Pandigital PANWF01 WiFi Dongle with USB Adaptor

7 Review to this product

• 

  Caroline R. Askey
  June 6th, 2010 on 8:33 pm

  Rating

  Plugged it in, entered in my security information and it connected!

  A few minutes more to log into Picasa web albums, (don’t use email, just username) and I had access to all my photos.

  As one of the other reviewers mentioned, this isn’t automatic, but it is very easy to set this up and connect.
• 

  C. Estevez
  June 7th, 2010 on 6:08 am

  Rating

  This product allows you to connect your Pandigital WiFi enabled unit to the Internet using your home WiFi connection. Beware that this product will not work for ANY Pandigital photo frame. Only those models that say so in the manual. Check it out.

  It worked out of the box as soon as I plugged it into our PI1051DW and turned it on. The PANWF01 was recognized by the photo frame and prompted us to configure the WiFi network we wanted to connect to. It allows you to have 3 WiFi networks pre-configured (this is handy for multiple locations).

  The navigation to get to the on-line services is not immediate. There are few options to select from and you will have to use the remote or the keys behind the screen to access them, but this is not an issue of this product, but the frame itself. However, I bought it with the hope of giving it to my parents so I could manage new pictures for them very often with minimum to no intervention from their end with the photo-frame and I was disappointed with the process that they most follow to access them.
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  Scott E. Thompson
  June 8th, 2010 on 1:48 pm

  Rating

  Nice product, it is great that you can pull pictures from the web and just update that and not have to take the card out of it and put new pictures then replace the card. Just wish that you could link it to a home server too.
• 

  rogerdugans
  June 9th, 2010 on 11:09 am

  Rating

  I purchased this dongle to go with a digital picture frame as a gift for a family member. The network connection appears to work fine (gets an ip address from the router) so it seems to work fine. My hope is that it will actually be of use on a computer as well however, as it ONLY connects the frame to a picture host service on the internet. But that is a different product review.

  Item does network the digital photo frame as specified.
• 

  Darryl Pierce
  June 11th, 2010 on 7:23 am

  Rating

  I almost didn’t buy this adapter because of all the negative reviews, but for $ 20.00 I thought it was worth at least trying.

  That being said, I am only reveiewing the advertised functionality, not what I wish it would do, or what others wish it would do. As I understand this, it is only supposed to allow you to do the following;

  1.) Connect your compatible Pandigital Frame wirelessly via WiFi to a Picasa Web Albums account.

  I use Picasa almost exclusively so I was happy to find a device compatible with Picasa, other frames connect to Snapfish and couple of other photo services.

  It does this very well once you get everything set up. You have to have a Picasa Web Album userid and password. The Picasa account is free for 1 GB of space. You can buy more space if needed. However you can store a lot of photos in 1 gb at lower resolutions, but I reccommend using higher resoultions for 9 ” frames and larger.

  Many reveiwers say they never got this to work. I had no problem getting connected to my network, but at first I couldn’t get it to download the photos from Picasa to the frame. The screen showed that it was connected to the Picasa server, but I had a blank screen, and I know I had photos available on the server. Did some reasearch at one of the user forums and there was one post had this helpful tip.

  Use your Picasa username and password, which is not the same as your email address and password, even though both methods will allow access to your Picasa account on your PC, only the Username works on the Frame. I think they call it your Picasa alias name. Once I did that, all of the photos and folders displayed.

  I would have given the dongle a 5 Star rating because the dongle does what it is advertised to do, and does it well. I knocked off a Star because of the spartan insructions. They only explain how to connect your frame to your network, and they really assume you have experience. The instructions do not mention Picasa or how to connect to Picasa. You have to go back to your Frame Instruction Manual for that information and even the Frame Documention is sketchy regarding Web Albums. This is a glaring ommission since at the present time, that is the only function you can perform with this dongle.

  In Summary,

  This dongle does what it is supposed to do. Connect your frame via WIFI to Picasa Web Albums. Several users commented that they had hoped to give a frame to Parents or relatives that live far apart and remotely download photos to the frame from time to time. That can be done with no problem using Picasa. Just follow intructions at the Picasa website for uploading your photos to their server, then set your frame to the “Network Photos” option. Then select a photo and hit enter, or select the slide show option to display all photos in the selected Album. One nice feature is the copy feature, you can copy the Network Photos from the server directly to Frames internal memory. Good if you don’t want to stay connected to the server.

  I have only had this running for about 15 hours, but I want to do a couple of other tests and I will update this reveiw later, but rest assured there is no problem with the dongle. Just make sure the Pandigital Frame you purchase is Wifi or Bluletooth compatabile. Many of the older PanD frames are not compatible with this device.

  One final point. The Adapter comes with a little multi angle adapter so you can adjust dongle in many different directions. This helps keep it hidden in the back of the frame. ( I mention this because I wasn’t expecting it in the package) I was worried that the dongle was going to stick out of the back of the frame, but using the extra adapter the dongle is flush with the back of the frame now, and out of sight.
  
• 

  BER
  June 12th, 2010 on 12:29 am

  Rating

  I bought the 10.4″ Frame and discovered this item was optional so I ordered it from Amazon. they ran out so I ordered again and Amazon warehouse sent one. Directions are Spartan but clear enough for me to connect to my Linksys router via WPA2/AES. After that the directions end. There is nothing about how to connect to Picasa web. The frame however does tell you to open an account if you don’t already have one. I had to exit from that screen and then the option to enter username and password appeared. From there it connected and displays all my PUBLIC Picasa web folders. Even though I’m logged in to Picasa the frame will not display hidden or password protected folders/albums. The frame will cycle (slide show) only the folder/album selected. Only one folder/album can be selected at a time as far as I can tell. It does a great job of displaying all the photos of all the albums I tried. I’m pleased that it never froze or hung on any photo or album during the day that I tried it. The dongle or the frame remembers your network settings and Picasa login so that does not have to be entered again. the unit is smoked plastic with a green light that flashes when transferring data. The included elbow hides the dongle behind the frame.

  For $20 it’s a great little gadget but I would not suggest it for non technical people. The missing directions and technical knowledge required to have this function is at least partly why the reviews are so negative. Loading a 4 or 8 gb SDHC card is much easier than setting this up.
  
• 

  E. Curtis
  June 12th, 2010 on 5:51 am

  Rating

  This is a great item and works well in our house on any floor. It works all the time and does what is says it will do. I just wish we were told we would need this when we bought the picture frame. The frame was a gift and it was a little disappointing not to be able to use it right away because we didn’t have the wireless adaptor.