Using Steam Link with Ant+

[twi78]

At the moment I play a non steam game that uses an ant+ Dongle to pick up bike data and interacts with the game (Zwift.com)
I've just purchased a dedicated gaming machine that will run Zwift and was hoping I could use steam link to play the game in another room with the ant+ dongle plugged into steam link to pick up the data and send it to the main gaming machine.

Any ideas if this would work??
Thanks

[Vaskee]

That's something i am interested in as well. I expect that steam link should have no issues streaming the video from the game but I am not having high hopes for it to be able to process ANT+ data.

Maybe you could keep the ANT+ dongle in your computer and use steam link for video only? Not sure what the range on that thing is.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

ANT is BT so yea u should get a good 30ft out of it
Yea u can use Steam Link for Video Only; but some sort of input device must be plugged into Steam Link, as that is required even to power it on.

[zacha <js>]

ANT ist not BT and what the OP wants to know is if the Steam link will support an ANT+ dongle via the USB port. I am interested as of the same reasons, I am currently using a dedicated PC in the living room but I am limited on space and don't want to set up a large gaming rig instead I like the idea using the Steam Link to stream the game from my pc under my workdesk. If the ANT+ dongle does not work with Steam Link you could possibly use an USB ethernet server too for attaching the ANT+ dongle.

So which type of devices will the usb ports of the Steam Link support? Can I attach any kind of device or only HID class devices?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

No; Steam Link barely supports anything well so far besides Keyboard, Mouse, Steam Controller. We having to do this Wired workaround BS to get 360/One Controllers to fully work right on it.

What could work is having the Keyboard / Mouse on Steam Link and have the gaming PC within range of the ANT+ wireless dongle so that can still connect directly to the PC itself.

[zacha <js>]

Oh thanks. That is what I wanted to know. I think this is no option as the range of ANT+ is anly about 3m but for reliability the device should not be farther away than ~ 1m. So sadly this won't work, the only thing one could try is either using a very long USB extension/ repeater cable and/or an USB-lan server for the dongle.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yea IDK about USB extenstion either; as I do know from experience that your average/standard USB extension cables; they generally will not provide solid power/signal for the connected USB device if you extend beyond 15-20 ft worth of cable (after the length of the main device's cable, for example after that 3ft of cable on a webcam for example)

Ok I was doing some reading an I coulda swore it said ANT+ was BlueTooth based dongle; if not, are there different ones? Like Gen 1, Gen 2, etc. perhaps?

Sorry if I was mis-leading infos in any way.

[zacha <js>]

It is 2.4Ghz radio too but different protocol than BT. There are basically two versions all made by dynastream but sold under different labels. For recent app/os suppport everyone is using v2 hardware. Operational range is about 3m, as ANT+ is a protocol for wireless sensor data for sports equipment and normally used to connect sensors to a bike computer or GPS watch etc. Computer controlled bike trainers use ANT+ for communication too (ANT+ FE-C e.g.). So a PC based software can control a bike trainer (or a threadmill or rowing equipment e.g.).

There is currently no industrial standard for bluetooth (BLE) based equipment control as of that all the world still using ant+ for that kind of communication.

Yes, very long usb extension cables are problematic but if you use an active usb extension cable it will work, especially as an ant+ dongle is a very low power device. You can attach a powerd usb hub to the end too that will work too but you have to route the extra cable to the extra room. I have some of those usb network servers by hand we use them at work for attaching usb dongles to vmware virtual machines and I will try if that is an option too, so you don't have to route an extra cable, at least if you have two lan ports available.

Driver support is very unproblematic, the ANT+ dongle drivers are included in Windows, so it is very plug and play-ish normally.

[rotNdude]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/353380