Development devices

As a firmware engineer building a Particle product, it is important that you can rapidly iterate on new device firmware, while still simulating the behaviors of production devices deployed in the field. Development devices allow you to do just this.

Development devices ( ) are special kinds of product devices marked specifically for internal testing, separate from the production fleet. Development devices are prevented from receiving any automatic product firmware updates from the Particle cloud. These devices will ignore both released product firmware as well as any firmware version it has been locked to run.

This allows you to freely flash new firmware to these devices from the development tool of your choice (i.e. the Web IDE, Local IDE, or the CLI), without having it immediately overwritten by the Particle cloud. These devices will continue to maintain product privileges, allowing you the flexibility to experiment with new firmwares while still simulating behaviors of deployed devices in the production fleet.

Marking a development device

You can mark a device as a development device from the Console. When viewing your product's Devices view ( ), mark a development device by clicking the ... icon and finding the "Mark development device" link as shown below:

Once you mark a device as a development device, you will see it marked with the icon in the "Firmware" column:

This illustrates that the device is no longer targeted for product firmware releases. You are now free to begin flashing the device from the Web IDE, or whatever your preferred tool is for sending firmware to Particle devices.

Quick tip: You can sort by firmware version on this page to quickly find all of your development devices. When sorting in descending order, development devices will appear at the top of your device list.

Quick tip: If you prefer, you can also call the Particle API directly to mark a device as a development device.

Unmarking a development device

If you would like to return a device to the pool of eligible product devices to receive automatic firmware updates, you can unmark it as a development device. Non-development devices will be targeted to receive released product firmware or any firmware version it has been locked to run.

This is useful if a device is no longer being used for active firmware development, and you would like it to behave just like any other device in the product fleet.

From the Console, you can find the "Unmark development device" link by clicking the ... icon from the Devices view:

You should see the development device icon disappear from the "Firmware" column for this device once it has been successfully unmarked as a development device. Note that unmarking a device as a development device may trigger an immediate over-the-air update. This happens to return the device to its targeted version of product firmware.

Quick tip: If you prefer, you can also call the Particle API directly to unmark a device as a development device.