Safety & FAQs

Safety

As a rule of thumb:

• Disconnect power while you're connecting wires and putting the circuit together
• Before powering the circuit for the first time, be ready to throw the ‘kill switch’ – i.e. a key power switch that can be cut safely in an emergency
• Check wiring THRICE, ask if you need additional verification
• Check your soldering job. Frayed copper wire touching another pin/pad? Fix it first before powering on!

FAQs

"Oh no, I wrote some code, uploaded it, and now the Photon cannot be updated again! Help!“
Put your Photon into Safe Mode, upload the basic Blink code example, then try again.

"Why can't the code verify? It's not letting me upload to my Photon and I keep getting cryptic errors in the Build interface.“
There's likely a typo in your code that needs fixing. The other most probable reason is that you have not imported the library into your code yet – this needs to be done when you copy and paste the recipe sample code into your Particle Build IDE – even though the ‘import’ statements are pasted in, you still need to explicitly import the library into the code document to register the presence of the library.

"The Photon's connecting but flashes yellow-orange before restarting.“
The most likely case is that your device's ‘keys’ are not matching what was set in the Particle server. So your device is connecting to the Internet, but once it ‘shakes hands’ with the Particle server, both parties don't agree on the type of handshake and therefore refuse each other's connection. A previous firmware/app update that you interrupted is the most likely culprit. This requires a bit more work to ‘rescue’ and involves using the Particle CLI (particle keys doctor) to fix this. Follow the thread here or bring the device to me to reset.

"Can I use the Arduino / ESP8266 / Teensy / Feather / RPi / [insert tech here] instead? I find the Particle family of microcontrollers unsuitable.“
The Particle Photon was chosen as a good solution for relatively easy (and secure) WiFi connectivity, a reasonably user-friendly interface, and its extensive documentation. If you have prior experience working with other variants of microcontrollers and processors, feel free to do so, as long as they help you in realising your group's concepts developed for the studio. We can always have conversations and individual help to forge a path towards other platforms if you are willing to learn something extra. Otherwise, always remember this phrase: fit for purpose.