After Hours - Canon EOS talking to a Surface Pro over wifi

Please note This an after hours post, specifically about connecting a Canon EOS 6D to windows 8/8.1.  I have written it for two reasons -  so I can remember how to do it and because this you might need to do something like this for a camera enthusiast that you know who isn’t a networking guy.

Canon have made it relatively easy to connect the new EOS 6D 70D etc. to your Android or IOS device and to a wifi hotspot to which your PC/laptop is connected.  However what I wanted to do was to  configure windows 8 as an ad hoc wireless connection point so I could remote shoot via wireless from my Surface Pro anywhere I happened to be; jungles, mountains, and the various events I go to.  However Windows 8 doesn’t have a UI for this anymore so you need to run a couple of netsh commands from an elevated prompt to get this working:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=MyWIFI key=MyPassword

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

..where MyWIFI is the wireless network name you want and MyPassword is the password to connect to it. What this does is to add a new adapter into network connections..

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In my case I renamed my connection to Canon and also note that Deep6 has a three after it as I tried this  a few times! Another thing you may see on forums is that you need to setup sharing when creating connections like this and that’s only true if you want to do the old internet connection sharing. I don’t need to do this for this scenario which is just as will as our IT department have prevented me from doing this in group policy

On  my Canon EOS6D I need to enable wifi
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then set it up by selecting the wifi function which is now highlighted.  From here I want to set up a C connection which is the Remote Control (EOS Utility option)..

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I have already don this a few times ..

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so to set up a new connection I choose unspecified. Now I ned to find the network I created on my Surface Pro by finding a network..

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My ad hoc network is called Deep6 as opposed to FAF which is my home wireless network..

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my key is in ASCII so I select that on the next screen and then I get this dialog to enter my password ..

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Note you have to use the Q button on the back of the camera to enter the text window. I am asked about ip addresses I select automatic as my wireless network will do that for me. Then I can confirm I want to start pairing devices..

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and then I will see this..

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I can now check that my 6D is talking to my new wireless access point (which I have called Deep6.

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as you can see I have one device connected.

So now I can use the supplied Canon software, the EOS Utility,  to control my camera. Or so I thought,  only all the control options are greyed out.  This is because you need to change the preferences to install and configure the wft utility which detects your Canon and allows you to control it. To do this select the option add WFT pairing software to the startup folder

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You’ll then get a little camera icon In your system tray and when your Canon is connected it’ll pop up this window..

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click connect and  you’ll see an acknowledgement and confirmation on the camera..

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in my case my Surface is called Vendetta. I click OK, and I am good to go and the camera saves the settings for me, which is great and in fact I can save 3 of them. In my case I have saved my surface connection and FAF to connect to my home wireless router.

The Canon EOS  Utility will now work..

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Now I can start to have fun with this setup and my shots get saved to my Surface Pro..

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