ANT and Zephyr Combo

[captainmohyal]

Hi.

I am curious to know if it is possible to use the ANT-only Softdevice with the Zephyr RTOS. The goal is to create a BT BR/EDR + BLE 5.0 + ANT+ device all on the same chipset. 

Thanks,

cm

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

This will not work for two reasons:

• Most importantly, there is no BT BR/EDR HW support in any Nordic chips. 
• Secondly, the ANT SoftDevice is not compatible with Zephyr. So you must stick with the nRF5 SDK for now if you want ANT support.

[captainmohyal]

Thank you for the quick reply. A few follow ups:

1. So even though zephry provides a BR/EDR stack, it is not possible on the n52s due to hw limitations. Do I understand this correctly? Are there any Nordic offerings that do not have this limitation?

2. Are there any plans with ANT on Zephyr?

Thanks,

cm

[captainmohyal]

One more follow up.

1. Can the nordic softdevice (bt and ant) be used but still use zephyr as an real time operating system without its bt stack? So essentially take the softdevice and its header files and integrate it with the OS and drivers provided by zephyr.

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

captainmohyal said:

1. So even though zephry provides a BR/EDR stack, it is not possible on the n52s due to hw limitations. Do I understand this correctly? Are there any Nordic offerings that do not have this limitation?

Yes, that is correct. BR/EDR requires a completely different radio and is not supported by any HW Nordic has to offer.

captainmohyal said:

2. Are there any plans with ANT on Zephyr?

Not that I am aware of. Please contact sales for more information, as they are in a better position to comment on pans and possible future products.

[Einar Thorsrud]

It might be possible, but I expect it will be a lot of work and may work as expected. It is not something we have supported or tested. If you want to use ANT with a Nordic chip, then you should stick with nRF5 SDK for now.