ANT Forum

Hello,

I am developing a program that connects to multiple devices using the ANT Radio Service on an Android phone. One of this devices is not ANT+ compatible and has therefore i.e. a different radio frequency. If I connect/pair just the ANT+ devices everything is fine. And if I connect/pair just the other one then also everything is fine. But connecting/pairing the two types at a time fails. The already paired devices work like before, but the other device won't pair at all.

Has somebody an idea what could be the problem here?

I am using the ANT Radio Service v2.0 (latest Version from Android Market).


Thanks in advance,
Marcus      

Could you describe in detail the sequence you use to pair with both channels?

Please refer to AN15 - Multiple Channel Considerations for more information on handling search on multiple channels.
http://www.thisisant.com/pages/developer-zone/ant-application-notes

ANT cannot search on two different radio frequencies simultaneously; if you are searching for one of your devices on one frequency, search on the other frequency will not start until the first search either acquires or times out.      

Hi Alejandra,

thanks for the hint. I didn't know an ANT slave always searches for the master first. But after reading the document mentoined by you and additionally "AN11 ANT Channel Search and Background Scanning Channel", my problem was clear - I have multiple search channels open simultaneously. Thanks again for the hint, that helped a lot sorting out my problem.

Current SE phones like Xperia X8 have no capability for extended messaging and thus no background search channel can be opened. Are there any current mobile phones that support a background search or will there be any devices in the (near) future?

Regards,
Marcus      

Extended messages are already available in the SE phones with ANT support, however the command to enable them is not present in ANTInterface. You can manually format the message (see Section 9.5.2.14 of the ANT Message Protocol and Usage document for the Enable Extended Messages command).

Not all ANT messages documented in the ANT Message Protocol and Usage document have a convenience method in ANTInterface, however, you can still send manually formatted messages. If the message is not supported by ANT, you will get an INVALID_MESSAGE response from ANT.      

This sounds great. Thank you for the tip! Well then I'm going to implement this.