ANT+ on life support

[Tsnor]

I like ant+ a lot, so was very sorry to hear this. Hope it is not true. Garmin is the driving force behind ANT+.

"Garmin has announced significant changes to ANT+:

Discontinuation of Membership Programs: The ANT+ membership program and associated engineering support will discontinue on June 30, 2025.

End of Certification Programs: Applications for ANT+ product certification will be accepted until March 31, 2025, provided they meet the specified requirements. Certification programs will officially end on June 30, 2025.

Halt in New Profile Development: No new ANT+ device profiles will be created, though existing profiles will remain available.

Continued Chipset Support: Garmin will ensure that ANT+ remains available on dual ANT+/BLE chipsets for legacy devices.

Open Documentation: All ANT+ documentation will be made freely available online to developers after June 30, 2025.

While these changes will terminate ANT+’s membership and certification programs for ANT+, ANT devices using the defined profiles will not be affected." https://garminrumors.com/why-ant-is-fad ... e_vignette

The trigger seems to be the EU encryption requirements and ANT+ lack support, but the demise of ant+ is also likely driven by smart phone's support of Bluetooth and lack of ant+. FWIW BTLE has picked up broadcast capability so HR straps in the future will be able to broadcast like ant+ can today.

[JaapvanE]

Interesting but expected development. Indeed bluetooth BLE is a likely successor, although many connection scenarios are simpler when using ANT+. Aside that, standard bluetooth FTMS Indoor rower is a poor implementation, even compared to ANT+. I sincerely hope the Bluetooth consortium seriously improves on this, hopefully bringing it on par with the PM5's data quality.