How to work with Particle

[FastEddy]

Now that the Oaks are arriving (excellent... thank you!), it would be nice to have some links to resources. Mine were purchased for a teenage beginner.

Especially how to get started working with Particle.

It'll take a bit of effort to get the momentum up after all this time but this forum should start to buzz soon, I hope 

[bruceme]

It's not ready yet, see this thread.

http://digistump.com/board/index.php/topic,1925.0.html

[konakcc]

How do I get a particle account?  When I try to access it off the Arduino Oak guide, it hangs.

[ajpowell]

Hey FastEddy,

Sign up to Particle here: https://build.particle.io/signup

Configure your Oak to connect to your WiFi here http://rawgit.com/digistump/OakSoftAP/master/config.html- full details are on the tutorial here http://digistump.com/wiki/oak/tutorials/arduino

[FastEddy]

Well, the Particle stuff is not working yet and with the Arduino method, I never get past the "Config file not found..." error upon uploading the first sketch. Running Oak.exe from the command line has no effect as there are "No devices available.

I have connected to the ACORN-XXXXXX network, which shows as an Unidentified Network.

I guess I'll wait a few more days 

[darklotus]

Hey FastEddy, Give the Config.html a few tries, the oak needs to flash fast for 30 odd seconds. Seems to take some people a few attempts depending on internet quality etc. One of mine took a couple of tries.
Once it does complete sucessfully your oak will show up in the Particle dashboard under Devices. Then you can run oak.exe and select your board.

[digistump]

It can take a few tries to get it to download the update, we're continuing to update the config app to help make this retry process easier, please try the newest one if you haven't yet

Thanks,
Erik

[Mirar]

I take it this means:

1. oak firmware is still not ready (particle, etc)
2. there's therefore no point of me trying to figure out how to upload it

is this correct?

[FastEddy]

So... here's where I have got to:

• Have two Oaks. Each when plugged into power (1A USB cell-phone power supply) powers up steady and gives a heart beat a bit faster than .5 seconds on and off
• I have noticed that they enumerate on the wifi network with a much stronger signal than my regular wifi router
• I have successfully registered on the Particle network, config.html starts successfully and the login accepts my email address and password (giving an error message, as expected, if I type inaccurately)
• On a Win7 laptop, I am connected by wired ethernet to the internet (reasonably fast Comcast cable connection) and wirelessly to the appropriate "ACORN..." SSID
• "Once connected click Next" yields a progress bar but no response in terms of LED behaviour from the Oak and the "Unable to connect or save settings to your Oak, please ensure you are connected to the Oak's network and retry." error message
• Refreshing the web page... no change
• Retrying MANY times in different permutations and combinations... no change

I'm sure it will work in the end and, once it does, I'll post the details.

In the meantime, I am open to any and all suggestions.

[Eje_G]

Try to unplug your Ethernet connection to the laptop once you logged in to your oak account when you do the setup on when you get the webpage telling you to connect to the acorn-xxxx
http://rawgit.com/digistump/OakSoftAP/master/config.html

Once you get the info page telling you that it's connecting the oak to the network and have the option to check the cloud connection plug the Ethernet cable back in again.

I just setup 2 Oaks to connect to the cloud and updated their firmware. Arduino was installed on a regular workstation so no wifi on it so I just used my phone web browser to go through the cloud connection. Went to web page above, logged in to my particle account, once told to connect to acorn-xxxx I connected to it with my phone, and did next step once it gave me the page with info that how the leds would be flashing and ability to check the cloud connection m phone had automatically reconnected to my regular wifi since the acorn ap had stopped broadcasting and connected to my wifi network. Now I could run the CLI tool on my workstation and configure it so I could upload sketches from Arduino to this particular board (seems you have to do the CLI each time you swap boards tho?)

[FastEddy]

Dear Eje_G,

This sounds like good advice, I will be working with it this weekend, once I am back at my home desk.

Fingers crossed... I'll post the results in detail.

Thanks!

[FastEddy]

I have finally been successful in adding my Oaks to the Particle cloud.
In summary:

• Using a laptop to run config.html never worked for me.
• The first time I tried using my cell phone, it worked with one of the devices. I simply followed the webpage instructions that come up when you run config.html, switching wifi connections as instructed (just as I had on the laptop - go figure. When something works, it just works!)
• The second device took several tries but also updated eventually. I power cycled everything just before it finally worked but I have no idea if that helped or it was luck.
• Both devices now show up in Particle.io, as expected.

Now on to test the Arduino uploading.

[exeng]

Here is the fundamental problem that those of us who cannot get the cloud connection are having (if I can speak at least from my experience). I would love to help debug this from a users perspective but I have no idea what the expected behavior should be at various steps going from new setup to cloud connection. When it works, it works (not for me yet). But when is doesn't it's hard to know where the fail is.

1. Successful firmware update? (how do I know that the update succeeded other than it looks the rapid flash lasted long enough).
2. Cloud connection? (how do I know that it is actually trying? I see the bar move but did it try to connect? If so, why no connection?)

Would love to have a network sniffer but that's not available.
I've tried setup from phone, laptop, two different internet connected networks, externally logged in (and not) at particle.io.
Would love to help but need some sort of real world indication of state of config / connection to cloud.  I've also tried opening an unrestricted pinhole for the Oak on my router as just a stab at it. I'm bordering on thrashing (as we used to say) for a solution, if not already there.

Some LED flash patterns might help to at least provide some state information information to go on. E.g. your firmware is fine but having a problem connection to particle cloud because, a, b, or c.

Seems like those that have had success don't know why. They are just happy that it work.
Those that have had fails and willing to help figure out what may be going on are at a loss without any debug info.

Without anything to go on I guess I'll set everything aside until it's resolved and/or continue to monitor the forum for possible things to look at.

[tcarleton]

Just throwing in my notes -- I've successfully provisioned 3 of the 4 oaks I have right now, and I cannot for the life of me get the fourth one to activate.

With the previous three, the only way I was able to activate them was after the "10 second" dance failed a few times I would pull the power on the oak and then power it back up. It seems to rapidly connect to the cloud and start blinking almost immediately.  If I can get it to keep blinking in excess of 20 seconds (which seems to be the longest period before dying) I have a shot at that "cycle" getting activated.

The other odd thing about pulling the power is that even if I go through the gitsetup page from scratch, put in an SSID and password that I know works but it doesn't blink on the reboot, the power cycle can get it blinking (once, then its "start over" time).  Looking at my router, I do see that when it "blinks" it holds onto an IP address for at least a few seconds before it falls off the radar.

To my mind, its struggling to maintain a connection to the routers (I've tried two different routers and a hotspot).  I'm tempted to drive up the hill away from all my neighbors (There's a lot of wifi around my house) and see if a hotspot with no competing access points will help.

All of the successful activations were before the server changes mentioned a few days ago.

[FastEddy]

exeng,

• If the update has been successfully completed, you will see a device on Particle.io
• When the update starts, the regular heartbeat flashing stutters and then the activity led starts to flash quickly. If this continues to completion, it seems as if the Oak reboots and immediately connects to the SSID that you pointed it at from the prompt. Go to Particle.io and you should see that a device has been added there.

I reiterate, nothing worked until I did the process from my cell phone (and I tried hard).

Good luck!