It appears that I’m one of the unlucky recipients of a “doesn’t create an AP for setup” unit, and I’d like to save the GF team several hundred bucks and myself a handful of weeks by fixing this over the wire. I’ve read over the unofficial hacker’s wiki and this should be straightforward compared to my last gig at Particle. Console access to Yocto via USB serial? Easy. Want me to drop a uSD socket on that unpopulated pad?
Think I have one of those around, plus a hot air rework station. Even if I need to flash via that JTAG, it’s gear already I have.
So! What I’m missing is:
Are there any known commands that’ll get it advertising the AP from the command line? Some other mode it might be in? A .conf to edit so it’ll come up on reboot? Or another non-major fix?
Or, failing that,
A known good Yocto image and recommended procedure for getting it on there.
Even better if it’s just a skipped assembly step and the Wi-Fi antennas weren’t plugged in.
A quick skim of LinkedIn didn’t turn up a GF engineer that I was sure worked on the device side to @, so happy to get that info too.
So sorry you’ve gotten one of these. Happy to see you’re not overly-upset by it. I applaud your ambition! And I have no doubt you’re capable of doing it. But they very likely won’t be allowing you to attempt it. They’re simply not at a point in life where they could properly document and promote such a process. Not to mention they’ll want to properly document and control any machines that have issues. As you might imagine, this is the time where that’s most important.
Luckily the replacement process is very quick. We’re talking mere days, in my experience. So you’ll be up and running in no time once they see this case.
Yup, mostly just professional compassion. I’ve been Product on a few consumer electronics (including ones with SoftAP) so I know how stressful it must be over there.
And totally agreed, this is a bit wild west so I sure wouldn’t expect nice documentation or hand-holding. As for the diagnostic value, I’m happy to pull any logs or dumps that might be helpful, though given the number of reported cases I’m betting there’s a known cause by now.
I’m so sorry to hear that. While I sincerely appreciate the thought behind your request, I’m recommending that we replace your unit. I’ll be in touch via email to sort out the details. Thank you for letting us know about this, and I apologize for any frustration.