The Lego EV3 brick is supposed to be “WiFi enabled”.
What this actually means is that the Linux kernel in the brick supports exactly 1 Wifi-chipset, the one in the Nethear WMA1100.
Lego sells this part for $40 + shipping, but is in fact the Netgear WMA1100, that can be had for far far less than this.
I bought one here in The Netherlands for €20, including shipping, and if you have time, you can get it for far less than that, but I didn’t. Because I had this brand new EV3 sitting on my desk, with a handful of Bluetooth dongles, and the bloody thing was as reluctant as the NXT to talk to my laptop! Lego. Go shame yourself!!!!
So the first thing I did was Google till I found the answer, and here is a resume of what I discovered:
– if you insert the dongle when it’s on, it won’t work!!!!
– get a Netgear WMA1100
– shutdown EV3
– insert the dongle IN THE EV3, not your PC or Mac!!!!
– this is because the EV3 doesn’t have Wifi! it needs the dongle to get on the air!
– boot the EV3
– go into the EV3 wifi menu
– enable the adapter
– connect it to your wifi network
– (wma2 enabled probably)
– the led on the dongle will start flashing happily!!!
– the Mindstorm software will now see the Brick
– AND IT WILL FINALLY CONNECT
Wow, that was three freakin’ years of NXT-Bluetooth frustration written of of me 🙂
I’ll try to complete this with pictures and AD-HOC wifi,
Thanks for your attention, enjoy Lego!
Lars