Can't connect to nabaztag in ad-hoc mode?

Hi everyone,

Forgive me for crossposting over from nabaztalk, but it seeme like someone might be able to help here.

I can start up the bunny and get it into the all-blue configuration mode, and I can see the nabaztag's hotspot in both a Mac and on a PC (though it's only there occasionally on the PC, sometimes the network disappears).
But I can't connect to it! I have tried turning DHCP off and hard-coding an IP address, forcing ad-hoc-only connections, manually adding the network to the list of preferred networks... On a mac I get the opaque "There was an error connecting to the AirPort network 'nabaztagEB'" and on the PC it just seems to give up and the network disappears.

I was actually able to "connect" to the nabaztagEB network two times, it seemed, but I couldn't do anything at all -- 192.168.0.1 would consistently time out. I managed to try with DHCP, and with a hardcoded IP set to 192.168.0.100, but same timeout results each time.

Anyone have suggestions? I'm about to give up and box it up to send back, but I would love it if it worked... Thanks!

Firstly I would wait for someone more experienced than me to trouble shoot your problems before you send it back but as a new owner I can say, from my experience, that it does sound like you have a fault.

I had none of the issues you are describing and setting up the Tag/tag was as simple as they say it is (website issues aside). A few things to try is to disable any firewall, anti-virus, and spyware software. I didn't need to do that but I think its worth a try.

Also this might be obvious but how near is the Tag/tag to the machine you are trying to connect? Ideally you want them right next to each other as I doubt the wireless signal will be as strong as a retail wireless access point.

jexe a écrit:

Hi everyone,

Forgive me for crossposting over from nabaztalk, but it seeme like someone might be able to help here.

I can start up the bunny and get it into the all-blue configuration mode, and I can see the nabaztag's hotspot in both a Mac and on a PC (though it's only there occasionally on the PC, sometimes the network disappears).
But I can't connect to it! I have tried turning DHCP off and hard-coding an IP address, forcing ad-hoc-only connections, manually adding the network to the list of preferred networks... On a mac I get the opaque "There was an error connecting to the AirPort network 'nabaztagEB'" and on the PC it just seems to give up and the network disappears.

I was actually able to "connect" to the nabaztagEB network two times, it seemed, but I couldn't do anything at all -- 192.168.0.1 would consistently time out. I managed to try with DHCP, and with a hardcoded IP set to 192.168.0.100, but same timeout results each time.

Anyone have suggestions? I'm about to give up and box it up to send back, but I would love it if it worked... Thanks!

Hi Jexe,

I receive my Nabaztag/tag yesterday.
I had the same problem as you with my pc.
I had the nabaztagXX in my list of WIFI accessible connection, but when i connected to it, it take several times and then nothing happened.

But i've got 2 laptop at the house, and i tried the same manipulation with another one (ad hoc mode to the bunny "all blue" + connection Wifi in ad hoc) and it worked correctly !!!

So i think that certain wifi connection have got some problem to do that, becase my 2 laptops have got standard Wifi and not the sam result.

for information, i've got an ACER (KO ad hoc) and a IBM Thinkpad (OK ad hoc).

So if you can have a friend with another PC and wifi, you can test the same manipulation with him, perhaps it will work.

On your PC don't use ad hoc mode but infrastructure mode. It will work

Thanks everyone for your responses. To answer everyone:

LongView -- The nabaztag is sitting right next to my laptop, so it should be able to pick it up. Sadly, it's not working.. thanks for the suggestion though.

Katrepsy -- I've been trying on two laptops. One is running XP, and the other is a Mac with OS X 10.4.. I'm unable to connect on either, unfortunately.

marfab -- How do I connect to the nabaztag in infrastructure mode? I can only seem to see the rabbit in computer-to-computer mode. If I enforce infrastructure-only connections on XP and try to connect, I get an error stating that "The selected network nabaztagEB is a computer-to-computer network." I've tried to change my router's IP address to 192.168.0.254, in hopes that the nabaztag would just find the network and connect to it, thinking maybe that's what you meant.

Can you give more details about how to do what you're talking about? I'm still unable to even connect to it and tell it what network settings to use.


Thanks again for your help! But still nothing's working. Any more suggestions would be welcome.

Hi jexe,

In your PC fix infrastructure mode on your wifi card.

Then display wireless network in windows. Switch off your connexion between your PC and your router. Then put Nabaztag/tag on "blue" mode (switch on nabaztag/tag and press button on his head)

You will see him in your wireless netwoork, then push connect button on windows. You will have a news IP adress for your PC.

Then you can connect on nabaztag/tag configuration page.

Thanks again marfab,

I have it in blue mode, but I can only attempt to connect in ad-hoc. The only connection I see available for the nabaztag is ad-hoc, and it refuses to see any other nabaztag network. Like I mentioned, if I enforce infrastructure mode on XP by turning off capability to connect ad-hoc, I get this error: "The selected network nabaztagEB is a computer-to-computer network."

By the way, this is a nabaztag, not a nabaztag/tag (no microphone). Does this make a difference? It came from thinkgeek.com, which only sells the original right now, no tag/tag yet.

Anything else I can try?

Ok thanks to tell me that you have a Nabaztag. So you're right for ad hoc mode.

Did you try ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew in order to have new IP adress ?

I did try ipconfig /release and /renew, but it couldn't pick up a new IP address. I also tried explicitly setting IP addresses in the 192.168.0.X range, but no luck. I can't even ping 192.168.0.1.. watching traffic with tcpdump looks like the nabaztag isn't responding to ARP who-has requests.

There were only about two times that I was able to successfully form an ad-hoc connection at all, so that's all I thought of trying those times... At the moment I'm unable to connect whatsoever. On a Mac, I get the error "There was an error connecting to the AirPort network 'nabaztagEB'", and on the XP machine it looks like it's just timing out. And after it fails, the network disappears.

Thanks again for all your help. Any other ideas, or you think I've got a broken rabbit?

Normally your PC must have a DHCP adress to connect with Nabaztag in ad hoc mode. It's very strange.

Do you see it in your wireless network when it's in ad hoc mode ?

Yes, there are a lot of infrastructure networks in my neighborhood, so I see those listed, and I see the nabaztagEB listed as an "Unsecured computer-to-computer network."

If I try to connect to it under XP, I get a connection dialog reading "Please wait while Windows connects to the 'nabaztagEB' network." It tries for maybe about 30 seconds, then it gives up, and the nabaztagEB disappears from my list of networks. I'm assuming that this may be because timed out, so Windows figured that it was a bad network and won't offer it as an option anymore?

Do you use Windows' firewall ?

I do use Windows firewall. Would that prevent an ad-hoc connection? I just tried disabling it, but am experiencing the same timeout that I saw before.
Thanks for all the ideas! Keep them coming if you have more

I'm sure thaht your PC kept is old IP adress. Put it on on ad hoc mode then restart your computer.

You're right, it does hold on to the old IP address. OK, I restarted the system and disabled infrastructure connections so it would try to connect to the Nabaztag first.

Unfortunately, I'm getting the same timeout. There's one more strange thing -- I've set it to automatically connect upon seeing the network, and it leaves it in some kind of half-connected state. The list of wireless connections shows the nabaztagEB network as "Not Connected", but when I try to click to connect, I get the message "Are you sure you wish to disconnect from the network 'nabaztagEB'?" I googled around quickly for an answer to this one and found a couple people who had similar problems with a buggy linksys router.

ipconfig still yields nothing interesting, even in that half-connected state:

Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

I'm not sure of a way to force it to only do ad-hoc connections on the Mac, but I imagine I'd see something similar..

Please try on your Mac computer

So this is strange...
On the mac, I got a connection after about 4-5 attempts and getting "There was an error joining the AirPort network 'nabaztagEB'", but DHCP gives it a peculiar IP address: 169.254.82.126. Especially strange because before connecting to nabaztag, the Mac was on a 192.168 network.

I've restarted the Mac with the Nabaztag set as its default connection. When it starts up, I'm not connected to anything at all. Now, I haven't had luck reconnecting to nabaztagEB since the Mac was restarted -- I've tried about 20-30 times.

Thanks for your persistence! I really hope I can get this working, at this point I've spent a whole lot of time on it..

Send it back to Violet in order to have a new one.

Okay, I'll try to send it back to the retailer next week for a replacement. If they don't take it for some reason, I'll ask Violet.

Thanks again for all your help!

You're welcome