EDIT : cf my last post.
Noone ? 
I don’t use the WiFly shield but do know that there are several threads a week about them.
Did you search the forum and read all that has been posted?
I’d be surprised that the answer isn’t in one of them,
Hello,
Thanks for your answer. Yes I did read all the topics I found about that, but I didn’t get any clue to solve my pb…
You need to solder the “combs” (header pins) onto the wifly shield. Once you’ve done this you can just plug it into your Arduino. If it still doesn’t work then you can come back with more specific questions as to what it is/isn’t doing.
-Gary
I just did that and I still have the problem. 2 LEDS of the WiFly Shield are blinking, I read the datasheet and it means the Shield isn’t bound to any Internet network, which is normal I guess. However, it still doesn’t work : with the WiFly Library it’s stuck at WiFly.begin() and the terminal doesn’t work as it can’t connect to UI_ART, and the Sparkfun Tutorial doesn’t work neither, “Could not initialize bridge, locking up”. So I don’t know what to do…
I may have an answer, my UNO is powered via USB cable, but I didn’t order any USB from Sparkfun so I used the cable of my electronic piano (which has the same shape). Would it be a reason for my problem ?
hi,
Have you managed to get your wifly to work? if so how? I have the same problem. I get a flashing sequence shown on this youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVdQUKgmfho
I had this problem with the first wifly I bought, and after trying with it for 2 weeks, sparkfun sent me a new one. This new one does the same thing. This is what I have tried:
I have tried the alpha 0, 1 and 2 builds. I tried the tutorial on the sparkfun website, but when I try to connect, it says:
Could not initialize bridge, locking up.
I tried the HardwareFactoryReset but that shows no response after displaying Attempting to connect to SPI UART…
I am connecting vin, ground, TX, RX, and pins 10-13 on the arduino duemilanove but I have also tried connecting all pins. I have tried this on my mac, and on bootcamp windows, but neither make a difference. I also thought it could be a faulty arduino so I bought a new one but it displays the same flashing lights.
Anyone have the same problem?
Thanks
The WiFly shield is, in my opinion, no way a ‘beginner’ part. But! It does what nothing else can, connect you via WiFi with a simple character stream. It fully hides the TCP/IP stack so your Arduino, with it’s pitiable 1K of RAM doesn’t have to deal with it. Once configured, connected, and going… it’s just a serial port. A honkingly fast serial port.
The rub is the configuring and connecting.
Configuring is first. For this, you need to setup the SPI UART and get the WiFly talking to the IDE’s serial monitor at 9600 baud (The WiFly’s default).
I’m going to link a project of mine that I know will work. It’s fully self-contained, no additional libraries and it’s reasonably well commented. It’s overkill in that it has an additional UART beyond the one powering the WiFly, but I’ll show you how to easily disable it.
Here’s the project:
To disable the unneeded UART (And you need to, calling the handler for it with no UART connected causes malfunctions) just comment out the last line of code in the loop() function.
ProcessCommInput(1); // Downstream input channel.
That one is going to UART1. UART0 (The one above it) is the WiFly.
The schematic (in the link, labeled WiflyGateway) Shows 2 LEDs and a button connected to the WiFly Shield. These are to manage the connection process. To use them, add the LEDs and button. To fully disable the default auto-connect, comment out everything after the initialization of the WiFly SPI;
That’s this line and everything under it.
InitSPI_UART(9, 460800); // Downstream UART connecting to the other Arduinos.
The line above it is for the WiFly UART. Note also the serial speeds. Defaults are all 9600 baud. As you can see, I set mine pretty fast. You’ll have to change those to default (9600 baud) to get going.
Get the SPI connected and post back. I’ll then help you with the rest.
Hi everyone,
I finally got it to work, a pin was badly plugged so I had a bad connection between the UNO and the WiFly Shield. So now, I’m able to connect to a network using the SpiUartTerminal and commands but i’m still unable to connect using either the WiFly Library (still stuck at WiFly.begin()), neither the Autoconnect source code provided by SparkFun, it’s stuck on joining ssid…
I didn’t edit the provided source code, I only put the information of my ssid.
Ok I have it wokring, all I did was try connecting with a friends arduino (arduino rip off bought from china). I dont know why, but the 2 arduino’s I have (from Italy) dont work with the wifly. I have been using these for a while and its the first problem I have encountered with them. I have also used the boards I have for serial communication and UART previously.
With the board I borrowed, I had no problems at all, connected straight away. If anyone has the same problem, try buying a cheap arduino from china ($9 AUD on ebay)
Thanks for the replies 
NachtNebel:
Hi everyone,I finally got it to work, a pin was badly plugged so I had a bad connection between the UNO and the WiFly Shield. So now, I’m able to connect to a network using the SpiUartTerminal and commands but i’m still unable to connect using either the WiFly Library (still stuck at WiFly.begin()), neither the Autoconnect source code provided by SparkFun, it’s stuck on joining ssid…
I didn’t edit the provided source code, I only put the information of my ssid.
I have the same problem (Wifly just blinking, cant get past begin() ), pls advise how you were able to identify which pin was not connected? i wanted to try and see if my soldering was bad but i cant even begin to start testing for connections.
thanks in advance - Edwin.
Did you manage to get any further with this to find out which were the pins in question?
I have exactly the same issue, hangs at wifely.begin.
I may have to look out for a cheep china ripoff if that solved the problem
Thanks
Andy