ANT Forum

Hi guys,

I am brand new to ANT and was wondering if ANT is the right solution for my use case. I wish to have 4 nodes that are idle/sleeping most of the time. However, upon an external trigger they wake up and are ready to communicate with any of the other nodes that may have also awaken. After exchanging information they should then close the connections and go back to the idle state.

The problem arises in master/slave allocation. Each node must be able to send its information to the others, and receive from them as well. What first came to mind was having each node as a master in a shared channel (with any other active nodes being slaves). Thus each node has a master (auto shared channel) channel and 3 slave channels (slaves to the other nodes' master shared channels.

So in concurrence there would be, amongst 4 nodes: 3 shared channels and 3 slaves per channel. Is this possible if the slave channels are set to wildcard? I have my doubts it is even feasible even with preallocated channel IDs.

Thanks for any help,
Anton      

Hi Anton,

Shared channels would work for your use case including with wildcards as each synchronized/paired slave channel will prevent other slave channels from pairing to the same master channels.

Another option would be to use a flood mesh topology where nodes broadcast/receive messages in an asynchronous fashion using master channels and background scanning channels. This would consume more power than a more connected solution like you suggested with shared channels, but if your nodes are idle most of the time then this could also be an appropriate solution. The ANT Scan and Forward workshop can be found here, which includes a training manual and source code.

Cheers      

Hi Harrison,

Thanks for the response! I am sorry but I did not quite understand your first point:

synchronized/paired slave channel will prevent other slave channels from pairing to the same master channels

In this context, does the slave channel refer to the channel between a single slave and master or all three slaves and master in one of the shared channels? Put another way, what are the "other" slave channels? My apologies, but ANT terminology is still a working point for me

As for the linked resource, I cannot access it. Must I obtain specific permissions somewhere?

Thanks again,
Anton
     

Hi,

My apologies for the confusion, what I meant to say is that if multiple slave channels on the same device attempt to pair to a single, separate device's master channel, only one of them will be able to pair with it as they can't overlap the same timeslot...if that's any clearer.


You must be registered with the website as an ANT+ Adopter in order to gain access to some of the files (when you register initially it's only as a basic user). It's free of charge and only requires passing through a standard clickthrough agreement. Here's a link to the Adopter agreement.

Cheers      

Thanks Harrison,

I really appreciate your help!