Welcome.
When you are still having trouble with it, what is the nature of the trouble? A few details would help but here are some questions.
- Are you piggy backing on a school network? School network may have some setting in their network blocking a port the Sam needs.
- How does the wireless spectrum look using a wireless scanning program like InSSIDer? To many networks and/or too much actitivity in the 2.4 Ghz range can put a damper on the party, Thus why Tournament Rule 8 is in place
- Have you copied all of the information about the wireless network into the network config tool correctly? Settings can easily be off. If there is a webpage authentication page process like some schools use, that's another issues.
- Remember to the put the .hex file into the drive? Another common mistake made but easily fixed.
- The flash drive the correct size and a non-U3 style? U3 and other similar style drives where a flash drive has 2 partitions are not advised.
- Flash drive formatted to Fat32? Another issue but check it.
- Is the drive reading as a removable external hard drive instead of a removable storage? Once ordered 8 flash drives that were 2GB for our tournaments and the computers read them as hard drives, not removable media. Led to about 20 minutes of head scratching.
As far as routers go, you're better off with their ones on the list. Some routers won't work. TP-Link routers are tricky as snot to get working with one. Asus's game routers are good ones that work although getting them setup initially take a little work due to their menu design.
The process we use at competition is the same as what you use at your school. We set the keys up once the network is up. We plug the flash drive in, hold the red button, power robot on, let it program the radio which is two light rainbows (READ the light codes, they will tell you a lot) then unplug the drive and plug up the NXT.
Feel free to inbox me a message if you need help.