alt Hacker NewsHey this looks neat, I’ve been thinking on trying something similar. I’ve not encountered the ANT protocol, what bike ya using? Is it a higher level thing that your display is giving you, or something your controller uses? I know Bafang uses CAN protocols in their newer e-bike systems and a lot of manufacturers (especially Chinese) use a proprietary UART protocol to stitch things together on the cheaper end.
The mess of different implementations makes it really hard to hack on and share this kinda stuff.
AI does make it really easy to figure out these protocols now so that’s nice I guess. I just flipped my bike upside down and hooked up a logic analyzer and it took LLM no time to figure it out… it is really impressive
Replies
Ant+ is for connecting sensors and other stuff. Like heart rate monitor, power meter, control resistance on a trainer etc.
ant+ 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.
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.
It 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.