Ant+ dropouts using Samsung A50 phone

Equipment
1

Hey all,

I was using Trainerroad with a Garmin Vector 3S, Garmin Hr strap and cheapo speed sensor, all connected via Ant+ using USB-to-go adapter with a a USB ant+ stick (a garmin one and an unbranded one) and a Moto G5 phone, with zero dropouts.

I’ve since “upgraded” to a Samsung A50 phone which has built in Ant+. Using the same devices with this phone I get constant (a few seconds every 1-3 minutes) dropouts across ALL devices. The HR will go away for 3 seconds, then a minute later the power will go away for 10 seconds, then 2 mins later they both go away (not sure about the speed sensor as TR doies not display that data on the screen I use).

The dropout makes the sensor reading display as “–” and the number of paired devices went down by one in the bottom right of the screen, but the workout did not pause (I guess that might be a setting I don’t have turned on).

I used bluetooh (for all but the HR as my strap does not support it) for the 2nd half of the workout and had zero dropouts except for the HR which was still on Ant+.

My garmin head unit was recording at the same time, via Ant+, and experienced zero dropouts, so I know the issue is with the phone hardware/drivers/TR and not the sensors as they work fine with the head unit still and were rock solid with my old phone plus external Ant+ sensor.

Has anyone experienced anything similar, or can anyone suggest a way to debug this further? I’m happy to turn on developer mode and enable any logging etc. that might help debug this.

A simple solution would be to buy a new HR strap that supports bluetooth, but they I could have bought a phone without built in Ant+ and this was one of the main reasons I chose the Samsung A50 :-/

Thanks for your time,

Evan.

2

Hi Evan,

My situation isn’t quite the same, but I have a Xiaomi phone with built-in ANT+ and after a certain OS upgrade the built-in firmware stopped working reliably (the “ANT Tester” app from the Play Store can help diagnose this).

In the end, I got an ANT+ dongle and installed the ANT USB service on the phone and that works totally fine. Occasionally TR can’t detect any devices and I need to reboot the phone, but that only happens once a month or so - I think after certain software updates.

It’s probably not what you want to hear - it’s so silly to need a dongle when you specifically bought an ANT+ phone - but it’s what I had to do.

3

Thanks for the reply and the ANTTester app pointer. The app shows all is good (see screenshot). I’ll do a long HRV reading with EliteHRV and I guess that will show me whether the issue is in TR or in the phone HW/driver.

And yeh it would be crazy to use the dongle when the phone has built in Ant+, but like you say, better to have it working that not!!

Screenshot_20190925-093530_ANT%20Tester|230x500

4

That screenshot does look good (I get a red exclamation marks and errors against the firmware).

Good idea to try the HR on its own. If that works, I’d recommend also trying having all three devices connected via another app (I think there are more ANT+ apps in the Play Store that could help with that). You might find the issue only occurs when multiple devices are connected.

Anyway, good luck!