Ok, the sensor must be VERY close to the watch. Usually it is outside my window, hence not recognized. But if I put it within a few (<10) cm it's found…
I wondered if this could be due to signal strength or interference, so I have tried in another room, and as long as they are sitting next to each other I can get them to connect. Not entirely useful though, but likely to be the same issue. Hopefully this can be fixed, although I had hoped we might get temperature showing on garmin connect during a run, but I think that is a long way off if ever.
Based on my experiments (I've written an app for Tempe too), there's a problem with searchThreshold parameter for DeviceConfig. According to specs value 0 should disable proximity threshold, but it does not work. Anyway, the docs are pretty poor for CIQ Ant support.
I just tested the following code and it paired to the sensor about 15 feet away.
The sensor number was known so mPersist.GetSn() was 34 and proximityPair was 0.
deviceCfg = new Ant.DeviceConfig( {
:deviceNumber => mPersist.GetSn(), //Sensor Number if known, otherwise 0 for wildcard
:deviceType => DEVICE_TYPE,
:transmissionType => 0,
:messagePeriod => PERIOD,
:radioFrequency => 57, //Ant+ Frequency
:searchTimeoutLowPriority => 10, //Timeout in 25s
:searchTimeoutHighPriority => 2, //Timeout in 5s
:searchThreshold => proximityPair} ); //0 if Sensor Number is known, 1 for proximity pairing if not
GenericChannel.setDeviceConfig(deviceCfg);
I believe the issue is what Roger pointed out: the Tempe app is coded to use a search threshold of '1' in the ANT device config, which means that it will pair only with the closest sensors. The actual distance related to the '1' proximity setting can vary from device to device, but based on empirical evidence, it appears to be about 10 cm or maybe 3-4 inches. Once paired, the sensor will work at larger distances.
The other suggestion I've put forward to the app developers is to have some kind of timeout message so the app doesn't continually say that it's searching. There is actually a search timeout of 30 seconds.
