Getting hypo alerts with libre, blucon and xDrip+

[justadad]

Would it be calibration issues?

It might just be that. Very similar experience this morning with my son's gadgets. Libre showed 5.0 and a flat line for the past 3-4 hours. Xdrip showed 5.7 and a flat line for the past 3-4 hours. Finger prick showed 5.3. Calibrated to reflect the finger prick result. One hour later the alarm goes off, xdrip shows 3.3, kid in class, I panic, wife panics, kid doesn't pick up, left his phone in the locker by the classroom most probably, wife goes to school, kid is surprised to see his mum there, says he never felt low.
Good way to start the day.

 

[Celsus]

Hi there,
Any of you that have found the personal best favorite smart watch to use for this purpose, so as not having the need to have the phone nearby at all times to get the alarms?
Been using the phone myself now for a good while but unsure what smart watch would be the best and still be able to get the alarms, as that is really the key function for me to get the notice when dropping below my set minimum bg level. Please let me hear about your personal favorites and experience with this if some of you already use a smart watch for this purpose with the Libre sensor and the blucon?

Much appreciated !

 

[Scott-C]

Hi, @Celsus , I've been using it with a Fossil Q Explorist smartwatch.

Although there's options which appear to make the watch act independently as a collector without a phone, it doesn't seem to work.

The lead developer, jamorham, seems to be working up solutions for different watches, so it's maybe a case of e-mailing him and asking if he'll have a go at a particular watch type.

Here's a link discussing the issue:

https://github.com/NightscoutFoundation/xDrip/issues/149

 

[Celsus]

Hi, @Celsus , I've been using it with a Fossil Q Explorist smartwatch.

Although there's options which appear to make the watch act independently as a collector without a phone, it doesn't seem to work.

The lead developer, jamorham, seems to be working up solutions for different watches, so it's maybe a case of e-mailing him and asking if he'll have a go at a particular watch type.

Here's a link discussing the issue:

https://github.com/NightscoutFoundation/xDrip/issues/149

Thank you Scott, for your excellent guidance!

Yes, what I am really after 'in the ideal world', is that the watch can show the latest bg reading, the arrow trend as on the Abbott Reader and then offer the alarm function for when bg going below or above a defined set range. And this should ofcourse be on its own, so not depending on having a smart phone as collector or communicator in between the blucon and the watch itself.

 

[HJROD]

Has anyone have problems with Blucon Nightrider disconnecting when jogging or walking. In the house I can get away from phone 30ft and it does not disconnect, yet when I go jogging/ walking it constantly disconnects< whether I listen to music or not.
Thanks

 

[Scott-C]

Thank you Scott, for your excellent guidance!

Yes, what I am really after 'in the ideal world', is that the watch can show the latest bg reading, the arrow trend as on the Abbott Reader and then offer the alarm function for when bg going below or above a defined set range. And this should ofcourse be on its own, so not depending on having a smart phone as collector or communicator in between the blucon and the watch itself.

This guide explains setting it up for a watch:

https://github.com/NightscoutFoundation/xDrip/blob/master/Documentation/WatchGuide.md

I was just about to give up on mine before I found the guide and noticed the bit near the start about having to install xdrip from the Play-Store on the watch. And Android Wear is needed on the phone.

There's four watchfaces available. I use the one in the pic below (that was an under-bolused Heineken causing the rise, yikes, but it tailed off and started dropping after briefly touching 8!). Numbers, arrow, delta change and a graph. Oh, and the time too.. Tap the graph and it'll show different time periods from an hour or two to several hours.

It'll vibrate if I'm dropping or rising more than a certain amount in the last five minutes. Annoyingly, there doesn't seem to be a way of making it hypo alert, although I might just have missed the setting for it.

Still, can't complain - the developer is doing it as a labour of love and has done a damned good job.

And he's having a serious go at solving the Force Wear Collection issue to make the phone redundant.

I thought it might be a bit gimmicky, but it's been surprisingly useful - so easy just to have a quick glance at the watch every now and then, I've picked up on a few downward trends I might have missed if I was relying on dragging the phone out.

 

[Celsus]

This guide explains setting it up for a watch:

https://github.com/NightscoutFoundation/xDrip/blob/master/Documentation/WatchGuide.md

I was just about to give up on mine before I found the guide and noticed the bit near the start about having to install xdrip from the Play-Store on the watch. And Android Wear is needed on the phone.

There's four watchfaces available. I use the one in the pic below (that was an under-bolused Heineken causing the rise, yikes, but it tailed off and started dropping after briefly touching 8!). Numbers, arrow, delta change and a graph. Oh, and the time too.. Tap the graph and it'll show different time periods from an hour or two to several hours.

It'll vibrate if I'm dropping or rising more than a certain amount in the last five minutes. Annoyingly, there doesn't seem to be a way of making it hypo alert, although I might just have missed the setting for it.

And he's having a serious go at solving the Force Wear Collection issue to make the phone redundant.

I thought it might be a bit gimmicky, but it's been surprisingly useful - so easy just to have a quick glance at the watch every now and then, I've picked up on a few downward trends I might have missed if I was relying on dragging the phone out.

View attachment 25761

Thanks again - Looks pretty useful to me Scott,
So already in the Amazon shop to place my order!

Are you aware of other watches that can offer similar functionality?
And does this watch really wear out the batteri after just 24 hours or less? If I should be picky, it would of course be better if it was possible to find a model with longer autonmy. Personally I often venture outdoors in my leasure time, so the longer autonomy away from a wall-socket-current the better. But aside from that, it does indeed look great and fitting my need, though understand its still being worked on to get a software update that would enable not depending on the phone as go-in-between the Blucon and the watch? So currently you still need to keep the phone with you to get the watch to function as described? If so, could the phone not still then give the alarms?

 

[Scott-C]

Thanks again - Looks pretty useful to me Scott,
So already in the Amazon shop to place my order!

Are you aware of other watches that can offer similar functionality?
And does this watch really wear out the batteri after just 24 hours or less? If I should be picky, it would of course be better if it was possible to find a model with longer autonmy. Personally I often venture outdoors in my leasure time, so the longer autonomy away from a wall-socket-current the better. But aside from that, it does indeed look great and fitting my need, though understand its still being worked on to get a software update that would enable not depending on the phone as go-in-between the Blucon and the watch? So currently you still need to keep the phone with you to get the watch to function as described? If so, could the phone not still then give the alarms?

It's my first venture into smartwatches, so I don't know much about them.

The developer, jamorham, posted a link a few months back to supported watches:

https://github.com/NightscoutFoundation/xDrip/wiki/Patching-Android-Wear-devices-for-use-with-the-G5

It's talking about dexcom G5 as the transmitter, no idea how it plays out with blucon.

Yes, I still get alarms, courtesy of the phone, but it would be neat if I could get the watch to do it independently. I only have hypo alerts set for night time, don't bother with them day time, so it's not a big issue.

Yes, the watch needs recharged every day. Bit of a pain but it is what it is. I suppose you could take a wind up charger with you and get even more exercise in the great outdoors! Or solar panels on your backpack...

I used to do a lot of cycle touring in the Scottish Highlands a while back, tent on the back of my bike, the coastal run from Ullapool down to Glasgow is lovely - didn't have to think about charging issues then with a meter which lasted for a couple of weeks, would have to rethink it now if I was doing it again. Didn't wild camp much - normally made sure I pitched up next to a pub, so there's an answer, just plug it in while having a well deserved pint!

 

[malekalamej]

Hi Scott! I noticed you had a couple of questions about Spike. Please feel free to reach me for any question you might have about the app!
Cheers

Edited by moderator to remove personal contact details.

 

[Scott-C]

Hi Scott! I noticed you had a couple of questions about Spike. Please feel free to reach me for any question you might have about the app!
Cheers

Hi, Malek, I'd mentioned it in post #103 further up this thread.

Another poster had mentioned an ios app at https://spike-app.com/# which seemed to be able to take data from a blucon transmitter to turn libre into a proper cgm (this whole thread is about turning libre into cgm).

So, when I started doing a bit of googling, I also found the similarly named https://www.thespikeapp.com which seems to be aimed at something else, not turning libre into cgm.

I was just wondering, given the very similar names of the apps and the fact that they seemed to have launched at about the same time, whether there was any connection between the two or whether it was just co-incidence and they are totally separate projects by different people?

 

[Celsus]

Has anyone have problems with Blucon Nightrider disconnecting when jogging or walking. In the house I can get away from phone 30ft and it does not disconnect, yet when I go jogging/ walking it constantly disconnects< whether I listen to music or not.
Thanks

Hi @HJROD , strange thing is I never had any connection problem as you described above before. But here after I loaded a new battery into my Blucon NightRider its like quite frequently my iPhone reports out that it lost the connection to the blucon. Tried also to no avail to change to a new battery also, but it still remains coming back now with frequent disconnects. And here comes my main issue then: I now observe that my iPhone is much more quickly getting drained for battery power. Its a brand new iPhone and without the Blucon connected it can stay charged for a few days. But now its like less than 8 hours or so it can last in a phone charge. So looked up the Bluetooth connection pattern to the blucon, and here I now observe that at times it doesn't connect for maybe 8-15 minutes. And then in between I see longer periods where it appears to connect every minute like 7 minutes in a row??? I didn't really look into these details earlier so cant say if that is normal, but recall that the blucon always appear very busy when linking up after a battery change, which then maybe is due to like a permanent data stream upload for maybe 1-2 minutes to get the connection initialized and base data sent across? Anybody else who have had same kind of symptoms when using their blucon?

The only big 'change' compared to previously is that I have recently tried to have several Bluetooth readers laying around the house so as not to have to bring e.g. my iPhone with me all the times, but simply just having a multitude of iPhone/iPad/Raspberry Pi/etc laying around with all able to pick up the blucon signal from wherever I might be around and then sound an alarm if either going to high or too low per set values. And no, I didn't manage to get it to work as intended...
But did I now totally 'confuse' my poor little blucon??? I would suppose a hard reset of it by lifting out the battery and then putting it back and then restarting it with sticking the pin into the pinhole would bring it back to pristine state?
Or do one need to do anything else special to make it forget all about the shocking past I had put it through?
E.g. anything like having to put the pin into the pinhole to reset fully for a minimum of 20 seconds or something else we poor mortals cannot read about in the short 1-page user-pictogram-guide that is all we get from Ambrosia?

 

[Scott-C]

Looks like there's another transmitter coming onto the market for cgm'ing libre, called MiaoMiao, from a start-up in China:

https://www.miaomiao.cool

Waterproof, slightly slimmer than blucon, but a bit longer and doesn't sit on top of the sensor, so takes up more skin-space.

Interestingly, there's a thread on gitter at link below where the developers are in conversation with the xDrip+ and Spike developers to see if they can get the transmitter and those apps to talk to each other. Quite an interesting read for those interested in how the open source community gets things done:

https://gitter.im/miaomiaoSDK/Lobby

Will be interesting to see how it works out.

 

[Celsus]

Looks like there's another transmitter coming onto the market for cgm'ing libre, called MiaoMiao, from a start-up in China:

https://www.miaomiao.cool

Waterproof, slightly slimmer than blucon, but a bit longer and doesn't sit on top of the sensor, so takes up more skin-space.

Interestingly, there's a thread on gitter at link below where the developers are in conversation with the xDrip+ and Spike developers to see if they can get the transmitter and those apps to talk to each other. Quite an interesting read for those interested in how the open source community gets things done:

https://gitter.im/miaomiaoSDK/Lobby

Will be interesting to see how it works out.

Thanks Scott, that would be a huge relief if its watertight by birth! ;o)
As right now its a struggle making your NightRider watertight yourself, and as you do, it does not anymore fit easily on top of your Libre sensor. (certainly not in that holder band that I have and use for 'normal use'. And when doing water sports I use velcro to keep it in place on top of each other under my wetsuit. But it is indeed a downer if this MiaoMiao now also doesn't fit on top and need a separate attachment to your arm...

The last part you write about is certainly good news for us all, as I feel right now we have too many independent components and that creates ongoing problems that they are not better integrated when we want to setup that cgm system we all want with warnings, etc. I am still struggling btw with my NightRider for the last 10 days. Don't know what has happened, but its like my iPhone no longer can maintain a resistant connection with it, so suddenly loosing the updates coming in through the Bluetooth connection and sometimes it doesn't even reestablish itself ever again. I observed that we got an update around the same time to the iPhone iOS, so maybe they changed something there that the App providers than also need to get updated in our user Apps?

 

[Scott-C]

I am still struggling btw with my NightRider for the last 10 days. Don't know what has happened, but its like my iPhone no longer can maintain a resistant connection with it, so suddenly loosing the updates coming in through the Bluetooth connection and sometimes it doesn't even reestablish itself ever again. I observed that we got an update around the same time to the iPhone iOS, so maybe they changed something there that the App providers than also need to get updated in our user Apps?

I don't know anything about ios, but I noticed that a lot of xdrip+ users were reporting connectivity problems from about January, not just with blucon but also dexcom. Looked like the developers made a tweak to the code and it had unintended consequences. I've deliberately not updated my version from September and having had blucon for about 10 months now it's still regularly firing out readings, with the occasional 10 min gap.

Sometimes updates cause more bother than they're worth - why can't coders just leave things alone!?!

 

[Celsus]

I don't know anything about ios, but I noticed that a lot of xdrip+ users were reporting connectivity problems from about January, not just with blucon but also dexcom. Looked like the developers made a tweak to the code and it had unintended consequences. I've deliberately not updated my version from September and having had blucon for about 10 months now it's still regularly firing out readings, with the occasional 10 min gap.

Sometimes updates cause more bother than they're worth - why can't coders just leave things alone!?!

Funny you say that @Scott-C , as I did exactly as you say have great fun with my setup that worked very stable throughout until just here a few weeks back when I as you know about purchased that smartwatch to use with it also. And at that very same I did actually run an update of all the software components and their drivers to make sure all would be in tiptop shape also now with the new watch showing the bg. So are you hinting it most probably is a software hitch or do I need to consider that its my NightRider that has gone amok? If a software hitch, one can only expect it to be fixed with the following updates they may release again. I noticed earlier as well a badish period just after Apple had pushed out on update to their iPhone iOS. And all became good again a few days (a week or two?) when Apple actually released a minor update to the iPhone iOS again shortly after to correct some new issues the last one had opened.

 

[jlarsson]

I don't know anything about ios, but I noticed that a lot of xdrip+ users were reporting connectivity problems from about January, not just with blucon but also dexcom. Looked like the developers made a tweak to the code and it had unintended consequences. I've deliberately not updated my version from September and having had blucon for about 10 months now it's still regularly firing out readings, with the occasional 10 min gap.

Sometimes updates cause more bother than they're worth - why can't coders just leave things alone!?!

Because the eco system changes, one service changes and the rest of the services using that service have to change, and so on. I don't know the specifics in this case, but consider Google Maps changing their API calls(i.e the service that transmits data to other users in the form of coordinates etc) and all of a sudden all the services utilising Google Maps will need to change their own service to correspond to the changes. This would mean every website that renders a map with directions to their location, every mobile app with a delivery service, and so on, would need to update their own service to keep working. It can be quite the nightmare.
Not sure if you were asking a rhetorical question, but that's the reason, anyway.

 

[Scott-C]

Looks like you might be able to throw away the sous-vide bags, @Celsus !

Just noticed that Ambrosia has recently started offering a waterproof version at $165.

Haven't tried it. I wonder whether they saw miaomiao being waterproof and decided to do something about it. Not entirely sure how they can make it waterproof when it still has a battery cover.

https://www.ambrosiasys.com/order

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2106080403002681&id=1791951504415574

 

[Celsus]

Looks like you might be able to throw away the sous-vide bags, @Celsus !

Just noticed that Ambrosia has recently started offering a waterproof version at $165.

Haven't tried it. I wonder whether they saw miaomiao being waterproof and decided to do something about it. Not entirely sure how they can make it waterproof when it still has a battery cover.

https://www.ambrosiasys.com/order

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2106080403002681&id=1791951504415574

Thanks Scott,
Yes I also got a note from Ambrosio about it, as that was my main complaint back to their R&D and Customer Service folks when starting out with it.
But they have so far been very tight on how exactly they have ensured it to be watertight. And when I pushed them, they still said probably just tight enough for taking a short shower or a 5 minute swim in the surface.
So highlighting its not really properly watertight in terms of any difference in outer versus inner pressure may still risk a water leak coming inside and damage the electronics due to the shortcutting by e.g. saltwater I surf in.

So I will keep using my sous-vide for my old NightRider until they come clean on 'how watertight exactly' their new model is. I already found it a little steep price to pay for it as is (and the fortnightly price also for a new button battery). And for all I can tell, this watertight model is simply just at 'shower watertight' level, as they have improved their manufacturing margin variations and added a better rubber seal to the battery compartment closure. Btw the last NightRider I got shipped over start of year, the local custom duties officers added like 60 EUR to the bill to pay to them due to import taxes now also being applied to purchases of electronics from the US, so it all adds up.

Ambrosio also made a short video on YouTube on the watertight NR model, again without the nitty gritty details that we techno file nerds crave for.

Btw, as said after recent ios updates, my iPhone/iPad is still not pairing very well with my nightrider, so my 24/7 usage of the feedback system with warnings is no longer the perfect world it used to be. As its keeping loosing the connection to it and then you need to pair them again after every time...

 

[Damon_]

Long time no see lads,

I've been using the Nightrider for 7 months now and apart from the thickness (I use velcro dots) and some connectivity issues when I'm moving a lot it's been great.

A few nights ago I was having a rather ... festive evening and got stuck on a wall in my basement and lost it between the steps and clobber that's been gathering down there forever.

At that point I had already decided to give Miaomiao a try due to all the positive feedback I've read, and just went back to my PC and ordered one.

Luckily I found it 2 days later after moving lots of junk, but now there will be a new device to take with me in my showers!

I'll be keeping you guys posted.

Cheers!

 

[LooperCat]

Long time no see lads,

I've been using the Nightrider for 7 months now and apart from the thickness (I use velcro dots) and some connectivity issues when I'm moving a lot it's been great.

A few nights ago I was having a rather ... festive evening and got stuck on a wall in my basement and lost it between the steps and clobber that's been gathering down there forever.

At that point I had already decided to give Miaomiao a try due to all the positive feedback I've read, and just went back to my PC and ordered one.

Luckily I found it 2 days later after moving lots of junk, but now there will be a new device to take with me in my showers!

I'll be keeping you guys posted.

Cheers!

I’d be interested to hear what you make of the MiaoMiao, I’ve had mine for about three weeks and absolutely love it!