How to Wifi Robot Camera Working on Hotspot

If you’ve read my other articles you’ll know that my solution for the gopro floating tripod was to make my own WiFi enabled gopro. After spending a good half an hour trying to get this to work, I gave up. After a day of trying to get it to work, and getting stuck on the same error message I have learnt how to fix it.

Firstly, what exactly is going wrong? I have my camera connected to my notebook and WiFi. The notebook is in range, so the camera is also working. The problem arises from my laptop (which is in wifi range), not being able to contact the gopro through the camera. This means that even though the notebook is connected to the internet, the camera will not be. In theory this is an easy fix: either I plug in the Gopro directly to my laptop, or use a USB drive connected through a small usb hub.

Just so I don’t lose anyones’ emails

I decided on the latter option, and on the night before I am due to leave to live in Sichuan, I tested my setup. The problem is the gopro still wouldn’t connect, but the notebook did.

“It works!” I said to myself, and left the camera in charge of the USB drive, the power cord, and my laptop. I have now successfully tested the camera on the laptop, and am not looking back. I have also created an image (3,034 bytes) on my internal hard drive, with the WiFi network name and password (gopro4togopro[.]hotmail.com) to make sure it stays connected when I am not near an internet connection.

So now that I have successfully connected my camera to my laptop, I must ask:

Why can’t any wifi connected Gopro work with my laptop?

Well first off, I can’t remember the name of the wireless protocol that the gopro uses. Its not WPA, and not WEP, so I’m not sure why it does not work. One thought that I have is that my Gopro may be using WEP, but its not connecting to the WiFi network. (After some research, I have realised that the following pages recommend this, and it matches up: https://help.gopro.com/troubleshooting/trouble_trg.php?page=1#WEP)

My other thought is that the password is incorrect. If I see any errors on my camera, I change it. The camera’s code is:

Gopro WiFi code: 1a2ff5ea6d745e

I am, however, not entirely convinced that this password is correct. I do not have an OpenWrt router, so I cannot check that the password matches the camera model. If anyone has any better information on this, please let me know.

I have installed some custom modules, to prevent the camera from loosing wireless contact with my notebook:

uncheck break-even then enable device-manager