Can't complete initial update or safe mode

[motley]

Hi,

Just received my 5 pack and the first two I have tried the 'Initial Update' process fails at the same point.

Having logged onto the board's wifi ap and selected my wifi for it to use for the update process I get the message:

Oak Wifi Config
Saving settings to your device...

I have left the process to run for 30 mins or so and no progress.

Trying to reset the bords to safe mode by grounding P1 during start-up doesn't seem to work either.

I'm reluctant to try the same process on the other 3.

As ever all help gratefully received.

Chris

[PeterF]

Hey Motley,

There are some ongoing issues which are trying to be resolved with Particle which could be causing you some problems. But if they are just related to the update, then you'll want to look at the troubleshooting guide for that. And if you have a USB to serial adapter handy, you can also do the easy serial update. If you don't have one... get one... you can get one for US$1-2 and they are invaluable for debugging.

I don't want to dissuade you, but depending on your application, but be prepared to follow this guide, and remove the particle integration from your Oaks, and run them as ESP8266s, until things settle down.

[motley]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the reply, on the suggestion of a friend who had similar problems using a laptop, I tried the update process using an Android tablet. I got further but still failed to complete the update despite multiple attempts.

I have an 'ftdi basic' USB to serial adapter and will give the serial update a go.

I hope I can get the particle.io facility working - it's the main reason I bought the Oak boards. But I will still have the ESP8266 to use in the meantime.

Should get this done later today - will report back.

\cheers,

Chris

[motley]

Ok, further update...

I have followed the instructions suggested by PeterF (written I understand by "Brendan 'nog3' Halliday" - so many thanks to Brendan) and have removed the particle integration from one of the Oaks. I'm not an Arduino expert but i did get the standard 'Blinky' to compile and download.

I had to de-power the Oak between downloads or there were transmission failures. For those who have such devices my 'ftdi basic' USB to serial adapter seems to work ok, the chip is marked FT232RL but I guess that's no guarantee!

The problem I have is that the LED (on Pin 1) doesn't flash - I used the code supplied in the Digistump wiki.  In the Arduino IDE have have selected the 'Generic ESP8266 Module' as the board.

Thanks in advance,

Chris

[PeterF]

Glad to hear they're starting to work for you Chris

With regards to the led blinky not working, you'll probably need to refer to the Oak to ESP8266 GPIO mapping table on the wiki. So instead of a 1 for the LED, it *should* be 5.

Make sure you have a look at the OTA Update stuff in the ESP8266 Arduino core. Once you get it working, it loads new code a lot faster than over serial. 

[motley]

Hi Peter,

Dooh - should have looked more carefully, I will try to move on now (the OTA sounds like the way to go).

Cheers,

Chris