rild[3402]: OK
Jul 31 08:33:43 tachyon-f6c7d61f particle-tachyon-rild[3402]: LPA STATUS command received
Jul 31 08:33:47 tachyon-f6c7d61f particle-tachyon-rild[3402]: Command: AT+CEREG?, Response:
Jul 31 08:33:47 tachyon-f6c7d61f particle-tachyon-rild[3402]: +CEREG: 2,0
Jul 31 08:33:47 tachyon-f6c7d61f particle-tachyon-rild[3402]:
Jul 31 08:33:47 tachyon-f6c7d61f particle-tachyon-rild[3402]: OK
Jul 31 08:33:52 tachyon-f6c7d61f particle-tachyon-rild[3402]: Command: AT+CEREG?, Response:
Jul 31 08:33:52 tachyon-f6c7d61f particle-tachyon-rild[3402]: +CEREG: 2,0
Jul 31 08:33:52 tachyon-f6c7d61f particle-tachyon-rild[3402]:
Jul 31 08:33:52 tachyon-f6c7d61f particle-tachyon-rild[3402]: OK
Maybe I should better take this to another thread for easier searchability?
Two SIM profiles is normal. The active profile depends on the country you selected during setup. If you let it go for a while longer it should show more CEREG results and change from CEREG: 2,0 to a different second number.
Hi @particularly, as Rick mentioned, the SIM does get enabled automatically during setup. What country are you located in? Feel free to message me directly.
Thanks for your response and your patience — haven’t had chance to look at this again until today.
I’ve left the Tachyon running for 20 min (and the other day, it was on for much longer); it’s still reporting +CEREG: 2,0 (i.e. no change) and seemingly no connectivity.
I’m in the United Kingdom, specifically the east of England.
Hm, 45min after boot now and it has just changed state. It changed to CEREG 2,3 and then 10 seconds later is saying it has registered and come online with the carrier 3 UK.
Didn’t expect that to be honest, can’t say I understand why it would spring into life all of a sudden 45min after boot :D, but good result?
I’m also in the UK at the moment and saw a similar strangeness with the cellular registration time - I’m not entirely clear the root cause, but we are keeping an eye on the cell side here. Appreciate the feedback and glad its working now!
