Photon Setup

This tutorial will teach you how to set up your Photon and get it running off the Photon's Particle IDE.

Claiming Your Photon

After you take your Photon out of its box, you have to claim it. The first thing you need to do is to create a Particle account to associate with your Photon. This can be done at Particle Login. Once you have created an account, you can claim your Photon using one of these three different methods. For all three methods, you will need a functioning Wi-Fi network.

Method 1: Using your browser

The easiest way to claim your Photon is to use your computer's browser. This can be done by going to Particle Setup and following the instructions on the page (set up for a Photon).

Method 2: Using your phone

Another fairly easy way to claim your Photon is to claim it using the Particle IoT app. This is the link for the Google Play Store and this is the link for the Apple App Store. Once you download the app and log-in, you will need to claim your device. You should see a prompt pop up to do this, if not click the plus button to continue. Select set up a photon and follow the instructions given.

Method 3: Using Command Line

The final method to claim your Photon is to set it up via Particle's command-line interface program. Information regarding this tool can be found at Particle CLI.

If you are running on macOS or Linux, you only need to enter the following command into the terminal to download and install the interface

bash <( curl -sL https://particle.io/install-cli )

If you are running windows, you will need to download and run the setup installer by going to this download. In either case, run the installer.

Once the installer installs the program into your terminal, open up a terminal. In the terminal, type the following command particle setup. This will initialize the setup installer. Follow the prompts and complete the setup. Occasionally, the setup process fails and requires you to run the particle setup command again.

Getting your access token

To run our Particle Photon programs, you will need your Photon's access token. This can be easily obtained by going to build.particle.io and click the gear in the bottom left corner. There should be an access token here, however, sometimes it may ask for you to create an access token via Particle CLI. This is slightly more difficult to do, but should not be too large of an issue.

Creating an Access Token

In the case that you are not able to obtain an access token off the Particle website, you will need to use the Particle CLI tool. More information regarding this tool is found at Particle CLI.

If you are running on macOS or Linux, you only need to enter the following command into the terminal to download and install the interface

bash <( curl -sL https://particle.io/install-cli )

If you are running windows, you will need to download and run the setup installer by going to this download. In either case, run the installer.

Once the installer installs the program into your terminal, open up a terminal. In the terminal, type the following command particle token create --never-expires. This will create an access token associated with your Photon and Particle account. SAVE THIS ACCESS TOKEN. It will be incredibly important to run all our Particle software.