ANT Forum

Hi,

Ive got the ANT Sample_AcquireChannels app compiling, running on the Android tablet and talking to ANTware.
I have stripped back the UI to the bare bones to work out what I need to add into my own application to support ANT.
Rather than have a button to open a channel, I want to do this as soon as my app starts up. So I added the "addNewChannel(mCreateAntChannelAsMaster);" line into the end of the onServiceConnected function. At this point I had assumed that everything is setup and ready to run. However probably 1 in 5 times it doesnt work and after debugging into the code, I found that in ChannelService.java in createNewChannel, I enter the following IF statement.

if(null == antChannelController)
{
Log.e(TAG, "null == antChannelController");
return null;
}

So my question is, how should i open up the ANT channel without user intervention? Do I just wait one second until after the connection to the service or is there a better way?      

At the end of the onServiceConnected() method, the ANT Radio Service may still be initializing and will have no channels available which is why antChannelController would be null.

Before you addNewChannel(), you should first check if there are channels available by calling the getNumberOfChannelsAvailable() method in AntChannelProvider. A broadcast receiver should also be implemented to receive updates on the number of channels available. Listen for intents with the ACTION_CHANNEL_PROVIDER_STATE_CHANGED action. The received intent contains an extra that you can use to see the number of channels available and is accessible from the intent.getIntExtra() method with the NUM_CHANNELS_AVAILABLE key. If you implement the broadcast receiver and wait to receive an intent that indicates channels are available, addNewChannel() should be able to acquire a channel and construct the antChannelController.

Here is the link to the javadoc for AntChannelProvider:
http://www.thisisant.com/APIassets/Android_ANT_API/com/dsi/ant/channel/AntChannelProvider.html

If you are using an ANT USB stick, you should still wait for the ACTION_CHANNEL_PROVIDER_STATE_CHANGED that indicates channels are available. The following thread may be useful to you as well:
http://www.thisisant.com/forum/viewthread/4010/

Hopefully this helps!