UPDATE: I tried this 2 more times and on the last try I held all four wires/pins against the H801 board while the flash process executed and it completed successfully! Woo hoo!!
But Ummmmm, now I connected power the VCC and GND on the right side terminals on the H801 and fired it up and…absolutely no broadcasting of the espRGBW.[mac address].
I’m looking at the H801 circuit board while under power and I see there are two led lights in the corner labeled D1 and D2. The D1 led is off, doesn’t light up at all and the D2 blinks green about once every 10 seconds.
I know it flashed correctly, but this dang thing won’t broadcast that SSID!!!
could I possibly have a defective unit?
I’m so incredibly frustrated with this.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
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@625alex and I will chat, but it does look like we may be sending "hex": "#106166255" as the hex parameter value. If so, then concatenated decimals is a bug, even if "hex": is still supported. So that’s something we need to investigate further on our end.
In the meantime… does it help for you to know that we send all of Hue, Sat, and Hex? Can you just ignore the `“hex” argument?
Just checking you did disconnect the switch wires after your flashing completed?
Strange not to see anything at all being broadcast by the device, I would expect it to broadcast something if it was booting correctly (that might be the original WiFi from unflashed device for example). Just checking your phone is searching for 2.4GHz devices and not just 5GHz.
The LED flashes are correct if I remember correctly, that said, can you try powering through the FTDI and boot that way instead? I found one of my devices did something strange on the first few boots but then started working normally, so assumed it was stuck setting something.
I agree with @cjcharles you should be seeing something on the 2.4Ghz band if it is flashed correctly or you left the jumper on pin J3 so it is back in flash mode.
If still no luck you could try resetting it OR reflashing again in case it was a bad load.
[quote] The new firmware has two methods of accomplishing this. Since the device doesn’t have any buttons by default, I wanted to create a way for everyone to be able to do a factory reset.
(1) This method might be easier to do with a surge strip with a button attached. Unplug controller and plug back in. Within 2 - 5 seconds after plugging in, unplug and plug back in. Repeat this process 4 times. You can know you are doing it correctly because on the second plug in the LED Strip will light up GREEN, the third it will light up BLUE, and the fourth it will light up RED. After it turns RED, you can just leave it alone. The little red led will blink 5 times slowly and then the RED LED strip will start to flash as the storage is being wiped. After that is finished the LEDs will turn off.
OR
(2) After the device is turned on, jump J3 for a) between 10-20 seconds will reset the wifi b) between 20-60 seconds will reset everything. If you reset the wifi correctly the little RED LED will blink 3 times quickly. If you reset all the device settings correctly the little RED LED will blink 5 times slowly.[/quote]
My Xfinity internet has been flaky today so haven’t been able to test till now.
Getting some erratic behavior.
I have only been testing this on one H801 thus far on my testbench but the device handler isn’t updating status on the device screen. For example everything is Off and when I manually turn on the Red channel it turns on the light but the mobile app isn’t updating to show its ON. Neither the red channel nor the main global indicator.
UPDATE: I should have known better; Everything is fine today without me doing a thing. All the crazy behavior coincides with SmartThings issue being announced. Note to Self: Not a good week for testing SmartThings code
Yes, even used a magnifying glass to ensure that there was no bleed over on the lead wires i soldered into the J3 holes for my wires.
Yep it is. To verify i re-enabled the broadcasting of my 2.4Ghz SSID band on my home wi-fi (i normally don’t broadcast for security reasons and all my devices use 5Ghz) and verified that my Android S7 Edge could “see” it .
Tried that as well and no luck. Held the wires in place for 5-6 minutes, watched the D2 led blink and kept refreshing the wi-fi networks on my phone hoping to see the SSID appear but no luck.
The advice and assistance is very much appreciated.
Thank you @dalec. I ended up re-flashing successfully three times today but still not seeing an SSID. I will try resetting it as per your methods above and let you know how it goes.
Don’t suppose you know if it was working with the original firmware do you? Do you see any high power wi-fi networks near your phone (I.e. perhaps it is just the ssid not as expected)
Would also suggest flashing one more time to be sure it finished and confirm nothing got corrupted somehow. That said should make no difference if you have already done it a couple of times. Maybe have a look at the antenna on the PCB and take a photo of you can to check for shorts or breaks.
Really running out of ideas now as these should cover it… If you do press the button again when booting do the led flashes change (they should)? If you connect all power and strips properly, do you get any LEDs on at all?
Unfortunately i don’t, hindsight being 20/20, i should have just fired it up right out of the box instead of flashing it immediately.
I flashed it again and confirmed it finished without errors. As a baseline for understanding what a successful flash process looks like i used this video as a reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kg_-bmBErM
I studied the PCB with a magnifying glass and all the circuits and components look to be in order, nothing is loose, i didn’t see any solder bleedover, the board looks clean. Not sure what the antenna component looks like ( i do have a picture of my rig in post 680)
Actually, the only led indicator that ever flashes anything is D2. It flashes a blip of green every 10 seconds. I’ve not witnessed it do anything else since i first put power to it. The D1 indicator led has never flashed ever.
So…for several hours i was working through these issues without having the RGBW leads connected to my SuperNight strip, that was all afternoon yesterday. Today I connected the led strip (in preparation for executing the reset steps that @dalec provided) and when i applied power the entire strip light up instantly, all led’s remain lit until I cut the power off. I was happy to confirm the led strip would light up but i don’t know if that’s what’s actually supposed to happen with this device when it’s working properly.
Thanks for the very detailed instructions @dalec. As i mentioned in my response to @cjcharles above, I successfully re-flashed (again) today and used that youtube video to confirm that what i’m seeing is indeed a successful flash.
I tried both your reset processes detailed above and neither produced the results i was hoping for. Instead, upon applying power, the entire led strip lights up and stays lit the entire time. I tried both your processes multiple times.
At this point I’m done messing around with this device, I’ve arranged a return through Amazon and the box is already in the mailbox at the corner of my street. As soon as i get my credit i’ll order another one and start over. Based on all the posts i’ve read I’m still convinced this is a great little device and am excited to actually see it work.
Huge thanks to both you and @cjcharles for the awesome guidance and support!
When you did the reset process, did the the red LED blink 5 times on the H801?
Sorry you had so much trouble. I have five that I use plus one spare. I had trouble with one so far and it was one that I had soldered to for putting on jumpers and such. I think the problem was me with my poor soldering that overheated the PCB and ruined that one and caused it to work weird. On your replacement you might try flashing before you solder anything just to see if it works better? Just a thought.
Nope, throughout the entire process, every iteration of troubleshooting i never saw an led blink any color other than green on the H801. The green led (d2) blinked once every 10 seconds, and that was the only cadence.
Yeah, i hear ya on the soldering and am thinking i may have damaged the board when i added the leads to jump the J3’s. When the next one arrives i’ll forgo any soldering and just boot it up prior to trying to flash to see what it does.
I am thinking then that the device was either not successfully flashed somehow due to damage? That blinking red LED on the H801 would have told us that the device was following the latest firmware instructions to reset. Since it never blinked for you something was faulty?
That’s the part that is the most confusing… the output of the esptool.exe command to write the image shows it completing successfully (screen shot below) Faulty device or damage…that’s what i’m reserved to at this point. I’ll start fresh with a new H801 hopefully by this weekend and see how it goes.
Agreed this is confusing… just to help me eliminate one other variable; what is the exact file size in bytes of the SmartLifeRGBWController.ino.generic.bin file that you are loading? Update: Never mind I can see from your screen capture it should have been the full file so it appears the H801 itself is defective like you suspected.
Best I can tell from your picture is “no”. I don’t see the ESP8266 Wi-Fi Module but even it was there I don’t see any comm pin outs necessary to do the flashing like Tx, Rx , etc
Here is a closeup of the H801 board and it’s ESP8266 WiFi module and comm pin outs circled in blue
