Cockpit tech: ANT+ Power meter → Android phone? Question
Has anybody had any success getting ANT+ only equipment to talk to Android apps?
I'm only talking about a situation in which the Android phone specifically has ANT+ capabilities; obviously if there's no ANT+ radio it would be idiotic to expect it to happen.
This might be the wrong SE to ask a question like this, since it's not so much about cycling per se but about data-exchange-protocol interoperability... I just figured that somewhere out there, someone else will have encountered the issue.
The background below lays out the main details.
Background
So I recently bought a set of wheels with a CycleOps PowerTap Elite+ hub, as a (relatively) cheap alternative to buying pedal- or crank-based power meter. My current bike has &quot;near-vintage&quot; Dura-Ace 7700 throughout - including pedals and cranks - and I didn't really want to switch anything out.
I knew that the hub was ANT+-only (no BLE), but I have an ANT+ dongle (for my PC, for Zwift) and my phone purports to have an ANT+ Radio Service and an ANT+ plugin manager. An ANT+ testing app claims that the phone has all the appropriate ANT+ functionality (HAL; Radio; USB; Plugins).
My phone detects the ANT+ ID of a bunch of Wahoo, Garmin, and other devices (e.g., speed and cadence sensors), but they are all dual ANT/BLE and they always connect using BLE.
When Zwift starts on my phone there's a little ANT+ icon next to the Bluetooth icon, and both are pulsating.
Same for the PC, except that on the PC Zwift usually connects to speed and cadence meters - and my KickR - using ANT+ rather than BT.
When I first put the wheels on, I tried to pair them with the Wahoo android app, but the app didn't find them. Nor did Zwift, on either phone or PC - despite the pulsating ANT+ icon.
My Garmin Edge 500 found the wheels no problem, but I hate the lack of screen real-estate on Garmins - I have terrible eyesight and pretty awful on-bike coordination, so trying to switch screens by button-pressing is a recipe for an ironic death...  give me a 6.5&quot; screen and swipe-changes and I'm less likely to die.
Plus uploading to Strava from an Edge 500 is a GPITA (Gigantic Pain In The ... Aorta), whereas from Zwift or Wahoo it.just.happens. The lack of screen and awkward functionality rules out, e.g., getting a cheap used Edge 510.
I would really like for my phone to be able to 'see' my PowerTap hub, without getting the hub upgraded to ANT/BLE - assuming that's still possible. It used to be possible, and might still be; I've seen one ebay ad for the 'Powercap' (which fits all G3 &amp; GS Hubs including Pro and Elite model hubs that have been upgraded to the G3 style cap - that has stopped me from pulling the trigger until I work out what this 'upgrade' to the cap entails; the cap's just a threaded bit of plastic).
Several suggestions in the comments helped steer me in the right direction.
The suggestion from Andrew about switching off Bluetooth on the phone and seeing if the phone still 'saw' ANT+ IDs was the clincher (I already knew that it saw nothing, but Andrew's comment made me ask WHY).
It turned out that the ANT+ Radio service on the phone required an additional permission.
This Reddit thread concerns a different phone (a OnePlus 5; I have a Samsung), but it was exactly the right solution.
ANT+ Radio must be given an additional permission to use ANT hardware.
This must be a relatively new thing, because back when I had a OnePlus One, there wasn't any hardware permission required (the only ANT+ device I had back then was a cadence sensor).
When I granted that additional permission, the hub was detected by the Wahoo Android app.
I just went for a brief ride to make sure that the app was receiving power numbers: it was. The hub is detected and data is being sent to the Wahoo app.
Problem solved - thanks to all.