Getting Started with Particle Photon

Updated 30 September 2016

When you first look at the Photon, it’s staggering that such a small device could possess the incredible functionality that it does, but not only does it bring an impress spec sheet to the table, but the true power is unlocked in the cloud based ecosystem that Particle have created for their hardware.

Photon graphicIf you haven’t checked out our Welcome to Particle.io tutorial yet, I highly recommend you do, as it gives a great overview of how the entire Particle platform works. However today we’ll be looking more specifically at Particle’s Wi-Fi enabled board, the Photon.

The ins and outs of programming the Photon were discussed in the tutorial linked above, so we won’t focus as much on the cloud side, as much the hardware and setup. Suffice to say that if you’ve ever touched an Arduino, you’ll feel pretty at home, and if you’re familiar with plain C++, you’ll love the flexibility and power.

Spec wise, the Photon packs a punch. Particle have developed their own SoC (System on Chip) which is the shiny module seen on the top side of the board. It consists mainly of the Broadcom BCM43362 Wi-Fi controller, and the STM32F205 microcontroller which features an ARM Cortex M3 processor.

Here’s the Photon specs at a glance, taken from the Particle website:

Photon specs

As you can see, it packs quite a punch, especially compared to Arduino products of a similar price. The ARM Cortex chips (used on the Photon and the Arduino Due) blow the AVR chips (used on most Arduinos) completely out of the water in performance and price.

The Gear

To follow this tutorial you will require the following:

Setting up your Photon

Now we know a bit about what’s under the hood let’s look at setting up our Photon for the first time and getting it connected to the cloud. Whilst it’s possible to do this using the command line interface, it requires a bunch of software installation and takes longer to do anyway so we’ll focus on the Wi-Fi setup using the Particle app.

Tinker screen

Setting up and claiming your Photon to your account is just about as easy as it gets.

  1. Unbox your Photon and connect the USB cable to the Photon to power it up. Your Photon LED should be blinking Blue, if not, hold down the setup button for approx. 3 seconds until it blinks blue.
  2. Download the Particle app off the relevant app store, open it up, and login with your Particle account (if you don’t have a Particle account, head to Particle.io to create your account).
  3. Once you’re logged in, select the device that you’d like to setup, and follow the on-screen instructions.
  4. Your Photon should blink purple upon the first setup and may take several minutes to download updates. The Photon may restart a few times, absolutely don’t unplug your Photon. I did this accidently during my first setup and it took about 2 days to fix.
  5. Awesome! Your Photon should now be claimed and setup with your account. You can un-claim devices through the dashboard at any time.
  6. Your Photon should now have Tinker on it, and your phone should display the tinker screen as shown to the right.

Fantastic, now have a play around with the Tinker app, it’s a really cool way to see different pin functions and play around with some basic IO functionality.

What Now?

You’ve now got your very own Wi-Fi connected microcontroller, let your imagination run wild! For some basic programming examples using the components supplied with your Starter Kit, check out the examples section of Particle.io. For inspiration for unleashing your inner mad scientist, take a look at our projects section, and be sure to read through our next article on Using Particle.io Cloud Functionality.

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