Getting started with PyGos and Pylife

[Ralph Lohse]

@bomtarnes +1

[Keptenkurk]

@bomtarnes +100 a few more months waiting would have been better than shipping useless bricks. My PyGo1 and 2 are plain dead. Now waiting for a magical revival due to battery discharge. As a backer you choose to go the bumpy road, but this journey has been far beyond expectations in all aspects...

[Stephen Glavin]

Thanks. I’ve now managed to update both using a PC. However, as other users are finding, they just won’t charge on the charging pad. After 5 hours still 0% on one and 2% on the other. The charging pad itself regularly has a flashing blue light which I assume is its own thermal protection. @Pete-Allen-0

[henri lepervier]

@Ralph-Lohse @Pete-Allen-0 @bomtarnes +1 also

[henri lepervier]

@Edouard-Abramovich @Pete-Allen-0 +1, I am now exactly at the same stage. After the reboot, I get BT, but Wifi-local is no more available.

[henri lepervier]

@henri-lepervier @Pete-Allen-0 @Peter-Bankuti @bomtarnes
Hello Pete, All,
Finally, I have understood (sorry I am slow) that this was possible to use the Wifi Local network to try the Firmware upgrade manual procedure. I did it, and after several attempts, it worked !

Then I started from scratch. I had difficulties to have a positive scan for the PyGo (dozen of attempts), but eventually, it was recognized by the Android OS Pylife application

I though I was at the end of the story... but unfortunately no.

1/ The device cannot charge more than 1% (using a QI Wireless Charger)
2/ and more : the location stays wrong : I have a plot in the middle of the blue (without any google map all around)

I have spent a lot of time to reach this point

And now, my question : I received a box with a sticker Pygo2 (so I used the PyGo2 firmware), but when I look to the device, there is no slot for a SIM card as presented into the documentation

Do you have the same ? is there a Sim slot on your devices ? I am wandering if all my issues are not due to a wrong PyGo (1 instead of 2)

For the time being, I am stuck : the device cannot charge, even with the Firmware updated to the latest version.

Any recommendation would be greatly appreciated

Kind regards
H.

[Stephen Glavin]

Update again. Both now just state 0% battery and only turn on when sitting on the charger. I left one charging overnight ~10 hours and in the morning it was still 0%. My conclusion is that neither will charge and the batteries are completely dead. @Stephen-Glavin @Pete-Allen-0

[Edouard Abramovich]

@Stephen-Glavin I noticed the battery percentage is not updated until the device goes to sleep mode. Once it is on again, the app displays the correct value. The overheating issue might still get in the way though. I put my charger in the freezer and managed to charge the battery halfway.

[Andrew Mills]

@henri-lepervier I ordered (and think) that I have received a pygo 1 + pygo 2. My pygo2 does not have a sim card slot. Having the issues upgrading firmware on it so can't confirm if it has a IMEI number (which I think indicates the unit can connect to cellular network).

[Stephen Glavin]

I like the ingenuity, but it’s not very practical and would make wired charging just as convenient :) Hopefully this is just a firmware issue. But a bit disappointing that I can’t even test two pygos communicating as they each only have power when charging, and there’s only one charger. @Edouard-Abramovich

[Peter Bankuti]

@Stephen-Glavin Maybe in another 4 years also pycom will respond to this shambolic product release. But until then it seems we as users should somehow reverse-engineer everything and try to find a solution instead of them. The very least pycom should have communicated by now is that they have an issue and we should not do anything with the delivered devices until they fix all the issues in the firmware that actually prevent us using the pygos. Really have no words how it is being handled.

[Andrew Mills]

This post is deleted!

[arikb]

I have the same problems as @Stephen-Glavin @henri-lepervier @Edouard-Abramovich.

My PyGo still heats up a lot, and stops charging after a while. I'm trying to figure out the status LED on the wireless charger.

So far I've seen several behaviours, and I'm trying to fill in the blanks.

Green-blue-green - booting
Solid blue - charging
Blinking ~0.5Hz teal - overheating?

[Andrew Reekie]

@Andrew-Mills They must have went back to an embedded SIM solution. I have manged to upgrade one of my pygo2's and app does now show an IMEI ID #.

[henri lepervier]

@arikb @Pete-Allen-0 @Edouard-Abramovich @bomtarnes @Stephen-Glavin

Status of tonight : I went outside to buy a new QI wireless charger (yeaaa) : larger one - a square like 7 x 7 cm. Still plugged on my PC USB port. I reached 6% !

Also, BT is on. Pygo is recognized by the Android OS application. But no clue why the WiFi Local network is gone : I suspect this is available only when a Firmware update is possible.

Still the GPS location is completely wrong (I am NOT living in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean)

Still very hot in any case.

No time to verify, but I have the suspicion that the device is charging only after an interaction (like trying to Fupgrade, or asking for a status)...

Anyway, this is quite far from a robust status ... and I still do not understand why there is no SIM slot somewhere as per the documentation

That all for tonight

Kind regards
H.

[henri lepervier]

@henri-lepervier

and

[Peter Bankuti]

@arikb Have been closely watching my PyGo on the pad for over 4 hours now to take notes about its behaviours. During this time i have observed 2 more LED states in addition to those you mention:

Blinking blue, drawing 530mA - not sure what it means as the PyGo shows a static battery indicator with only 1 square filled, however 530mA sounds too much for not being charged. (How ever the pad is solid blue, when PyGo shows charging animation)

Interchanging blue-teal, drawing 8-540mA - not sure what it means. PyGo display is off in this state (i observe this phase after blinking in teal only).

Based on my notices i get the impression as if the pygo would check its state every 60 seconds and decide what to do based on that. It seems to me when the display shows a static battery indicator (number of filled squares is not always consistent), it probably does not charge. When it shows an animated battery indicator, then i assume the pygo charging itself (most of the time 0-3 squares are animated, for some minutes however it was animating only 0-2, not sure why). When thy pygo overheats and is left on the pad, the pad draws ca 8-115mA while the pad blinks teal. Some time later the pad changes between teal and blue, drawing 8-540mA. However if i remove the pygo from the pad when overheated and place it back on the pad when both have cooled down, the pad turns blue and draws 980mA...which is for sure too much for a battery rated to ca 450mAh. Then after the pygo overheats it can be still scanned over BLE even minutes after having removed from the pad...while other times BLE seems to be turned off as soon as the device overheats. And othertimes the device can not be scanned over BLE despite it has been cooled down, being charged on the pad and also the display is on since minutes. So i simply can not find any consistency how the pygo behaves on the firmware it was released with (yeah, i still did not manage to start its wifi AP to do the ugdate).

[arikb]

@Peter-Bankuti I noticed that sometimes I get the blue-teal immediately when I start charging, when the device doesn't sit on the pad in the correct place, there doesn't seem to be a lot of leeway in where to place it and a few mm here and there can make a big change.

I did upgrade to the latest firmware on the 3 devices that I didn't brick (I have a 4th one that doesn't charge or otherwise respond at all, possibly literally fried). I still have a problem with BLE - I have 2 devices charging but only one gets the BLE connection. When not charging they seem to be connected for a very short while until they're entirely unresponsive.

NONE of the features in the app work at ALL. This is categoric. No functionality. I tried playing around with the "alert templates" and thereafter "alerts" but I cannot get a single one to trigger. Not even to upload

I just don't know how to characterise this. I'm usually good at this black box analysis stuff. This is really frustrating and disappointing. In a private chat to @Pete-Allen-0 I wrote:

"I had the feeling that the target of this kickstarter project is (also) relatively technical people who want this device to play with and mess around with and reprogram.

"If it's targeted at technical people, then give all the information. Log files, technical information inside the app, ability to control the device mode and put it into firmware update mode explicitly - and not as a side effect of the firmware update mode failing and forgetting to reboot the device.

"If it's made to be an end consumer device, all I have to say is that it barely feels like an alpha version."

This pretty much summarises my feelings about this project. I have nothing against Pycom - in fact I've participated in the original WiPi kickstarter and have only good things to say about that product. And although waiting from 2018 until now is a bit long, I've seen worse in Kickstarter and there was a pandemic in the way. The hardware itself is a bit of a miracle - so much hardware in such a small package. I honestly think the idea and the execution of the hardware (assuming none of these problems are hardware related) is fantastic. I think Pycom really aimed very high and actually hit the mark. However, the overall quality - just feels off, and the lack of control I have over this buttonless portless little brick (I know it has a serial port, but I haven't manufactured a cradle for it and it can't be bought) is frustrating. The firmware leaves much to be desired and the phone app feels like an afterthought with some obvious grammar errors.

Additionally, if I had the responsibility of dealing with what is very obviously a problematic product, I would make sure to dump as much information as possible on how to work around, mitigate, solve and debug these issues. It's been a bit silent around here, as far as people from Pycom responding.

Could it be that only us handful people on this forum have problems with our PyGos? I'm kickstarted backer number 131, so there must be quite a few people out there. Based on the serial numbers I assume more than 1000 units have been manufactured. Do they mostly work and I / we just got stuck with the malfunctioning ones? Are there happy PyGo customers that love their new hackable tracker / communicator?

I don't know how much more of my time I will keep dumping into this project before I set it aside in the "failed kickstarters" bucket, to be recycled in a few years when I move again. My monetary investment into it was €239. I've made worse financial mistakes in my life.

Feeling a bit frustrated now.

[robert-hh]

@arikb maybe the number of complaints is low because only few people received their devices until now. I'm. still waiting.

[arikb]

@henri-lepervier The location - Atlantic ocean just west of Gabon and south of Ghana - happens to be GPS coordinates 0 longitude and 0 latitude. That's why it seem to pop up in many applications when GPS coordinates are not available and they default to 0, 0.