Some of my students are having issues connecting their iPad to their robot. The iOS is the same on my iPad and theirs as well as the VEXCodeIQ app version is the same on my iPad and theirs. BlueTooth is turned on. The robot is connecting to my iPad, but not the select students iPads with what appears to be all the same settings. Any ideas?
Thanks for reaching out about this issue.
First I just want to make sure you don’t have any other iPads trying to connect to the same VEX IQ Brain. The VEX IQ Brain is only able to connect to a single iPad (or Android tablet with VEXcode) at a time, so if there is another iPad already connected, that would prevent you from connecting to the desired brain with your iPad. To help prevent this, I would recommend that you check that all the other iPads are either connected to the correct VEX IQ Brain or not trying to connect to anything at all.
At this point it helps to know if you are using the VEX IQ Brain (1st Generation) or the VEX IQ Brain (2nd Generation) in your classroom. The 1st generation brain can be slow to connect in an environment with lots of radio frequency noise like you can get with a large number of VEX IQ Brains and iPads all trying to connect at the same time. So if you are using the 1st generation hardware, it may help to try having all the other brains and iPads turned off to make sure that they are actually able to connect to each other successfully. This will just help confirm that there are no issues with actually connecting between the pair of devices. If they are able to connect, then we can work on helping you to get the connection process more reliable.
Another issue that you should watch for with the 1st generation hardware is that the connection process can fail if the brain you want to connect to is connected to a controller. This is a hardware limitation, so I would recommend that if you use the controller in your class that you make sure to either have the controller connected or the iPad connected to your brain at any given time. To make sure the controller is not connected to the brain, you just need to turn off the controller and wait about 30 seconds. That will give the brain enough time to know that the controller has been disconnected.
If you are using the 2nd generation hardware, I would recommend that before trying to connect to the brain, you check see if the brain is already connected to another iPad. If the status LED on the brain is flashing, it means that there is an active connection. However, it also does this if there is a controller connected. So if you see a little controller icon in the top status bar on the brain screen while the LED is flashing, you have a controller connected. While the 2nd generation brain does not have the same issue with connecting to the controller and an iPad at the same time, making sure the brain is not connected to a controller will make it easier to see if there are any other devices connected to the brain. If the LED on the brain is still flashing, then there is another device, probably an iPad, that is still connected to the brain.
Please let me know if any of these steps help you to connect between the desired brain/iPad pairs. If not, I will need some additional information
- Are you using 1st or 2nd generation brains?
- How many VEX IQ Brains are in use in your class?
- What version of iPadOS is running on your iPads?
- What model of iPad are you using?
