A few weeks ago I purchased this SD card on eBay. It's a Toshiba Flashair card that allows you to connect to it over wifi and transfer files without having to insert it in the device that you're transferring from. In the 3D printing community, the Flashair cards are notoriously difficult to configure properly. There are a number of options for ways in which it can be set up, all of which will be covered below. If you'd like to have a look at the official documentation, then it can all be found here.

Initial configuration

The first step when you get your card is to update it to the latest firmware. This makes sure that the card will be compatible with the configuration commands that we'll be entering later on. You can find the firmware updaters at the links below:

W-02 Card Firmware Update

W-03 Card Firmware Update

W-04 Card Firmware Update

Editing the configuration file

If you haven't already, you'll want to set your file explorer to show hidden files, and then navigate to the SD_WLAN folder on the SD card. Within that folder you'll see a file named CONFIG. Open that up in any text editor (I found that it doesn't matter if you use windows CRLF line endings) and delete everything that is already there.

There are three ways that you can configure the connection to your SD card - AP mode, STA mode, and Internet pass-thru mode.

AP (Access Point) mode makes the SD card behave like a normal wireless access point, although with no direct internet access. This means that you need to connect to the SD card every time that you want to transfer files, which isn't really ideal but its the easiest to set up.

STA (Station) mode allows your SD card to act as a LAN client and connect to your existing access point, meaning that you won't need to change networks when you want to transfer files. This is generally the most desired mode of operation.

Internet pass-thru mode allows you to connect to the SD card but also have a connection to the internet at the same time. This isn't ideal as the card acts as a bridge for all your internet traffic, forwarding it to your access point.

Setting up AP mode

To set up AP mode, you'll need to copy the following lines into your CONFIG file. Set your APPSSID to your desired access point name, and your APPNETWORKKEY to your desired access point password by typing them after the equals sign on their respective lines. At least 8 characters are required for the password.