ANT+ and BlackBerry

So, I saw the new Nike+ FuelBand release and decided to start doing some digging into whether or not BlackBerry supports ANT . ANT is a super light weight wireless protocol that allows a lot of data transmission from devices without draining the battery as fast as Bluetooth. Common usage is with those strap on heart rate monitors that send singles to a watch, which lets you know how well you are doing. It uses the 2.4GHz ISM band, which most new mobile devices support. However, you still need a chipset to have ANT work on the device. Currently the iPhones and a few Sony Androids support the ANT chipset. You can get a USB dongle for use with a PC/Mac or a device that can support it.

Other ANT+ enabled products:

• Wahoo Fitness
• Adidas miCoach
• FOX Ride Dynamics

ANT is owned by Dynastream (located in Canada), which is owned by Garmin.

Not knowing what is coming out in the BB 10 phones, I think that it would be a great addition and open up opportunities for application development. Has anyone attempted a drive/petition to get a feature added to the BlackBerry phones? This would be a nice feature to have.

I would have added links to the information, but I don't have enough posts on the board yet.

I am hoping for some ANT+ peripheral compatability on my new BB10 devise. There are many product on the market and in development which would be fun to link to this new mobile platform. At the same time time it looks like Bluetooth will be making a lot of the same sensor so if we can not use ANT+ hopefully the Bluetooth 4 devices will be low power and responsive.

Temperature sensor
Wattage sensor for bikes
Heatrate monitor

The list will only get longer over time.

It looks like BB10 will have Bluetooth 4 and not ANT+.

BlueTooth Low Energy

ANT+ isn't really all that great - its very slow. I think that many manufactures are realizing this - the most recent Nike Fuleband syncs over Bluetooth rather than ANT.

Originally Posted by jonyvr

ANT+ isn't really all that great - its very slow. I think that many manufactures are realizing this - the most recent Nike Fuleband syncs over Bluetooth rather than ANT.

I just wish Nike Fuelband, Wahoo or FitBit would just open up their API to the BlueTooth part. I really don't care about the web part. It would be better just to download the data directly.

Now I am pondering homemade BT enabled sensors. If you have a BB10 phone on you, you don't need the general accelerometer, altimeter or tripometer. What you need is the heart rate and core temperature monitors. Then after that, just sensors to measure movement of the different large bones to see if motions are correct. Maybe some sort of sensor on the mass muscle groups to determine resistance or something.

I would be surprised if ANT+ was native to the device. But if a plugin module were made available by someone, it would be the next best thing. (this is what iPhone has to do to use ANT+ I believe, but I'm not 100% confident of that)

I heard straight from a App developer that the iphone5 does fully support ANT+. I was talking to him about a Cycling app I had recently purchased for my Torch, and was asking him if he was going to develop one for the BB10. He said, he had been using all his time for the app he wrote for the iphone5 which uses ANT+ and that he was going to start working on the app for the BB10 but it will not come out until the end of next year, 2013.

Originally Posted by Cyclingman25

I heard straight from a App developer that the iphone5 does fully support ANT+. I was talking to him about a Cycling app I had recently purchased for my Torch, and was asking him if he was going to develop one for the BB10. He said, he had been using all his time for the app he wrote for the iphone5 which uses ANT+ and that he was going to start working on the app for the BB10 but it will not come out until the end of next year, 2013.

Interesting, thanks for sharing

I asked a slightly related question but didn't get an answer (yet). Let me post it again here:

Is BlackBerry 10 going to have Apt-X codec for higher quality bluetooth audio/music? I am buying bluetooth headphones that support SBC and Apt-X codec both. A2DP/SBC is much poorer quality than a wired connection. But Apt-X over bluetooth is very close to the quality of a wired connection. Hope BB 10 supports it. Does anybody know?

My touchscreen 8" android running treadmill supports ANT

So far I have not been able to use any Ant+ peripherals with my Z10. I am still waiting for Endomondo and also the other fitness apps to be launched on BB10.

Originally Posted by Just Me

So far I have not been able to use any Ant+ peripherals with my Z10. I am still waiting for Endomondo and also the other fitness apps to be launched on BB10.

Looks like they only went with BlueTooth 4 for the BB10. No Ant+.

Network & connectivity
Network bands
Z10

• Quad band LTE 2, 5, 4, 17 (700/850/1700/1900 MHz)
• Quad band HSPA+ 1, 2, 4, 5/6, (850/1700/1900/2100 MHz)
• Quad band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
• *Note: HSPA+ Band 4 (AWS) is carrier dependent

Z10 (4G - Verizon)

• LTE Band-13 (700 MHz)
• CDMA Cell-band and PCS-band (800/1900 MHz)
• WCDMA Band-1 and Band-8 (2100/900 MHz)
• GSM/EDGE Quad Bands (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)

Wi-Fi�

• 802.11 a/b/g/n
• 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz
• 4G Mobile Hotspot

Bluetooth�

• Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (LE)

GPS

• Assisted, Autonomous and Simultaneous GPS
• Preloaded with BlackBerry Maps application
• GLONASS Support

NFC

• BlackBerry� Tag with NFC technology enables communication between BlackBerry smartphones and other NFC-enabled devices with a tap

Originally Posted by chrysaurora

I asked a slightly related question but didn't get an answer (yet). Let me post it again here:

Is BlackBerry 10 going to have Apt-X codec for higher quality bluetooth audio/music? I am buying bluetooth headphones that support SBC and Apt-X codec both. A2DP/SBC is much poorer quality than a wired connection. But Apt-X over bluetooth is very close to the quality of a wired connection. Hope BB 10 supports it. Does anybody know?

From some site with the specs
Bluetooth Yes, v4.0 with A2DP, LE

Originally Posted by LoganSix

From some site with the specs
Bluetooth Yes, v4.0 with A2DP, LE

Thanks. Yeah, A2DP is standard. But A2DP uses SBC codec. I was talking about APT-x codecs for high quality/lossless audio streaming.