Controlling ANT+ lights directly without forming network

Hi community,

I have Cycliq FLY12 CE and Flare RT lights, both ANT capable. My idea behind this was to see battery status at my Edge 1030 and control the headlight from Edge screen (taillight is permanently on). But, this I could not manage. Neither built in Garmin tool nor any available ConnectIQ app worked for me. At the beginning the problem appeared to be just in light modes that the apps just did not supported the right modes that were supported by the lights. So I decided to create own datafield tailored to my needs. Should not be a problem with 25 years of embedded programming experience... I managed to create the datafield, although this Monkey C is sometimes quite strange for "normal" C/C++ developer, but then, finally the whole thing failed. Why? Because there seems to be some incompatibility between these lights and Edge1030 regarding the "light network" functionality, in which (according to ANT+ LGT profile documentation) higher level of compliance between the devices is needed as in this mode one light acts as a master and shared channel is used to control other (slave) devices. As result, the "Light network" is repeatedly forming 10x during a ride, lights disconnecting and connecting again. Very frustrating and, above all, dangerous. If the headlight goes off during a downhill in darkness, it may have fatal consequences :-(((.

So I decided to try again, but now give up ANT+ and go directly to ANT generic channels and control the lights directly with "Light network" DISABLED. As this method avoids using shared channels and the lights will be controlled independently, I hope I should be able to manage it a eventually even overcome some behavior of the lights that does not conform with the ANT standard.

Now the question: does anyone know if the Connect IQ API (namely the part related to generic channels) allows to do such thing? Does anyone have experience with similar thing? I am asking because I spent much time with this and would like to avoid spending another hours or days and finally fail due to missing access to something important through the API ..

Thanks

Jan

0 maca88 over 4 years ago

8337099 said:
Neither built in Garmin tool nor any available ConnectIQ app worked for me

Based on the information that I was able to gather, it is most likely because Cycliq partially implemented the ANT+ LGT profile.

8337099 said:
Now the question: does anyone know if the Connect IQ API (namely the part related to generic channels) allows to do such thing?

The ANT+ LGT profile supports controlling ANT+ lights without creating a light network, so it should be possible to control them by using the GenericChannel to send commands to their main channels. But keep in mind that this approach has the following limitations:
- You cannot have the lights paired with the Garmin sensors menu, which means that the lights will not be turned off when Edge goes to sleeps (there is no way to detect a device sleep in CIQ)
- You need one ANT channel for every light instead of one channel for all lights
- As user interaction with datafield applications is very limited, you will need to manually set the device id for every light you want to control

There is a chance that Cycliq did not implement correctly the main Data Page 1 and you won't get the correct current mode number, so you need to test it out.

0 jim_m_58 over 4 years ago

When you're testing with a CIQ app, are the lights paired/connected to the watch yourself? You probably want to make sure that is not the case.

A common example is if you have a HRM paired/connected in the FW, you won't be able to access it with ANT in a CIQ app.

0 8337099 over 4 years ago in reply to maca88

Hi Maca88,

thank you for your reply, providing very important information. I appreciate it... I will see if I find time to play with these generic channels or give up and will control the Cycliq manually.

Btw, I read your post that you linked in your reply and had to laugh a bit ;-). I will put my comments there.