Bittle only works with the USB Adapter

Hello!

I was generously gifted the Bittle kit and am new to robots. It took me several days, but I have been able to successfully piece together the puzzle and have an adorable Pupper that currently only accepts commands while leashed via his USB adapter. As much as I have tried, I can't seem to get Bluetooth or the remote working with him. This forum has been a huge wealth of knowledge and you all have gotten me this far (Thank You!!), but I can't seem to find a solution for either one of these issues, though I have read several posts from others having similar problems.

I'll do my best to explain both. If I need to split this into two posts, I certainly am happy to, but I thought I would combine them in case they are somehow related.

I have a Windows 10 laptop. I have followed the Bittle User Manual and watched Rongzhong Li's video.

The remote: I installed IRremote 2.6.1 and have made the recommended changes to IRremote.h. I have even successfully tested the remote buttons using testInfaredRemote.ino. As mentioned, I can use the test sketch and the button values are returned. However, when I try to use the remote after uploading OpenCat.ino, it doesn't respond at all. (I did disconnect the USB adapter before testing, in case that made a difference.) The bluetooth:

I attempted to connect to the bluetooth adapter (properly installed with the battery installed and charged) to my PC. My PC sees two Bittle Bluetooths as discoverable devices.

BittleBLE* lets me pair without entering a code, however, it is not stable and disconnects then attempts to reconnect over and over again. I have to unpair then remove the bluetooth to stop Bittle from his wake up cycle.

BittleSPP* requires a code to pair, but never connects (it likes "0000", by the way). I've explored other places on the internet to help with this but nothing I found seemed to work. Tonight, I found setBluetoothParameter.ino in the test files but it fails because it is looking for Adafruit_NeoPixel.h. Is this what I need to use to get bluetooth working? And if so, which library should I install since there are several referencing "NeoPixel"?