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Develop with Android Studio, General Remarks

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Total Posts: 5

Joined 2016-02-26

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I want to develop an Android App similar to "IpBike" as you find it in Google Play Store. I have many years of experience in this kind of development but find it very hard to use ANT+.

Some General Remarks:

1. The titel of this subforum is wrong. It should read "ANT and Android", because it also covers tablets. As far as I know windows phones don't support ANT?

2. The Workshops or Trainings I found are for eclipse, but the newer environment would be Android Studio. I like eclipse but Android Studio is better.

3. The workshops have almost no information on debugging. I would like to do most of the develpment on a PC. But it is not clear if the ANT+ Plugins and the ANT Radio Service would run in an emulator environment.

4. I was able to do the droidweight workshop and finally the App worked. However the SDK is just too complex.

5. I doubt many people will develop Apps for ANT on Android, and if you do a seach in Google Play Store you have to agree. The ANT SDK It is just to complex.

6. These remarks are also valid for development of Apps for smartwatches like vivoactive.


     
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Total Posts: 1

Joined 2015-12-22

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Agree with all your points and then some. The SDK and sample apps fail at the most basic level - atrocious documentation, sample apps which have apparently never heard of Gradle, zero Android Studio support, and patronising links to beginner Android tutorials for anyone questioning this. And laggy, spurious results when you do finally get it working. All this from a proprietary product; not worth the blood, sweat and tears. Roll on BLE, sick of this now.      
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Total Posts: 313

Joined 2011-09-12

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We like using Android Studio too, but most of the development work on the ANT Android SDK was done before Android Studio existed. If you chose to use Android Studio, importing the sample apps into Android Studio is possible with little hassle. You will only need to import the project then import the .jar libraries in gradle.

You can run ANT enabled applications in an emulator environment using the ANT Android emulator bridge in the SDK https://github.com/ant-wireless/ANT-Android-SDKs/tree/master/ANT_Android_SDK/Tools/Android_ANTEmulatorPackage

I agree the documentation and tutorials are not the best. The best approach to learning ANT on Android is to look at the simple info in the quick start guides in the SDK ANT and ANT+ readmes: https://github.com/ant-wireless/ANT-Android-SDKs/blob/master/ANT_Android_SDK/README.md and https://github.com/ant-wireless/ANT-Android-SDKs/blob/master/ANT+_Android_SDK/README.md then look at the referenced samples for examples to get started.

If you have any other specific feedback please let us know.      

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Dynastream Developer

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Total Posts: 5

Joined 2016-02-26

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@ShaneG

Thank you for your response. I finally succeded and can now test my app in real time on a PC. In fact it was not so difficult, what i did:

I work on Windows 10 with Android Studio.
It is not so difficult once you know how things work together. I did:

1. Download needed apk files

ANT_Radio_Service_4.14.0_apk-dl.com.apk
Android_AntPlusPlugins_3-5-0.apk
Android_ANTEmulatorConfig_2-0-0.apk
ANT+ Plugin Sampler.apk


2. In Android Studio start your Emulator, in my case:

Galaxy_Nexus_API_15

and wait for it to come online.

3. In Windows explorer do right click on above apk files and select Use OTCApk to install. Then select install on Phone.

4. Connect USB cable with ANT+ stick. Note that inserting ANT+ stick directly into a USB slot might result in bad connection, the signal might not be found, depending on location of your PC.

5. Run ANTAndroidBridge.exe, select USB port and click Connect.

6. In your Android Emulator start ANT+ Plugin Sampler. Select a device, eg. Heart Rate Receiver.      
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Total Posts: 2

Joined 2016-12-15

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Hello,

I did all the steps above and was able to run my emulator(Nexus7_2012_24) and bridge. But when i start running the ant plus sampler app(i.e. Heart Rate Display), 'ANT Radio Service has stopped' message pops up and stays.

Does anyone have the same issue or know what I missed?

Thank you.      
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Total Posts: 313

Joined 2011-09-12

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Follow the Android steps here: https://www.thisisant.com/forum/viewthread/6283

Then see what your logcat says is happening.      

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Dynastream Developer