ANT+ is basically dead because of an EU legal requirement to ensure that personal information is encrypted. So no new devices will be supporting it, and everything has to move to BLE.
replyIt was quite a rich ecosystem of sensor devices, especially for cycling, including speed and cadence sensors, heart rate monitors, power meters, lights, radar, etc.
It has been extremely popular over the last 20 years.
what is insane, is that ble is largely unsecured in modern implementations. when testing, i kept picking up everyones whoops/assorted ble devices spamming out heart rate data to whomever wanted to connect.
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replyAnt+ is for connecting sensors and other stuff. Like heart rate monitor, power meter, control resistance on a trainer etc.
replyant+ is a garmin protocol that is very common with fitness gadgets and in the bike world. It's a bit like bluetooth, but lower energy usage.
replyIt also got nuked from orbit by European regulators. The ecosystem has a huge installed base but no future.
replyIsn't it only using standard ble hardware anyway? So what's the problem?
replyThey are both using the same physical layer, but the ANT+ protocol scheme is more amenable to ultra-low-power implementations than BLE is. The European belief that my wheel rotation sensor needs privacy through encryption has effectively outlawed the low-power attributes of ANT+ for future hardware.
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