ANT Forum

We've been developing Android applications to interface to our custom ANT+ sensors. The device we've been working with is the 2017 Samsung A5 device which has worked well. However, these are no longer being manufactured and so we are planning on using the 2018 Samsung A8 to fulfill this purpose. Unfortunately, the ANT+ performance on the A8 is noticeably worse:

2018 Samsung A8:
* Receives up to 5 ANT+ devices at a time
* Receives significantly less packets (of the five devices it receives, the packet rate is 17.0, 15.0, 7.0, 5.0, 1.0 Hz)

2017 Samsung A5:
* Receives up to 8 ANT+ devices at the same time
* Much higher packet rate (of the six devices that it is receiving, the packet rate is 20.0, 19.0, 19.0, 16.0, 15.0, 8.0 Hz)

All of the ANT+ devices are sending out messages at 20 Hz. We've installed the same app on both phones.

The A8 appears to be running newer firmware than the A5, as reported by the "ANT Tester" app:

2018 Samsung A8:
* Android: 8.0.0
* Kernel: 4.4.13-15...
* ANT+ built-in firmware: BKU1.02B00
* ANT HAL service: 4.1.1
* ANT Radio Service: 4.15.00
* ANT USB Service: 1.4.0
* ANT+ Plugins: 3.6.40

2017 Samsung A5:
* Android: 8.0.0
* Kernel: 3.18.14-13..
* ANT+ built-in firmware: AVN1.01B04
* ANT HAL service: 4.0.0
* ANT Radio Service: 4.15.00
* ANT USB Service: N/A
* ANT+ Plugins: 3.6.40

Has anyone else encountered this sort of problem? What did you do to overcome it?      

Hello,

I just saw your post now. We have observed a similar problem on the Samsung A8, but have not got around to fixing it.

It seems that packets are only processed at 1hz, similar to this problem:

https://www.thisisant.com/forum/viewthread/7121/

but in this case the eventBuffer is already disabled.

If anyone from ANT+ can shed some light on where else to look? I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

John      

Unfortunately we've already incorporated that fix into our app, but to no avail. We also contacted Samsung about this, sent debug modem dumps with both phones running the same app, but they were not able to establish a solution.

From what I gather, this is a firmware issue on the wireless chipsets on the phone. I noticed that the 2017 A5 separate ICs for the wifi (QCA9377) and BLE (/ANT+?), while the 2018 A8 has a single IC (Exynos 7885) that does the wifi, BLE and ANT+.

While Samsung was kind enough to let us evaluate a S10e, the ANT+ perform was better than the 2018 A8 but worse than the 2017 A5, I suspect this will be a problem going forward...