Pretty dissapointed with pycom

[neil jepsen]

Im pretty dissapointed with my pycom product the fipy.
Ive spent about 1 week trying to get stable lte operation, without success. This is due to issues with the documentation which is shallow and error ridden. For example there is no instruction lte.detach() which is in the docs. Lte.dettach() appears to be the correct syntax.
Lte.dettach(reset=true) is talked about in the docs but doesnt work.
The lte send at command is supposed to set the modem automatically into command mode but doesnt.

There are lots of posts from other users who are finding these (lte) issues also and pycom dont seem to be able or interested to fix the problem. I purchased these devices for a commercial venture to upgrade a product based on atmega1284p, but it looks like the pycom is not yet fit for market.
Two days ago i emailed the mfr asking some important questions and received an automated reply promising a real person in a few hours (it said).
Im still waiting.

Today i managed to upload a script to the boot.py that does a machine.reset() and now i cant ersse the flash or reflash firmware using the windows tool or an ide such as thonny. The esp32 is not part of a dev board and i have rs232 coms to it on rxd/txd.
Any help on this woud be appreciated.

[neil jepsen]

@robert-hh Thanks for your reply Robert, and I apologise for being late.

[robert-hh]

@neil-jepsen You can always recover with theses devices, either with safe boot or full flash erase.
Safe boot is helpful if you have trouble with boot.py or main.py. For safe boot, connect P12 to 3.3V and push the reset botton. Safe boot will skip executing boot.py and main.py and bring up the REPL prompt. There you can change (or delete) boot.py or main.py.
Full flash erase is the sledge hammer that bring you back to point 0. For that, connect P2 (GPIO 0) to GND and push reset. That sets the device into bootloader mode. From that you can use either the Pycom Updater to reload the firmware (it includes an full erase option) or use esptool.py with the subcommand erase_flash. Erasing the device will also erase the SigFox and LoRa credentials. You will (or should) get them back if you use the Pycom updater in online mode. Again, to get into update mode, connect P2 to GND and push reset. Don't forget to remove the connection of P2 to GND for normal use.