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Blucon Nightrider UK

Hi, @Peppergirl , I got my first one last June and decided to order a spare a couple of months ago for when/if the current one breaks.

Ordered on a Saturday, they sent me a postal tracking code for USPS on Tuesday or Wednesday, arrived about 12 days later.

They had a spell last Autumn where they said there had been some sort of forest fire or something near the production plant which had left them with limited stock so there was delays for a while but they seem to be over that.

I've seen a few other posts on this site from posters saying they got theirs after about 2 weeks.

There's a post office handling charge of £8 to pay and import VAT of about £18 but that's reclaimable as T1s don't pay vat for diabetes medical equipment, sorry, can't remember the name of the form to use, you'd need to keep the paperwork from the outside of the package as proof.

Good luck with it, mines has made a major difference for me, not just the hypo alerts. I'm using an app xDrip+ which is way better than their inhouse app.
 
Peppergirl said:
Hi @Scott-C did you buy their armband or do you use something else?
Click to expand...

I bought the armband but it didn't really work that well. Too much hassle getting the tension right - too loose and it would slip through flexing my arm, too tight and the undersurface if the 3d printed holder would rub too much on the skin.

Bought a running armband, the sort with a small pocket to hold keys, that might have worked if I'd stitched a blucon sized pocket into it, but didn't have the patience for that, and also the fabric layer between the sensor and the blucon would mean it wouldn't partially enclose the sensor like it's meant to.

So, eventually just went cheap and cheerful and use a 7 by 8 cm Molnlycke Mepore sticking plaster which you can pick up in most chemists for 17p., not on display, kept behind the counter.

Means I need to use a new plaster each time I take it off for a shower but not a big deal at 17p and the adhesive is very gentle, haven't had any reactions.

One thing to mention is I've noticed a few posts recently from some people saying they're having problems with the bluetooth connection pegging out a lot.

I'm not sure why this is or to what extent. Mines has been fine - I have one of the preordered batch and I'm running it to the 6 Sept 2017 build of xdrip+, and I regularly get the max 288 per day readings, with an occasional missed 10 mins here or there.

I wonder whether the build quality of later batches of the transmitter have become sketchier. I've been meaning to try the one I recently bought but haven't got around to it.

But it also might be that if it it's running to xdrip+, that app is being constantly developed, it works with a wide variety of data sources, and I recall back around January there was a fair number of people saying it was hanging with dexcom, so it might be that it's not the transmitter at all, it might be glitches in later versions of xdrip+. I don't know if those January issues were resolved. The xdrip team seem to be totally on the case resolving issues. On the whole, though, I just decided to use the 6 Sept build as it was stable.

Don't won't to dissuade you from buying it - it's really good - but there's always the caveat that this is fairly new technology from a small startup running in conjunction with open source experimental software, so there's scope for some unexpected stuff.

There's another libre transmitter just popped its head up: https://www.miaomiao.cool

They're working with the xdrip people. Might buy one to see how it compares to blucon. It's waterproof. It's been quite well reviewed, but, again, it's a startup, so it remains to be seen how well it copes in the real world.
 
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