Bluetooth

Be sure to read the 'Wireless' page for general information before you read this page.

When you have a working Bluetooth facility on your PC (either with a Bluetooth dongle or built-in), you can configure the EV3 to communicate with the PC wirelessly. If not already done, you have to "pair" the EV3 with your PC to allow communication. To do so, first activate the Bluetooth features on the EV3: In the settings menu, activate the "Visibility" and "Bluetooth" options. Then, on the PC, open the system dialog "Bluetooth Devices". There you can search for the device and start to establish a connection to EV3. The process may be a bit lengthy and requires to confirm the action on the EV3 as well as on the PC, and you will even have to enter the correct coupling code in some place (should be "1234").

Important note: once you have established a wireless connection with the brick (whether it be via Bluetooth or WiFi) you must then close all settings dialogs on the brick before attempting to run programs via the wireless connection. If any settings dialog or any brick application such as 'port view' is running on the brick then it will be impossible to launch any EV3 Basic program, wirelessly or not, on the brick from either Small Basic or EV3 Explorer. It will, however, still be possible to use other functions of EV3 Explorer such as compiling programs to the brick.

Once the connection is set up and the automatic installation of the appropriate drivers is finished, your PC can communicate with the EV3 over a so-called "Serial Port". Which will be named "COM1", "COM3" or the like. You can check which name was actually assigned by looking at the properties page of the EV3 Bluetooth device. Alternatively, on the PC side, you can open the Bluetooth settings page, click 'More Bluetooth options and then the 'COM ports tab and you should see something like below (Win 10 screen capture). If you get a choice between 'incoming' and 'outgoing' ports, use the 'outgoing' port.

To use the newly-established connection with EV3-Basic, just start your program from Small Basic (not recommended) or start it (compile and run) from EV3 Explorer or compile it to the brick using Explorer and then start it from the brick menus. When no EV3 can be found directly connected via USB, but there are possible "Serial Ports" available, the PC will prompt you to select one of these ports. If you choose the right port, the connection should work.