ANT Forum

I am making a first orientation on ANT and have the following basic question:

in order to write an app that handles data from an ANT+ sensor, one needs a driver. (would be very unefficient when each single buyer of a sensor would have to create his own serial driver)
So this driver should either be delivered by the producer of the sensor, or it might be part of the SDK library (e.g. a driver for Android might be included in the Android SDK.)
Is this the case?
But then how does this work for other systems such as: iOs for iPhones or on a .NET environment for laptops etc ?

many thanks in advance,
Rolf


     

Drivers let a particular platform (e.g. a PC) interact with ANT enabled hardware,whether it is built in or an accessory (dongle). Therefore, drivers are very specific to the hardware and operating system - a PC with an ANT USB stick requires very different drivers than a mobile phone with a built in ANT chip running Android, or an iPhone with a dongle. Drivers depend on the hardware ANT is running on, not on the sensors you are communicating with.

To interact with a specific sensor, you would need to implement software that implements the appropriate device profile (for ANT+ devices).

Please refer to the following link for more details on ANT support on mobile phones
http://www.thisisant.com/consumer/ant-101/ant-in-phones/

Also, have a look at the Getting Started pages to figure out what resources are already available for development. on the platform you are planning on working on
http://www.thisisant.com/developer/ant/starting-your-project/

You can learn more about device profiles here
http://www.thisisant.com/developer/ant-plus/device-profiles/