Reset Button Modes

Reset Button Modes

The Ninja Sphere has a small, recessed, reset button on the base in the center of the Sphere (and in the middle of the ring that runs around part of the base). This button can be held in to perform a variety of resets. The button may be hard to press in, so keep pressing until you hear a soft "click"

When the sphere ships from the factory, the reset button can do one of three things:

• reboot (green)
• unpair (yellow)
• factory reset (red)

You can choose which action to take based by holding the button for different lengths of time and then releasing the button when the corresponding colour is displayed on the LED matrix.

With the March 9 update, and following a "green reset" of the sphere, the reset button can now do one of 5 things, two of which (halt and abort) are new to this release.

• halt (grey)
• reboot (green)
• unpair (yellow)
• factory reset (red)
• abort (white)

The reset button now cycles through all the modes instead of moving from green to yellow to red and provides an extended grace period during which you can cancel the selected reset action by pressing the reset button again.

If the Ninja Sphere has registered your cancel intent, it will flash the LED matrix white, before re-enabling the normal control functions of the LED matrix.

You can also abort the cancel action by holding the button until the LED matrix displays "white" and then releasing the button.

Note: that this new functionality is not available in new Spheres until you have successfully passed the updates phase of the setup process and have rebooted once.

If you are trying this and do not see 'grey', then make sure that you release the reset button at 'green' so that you don't have to setup your sphere again.

Halt

The new "grey" mode allows you to ask the Ninja Sphere to shut itself down without rebooting. This might be useful when you need to unplug a Ninja Sphere to move it to another room and is slightly safer than simply removing the power.

Reboot

The "green reset", as before, allows you to reboot the Ninja Sphere. We'd like to reduce the number of times you have to do this, but until we have that sorted, it will occasionally be necessary to reboot the Ninja Sphere manually.

For example, after receiving the March 9 update, it may be necessary to use the "green reset" to get access to the new Presets and Scheduler functionality. The "green reset" is generally safer than power cycling the sphere, since with a reboot we can guarantee the file systems are properly synced where as a power cycle may corrupt the file system in a way that will require a full factory reset.

Unpair

The "yellow" reset allows you to return the Ninja Sphere to an unpaired state. This reset does the following things:

• resets the WiFi network configuration
• deletes the credentials that bind your Sphere to your Ninja Blocks account
• deletes all your rooms, things and sites
• reboots into the "unpaired" state.

This reset mode might be used in these cases:

• the setup process got past the WiFi network setup phase (you saw a "Green WiFi" icon), but did not run to the point where you configured the location of your site.
• you want to use your Ninja Sphere with a different Ninja Blocks account
• you want to give your Ninja Sphere to a person who has a different Ninja Blocks account
• you want move your sphere to different location which has a different set of devices
• you want completely reset the configuration (as opposed to its software) of your Sphere to the factory state. Factory Reset The "red" or factory reset mode will re-image the Ninja Sphere's internal SD card with a fresh copy of the Ninja Sphere software. In detail it does this:
• ensures the SD card partition table matches the factory state or regenerates it otherwise
• reformats the boot, root and data partitions
• ensures that the Sphere has recovery media available locally or downloads it from the network (or from aUSB key)
• boots into the recovery system
• reimages the root, data and boot partitions.

Factory Rest

The "red reset" resets the Sphere's configuration to factory state, like the "yellow reset" but it also resets the software to the initial factory state. The software will then be updated to the current state by the updates phase of the pairing process.

Once you are in this mode, the Ninja Sphere will display a seemingly random sequence of blue, 4-digit numbers on the LED display for about 20 minutes until the factory reset is complete. If you get into this state and want to abort, you can sometimes do so by turning the power off. However, if on the subsequent power up the blue 4-digit numbers return, then you will need to let the process run to completion.

As a general rule, you shouldn't attempt to do a red factory reset unless directed to by Ninja Blocks support staff. The reason is, a "yellow" reset is usually sufficient and if your actual problem is one of the known issues with the Android phone app, doing so will waste a lot of time without helping you get your Sphere paired. So, feel free to use this reset mode if you want to, but please consider reaching out first to support staff by e-mailing [email protected]

You may also wish to read "How to factory reset a Ninja Sphere with a USB key"