Originally Posted by
JohnJ80
I think Garmin was one of the companies behind the ANT+ standard. I doubt they will change until everyone else changes.
They are the primary company behind ANT+. Other companies supported it to be able to work with the Garmin stuff. When it was introduced, there wasn't any (reasonable) alternative. I think there was some idea that ANT+ would be used more generally but that never happened. Then, BTLE happened. And that's less tied to a particular company.
Garmin has a strong reason to not go with BTLE. They make more money on head units than sensors. Selling or supporting BTLE sensors means that people might choose to use their smartphones over buying a Garmin head unit.
Originally Posted by
JohnJ80
I feel like the future of these will be low power Bluetooth (BTLE) but it's not quite there yet in the bike sensor world.
It's not there in the bike sensor world because people want their sensors to work with their Garmin head units.
Originally Posted by
JohnJ80
You can see the handwriting on the wall with the chips coming out that support BTLE and ANT+ simultaneously. Once the BTLE stuff is out there, it opens up the app world on the smartphones in a very big way.
BTLE is cheaper for smartphones and they have to support it anyway (they don't have to support ANT+ because it costs extra
and it's a small market).
The only way a company like Wahoo can really access the smartphone market is through BTLE. Supporting ANT+ gives them access to the Garmin market too. Their smartphone market is small enough that it's worth for them to pay the extra ANT+ licensing to gain access to the Garmin market. A Garmin head-unit owner wouldn't likely consider the Wahoo sensor unless it
also supporte ANT+.
Originally Posted by
JohnJ80
That said, I don't think there is an exclusive pairing process in ANT+ like BT. So any ANT+ capable head should be able to read the existing ANT+ sensor as long as it's been trained to look for that sensor.
Yes, there is no exclusive pairing with ANT+. ANT+ data can be received by any number of head units. That's actually a good/useful feature.
There isn't any reason BTLE can't work the same way (I think it
might be an option). Hopefully, one isn't stuck with it being an exclusive pairing.