I haven’t tried the serial except to try to flash by USB, but I wasn’t successful.
The Web IDE is pretty flaky right now. If I look for the version details on my devices, it says default is 0.8.0 rc.26, but if I then hit the refresh icon, it reverts back to default 0.8.0 rc.25.
Hoping for some progress tomorrow!
J
Flaky is putting it mildly. I flashed my mesh heartbeat code to both devices multiple times now – it appears that it works, I get flashing and the IDE says it was successful, but now somehow Tinker is back on both devices. What?!? I confirmed that from the iOS Particle app, and I can control D7 from the Tinker app now. I did have that heartbeat code on the devices before I tried to get it to update to rc-26.
From what I saw, if you select RC.25 instead of default, it would flash the selected code and run it. If I selected default, it would revert to tinker.
Just tried to flash the RC26 to Argon and 5 Xenons but it’s still showing RC25 and all devices ar back to flashing green again. Not sure what to think 
Did you check the mobile app to see if the devices are now running Tinker now (or can you when you get any of them to come back online)? Have you checked to see if you have a serial port when one of your devices is plugged into USB?
Yea, same here, all have Tinker on them again.
Maybe the phone setup process loads the RC26 on setup now?
I have not tied Serial usb yet.
It seems to me that RC26 flashes RC25 (so no system updates) but with tinker instead of the selected application. Manually selecting RC25 was the only was to flash my own user code again.
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Hello,
I really would like to try the RC26 to see if it gets better … but where do you fin dit? For my account it’s neither in “build”:
nor on GitHub
neither worked by reinstalling the Argon from the iOS app (still RC25)… Am I missing something?
Steven
0.8.0-rc.26 is currently being tested and not available yet.
We spent several hours fighting with both Argons and Xenons with rc.26 showing up and disappearing. We also kept having the issue of losing the serial port so while you could flash new code, you couldn’t get any output via the serial port. If you put the units into listen mode, you could hear the serial port initialize and it appeared to be ok. As soon as you gave it wireless credentials, it would connect to the wireless network and then disable the serial port. If I hadn’t waited 9 months to get these new devices, I probably would have thrown them out the back door.
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We also kept having the issue of losing the serial port so while you could flash new code, you couldn’t get any output via the serial port.
Are you using Serial.begin(9600) in your setup()?
Is your user code doing some form of Serial.print() and you are seeing that it does not show up in the serial terminal?
I saw this same thing after I tried to update to rc-26 (when it was present in the IDE and flashing Tinker to the device). I just tested again, and unlike on my Photon (on 0.7.0) which finds the serial port whether or not I have Serial.begin(), the Argon, on rc-25, only finds the serial port if there is a Serial.begin(). Has the use of that been made explicit? Given this behavior, it makes sense that we didn’t see the serial port after the attempted upgrade to rc-26, since it put Tinker on the device, and it doesn’t have a Serial.begin() in the code.
@kennethlimcp, yes, I am doing both the begin and the print.
The problem is that at the OS level the serial ports are not being initialized. When you go into the Device manager in Windows it says there are no serial ports available. If you go into CoolTerm it says there are no devices available. If you go into PuTTY it says there are no devices available. This problem didn’t start until the phantom .26 code started showing up sometime after lunch.
In fact, I had hooked up a uBlox M6 to my Argon and it was spitting out GPS data with no problem, and I was serial monitoring it with no problem. After lunch I wanted to move the uBlox to the Xenon and mesh it over to the Argon, which would then upload it to the Internet. That’s when I started seeing the .26 code become an option and things started breaking. Same exact code that worked before lunch broke horribly since the serial ports would not initialize. This happened with Argons, Xenons, and multiple laptops.
Have you reverted to rc-25?, because if you haven’t, your code with the Serial.begin() is no longer on your device, Tinker is (or at least that’s what happened to me when I tried to upgrade to rc-26). This re-flashing of Tinker is discussed in this thread.
@ric, yes I did, no change.
I was able to get the Argon back on-line by re-flashing the GPS code at .25. I tried doing the same with the Xenon but it still does the same thing: blinking blue with no wifi creds and the serial port active. Once I put in valid wifi creds it breathes properly but does not init the serial port, even with non-Tinker code.
After spending the whole afternoon I just threw everything back into the box. I haven’t had the time or patience to start on round 2. Just reporting my findings.
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Looks like some could test RC26, so what are the criterias. I would like to test it, because i have nothing to loose, my all Argons and Xenons are unusable in this state.
Best regards,
Steven
@steven_r, I believe RC.26 hasn’t cleared Particle’s internal testing yet. According to a post by @ParticleD, they just started that testing late last week or this weekend.
@ninjatill, ok then i can wait a little, but if Particle is looking for early testers… i am ready to 
Steven
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I didn’t read this whole thread, but re: serial port – there was an intentional change for at least the mesh products (I’m no sure if this will make its way into the 2nd gen devices) where if you don’t have a Serial.* function call in your code, the serial port will not be initialized. I am curious to know why that decision was made but haven’t found out yet. If I do I will post here.
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