Tech FAQ
Tech FAQ
Yes. If connected USB sticks don’t show up straight away, then try refreshing the “Available Devices” panel.
The Auto Open button provides a simple way to configure and open a channel with a single button click. The configuration sequence includes:
When you set the channel parameters (e.g. channel ID, radio frequency, etc.) to a value different than ANT's default values or the previous configured values, the parameter will be highlighted in yellow. Only the messages highlighted in yellow will be used. For example, when ANTware is first started and a Device is selected, the Channel Assignment and Channel ID boxes will show up highlighted in yellow. If you press Auto Open right away, the configuration sequence will be:
Since assigning a channel returns most channel parameters to their default values, please be careful not to press any of the buttons for the channel configuration (steps 2-7 in the first sequence above) if the box for Channel Assignment is yellow, as the resulting channel configuration will use ANT default values for those parameters that were set before clicking Auto Open.
No.
With your USB sticks inserted, let windows find the drivers if they haven't already been installed. Drivers can also be found on the software tab of the Downloads page, but if you've plugged the USB sticks in before then they are probably already installed.
Open up ANTwareII. Your devices should show up on the left hand side. They'll be named something like Device A and Device B. Keep in mind that they may be named other letters but it’s not a big deal.
At any time you can hit the refresh button at the top of the available devices panel to scan again for new devices.
MASTER SETUP
1) Now you get to configure the channels! Let’s say you want to make A your master and B your slave. Click on Device A to view its channels. Now in the central panel you should see a selection of new options and buttons.
2) Right under the title "Device A: Channel 0" you'll see the Mandatory Channel Setup group box. Start with the Channel Assignment section and select Master (selected by default).
Expand the Channel Assignment box. More options will appear, which will make sense if you have read the ANT Message Protocol and Usage document. Press Assign.
Check for confirmation in the "Feedback display" box.
3) Now that Device A is definitely a master, it’s time to set the Channel ID. Expand the Channel ID box. These parameters define what kind of device is transmitting what type of data, and which specific device it is.
Feel free to choose arbitrary values here if you're just looking to connect your devices for the first time, or leave them as the default values. Press Set ID. Check out the Feedback display again.
4) What’s next? The device won't actually transmit until the channel is "open". Up until now, we've just configured the channel. Go ahead and hit the big Auto-Open button to start transmission.
As a shortcut, hitting Auto-Open at any time that the configurable parameter boxes are highlighted yellow will Assign/Set/Accept their values across the board in one swift motion. Play around with that if you like.
SLAVE SETUP
1) Select the device you want to be the slave. I'll assume Device B for this. You'll see the same options and button in the centre as before.
This time, choose "Slave" under the Channel Assignment box.
2) For a slave Channel ID, you can either specify all three parameters, so that you'll only ever receive from a master with the same Channel ID parameters, or you can be more flexible.
Assigning any of the Channel ID parameters to 0 will "wildcard" that parameter. This means that the slave will adopt that value from the master it begins communicating with.
If all three parameters are wildcarded, the slave will communicate with the first master it hears that is at the same Radio Frequency (bottom of the window).
Note that wildcarded values are no longer wild once the slave has found a master - the slave will adopt the master's parameters and keep them!
3) Pressing Auto-Open will make your slave available for communication. You should be seeing the data being transmitted between the devices in the "feedback display".
Yes. But it is usually only necessary to run one instance of the program. To see the Feedback Display for multiple devices at once, you can use the “Show Pop-out” button.
Yes, Device###.txt log files are generated showing all serial transactions between your ANT device and ANTwareII application. These files can be accessed by using the “Log Files” menu item in the upper right hand corner of ANTwareII. Chosing the “Open Log File Directory” option will open an explorer window to the directory that holds the device logs.
To receive data from an ANT+ sensor in ANTware, the ANT+ Network Key is required to be loaded in ANTware. ANT+ Network Key is only available to ANT+ Adopters. You can sign up as an Adopter here. If you are using the ANT+ Network Key and you still can’t see your device, then check whether you are using the correct channel parameters for your device. You can find these in the device profile.
The simulation area contains functions for controlling responses to messages received. Checking the ‘Auto Send Response to Received Msgs’ box is used on slave devices. When checked, the user must also specify:
• the type of message ANTwareII should respond to
• the type of message ANTwareII should respond with
ANTwareII will send the specified message back to the master in reply to each (specified) message received .
By default, ANTwareII generates its own broadcast data with an incrementing byte; user-defined messages can be interleaved with this data using the “Messaging” panel in the lower right hand corner of ANTwareII. The messages will be sent as either broadcast, acknowledged, burst, or extended messages according to the tab selected. The message is sent once on the button click, and then ANTwareII continues to generate and send the incrementing data messages.
The automatic message incrementing can be switched off if desired: the setting is under the General tab in the Messaging Panel.
ANTwareII can also auto-reply to received messages, broadcast or otherwise, by using the “Simulation” tab in the lower right hand corner. The user can choose what message to reply with as well as how to send it.
ANTwareII is also capable of running AutoANT scripts. These are files that contain pre-determined sequences of ANT messages. Please refer to the “AN17 AutoANT Scripts” application note for more information on AutoANT scripts and how to use them.
USB devices are enumerated based on their drivers and serial numbers. Devices using Si Labs drivers will be enumerated first, followed by devices using libusb drivers. Lower serial numbers correspond to lower USB port assignments, however this is applied after being sorted by driver. To clarify, a device using a libusb driver and having a serial number of 10 will be enumerated higher than a device using a Si Labs driver with a serial number of 20.
Additionally, the enumeration can potentially change every time a usb device on the system is connected or disconnected – so, unfortunately, these numbers have no guarantee to be consistent.
The only requirement to run ANTwareII is .Net Framework 3.5 SP1. This can run on Windows XP or later systems.
