Diagnosed 42 years ago T1. Went on the pump "99". Finally went to a CGM 2 months ago Dex4. A friend told me about Freestle but I can't find any info if Freestyle has an alarm. Extremely brittle and without an alarm methodology I have to discount this one.
Any information would be extremely helpful.
Hi, Glassymtn, libre on it's own doesn't have an alarm, but there's a couple of ways of making it alarm at a fairly modest cost.
The one I use is a small bluetooth transmitter called blucon from a company called Ambrosia Systems. It's about twice the height of a libre sensor and a couple of mm wider. I stick it on top of the libre sensor with a 7 x 8 cm sticking plaster and it pings a reading every 5 mins to an android phone app, xDrip+, which can be set up with as many customisable alarms as you want. It cost me £95 one-off cost and is still working fine a year later. It's not waterproof so have to take on and off for showers. They've just brought out a waterproof version for about 150 quid but the jury is still out on how waterproof it is.
I started a thread about it a while back which gives an idea of how it works and some screenshots of what it looks like and the graphs you get, and links to where to buy and download xdrip+.
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/getting-hypo-alerts-with-libre-blucon-and-xdrip.127195/
The new kid on the block is from a Chinese company:
https://www.miaomiao.cool Again, it's a bluetooth transmitter which gets put partly on top and partly to the side of the sensor and pings results to either xdrip+ on android phones or Spike on iphones. Haven't tried it yet, but
@Mel dCP has recently got one and is chuffed with it, so have tagged her in for her thoughts on the matter. Not sure about the price, maybe around the 160 quid mark, and it's waterproof.
One of the things to consider is pricing and availability. I don't know whether you're self funding dex or not. Pricing of dex and libre can work out at about the same per month because it's possible to restart a dexcom sensor and use it for long after it's official 1 week.
Libre times out after 2 weeks and there's no getting round that - people who can easily hack the White House or the Kremlin have tried but failed.
So, either will cost you about £100 per month.
With libre, they're not taking any new customers at the moment because of demand. No-one knows how long that will last, so if you decide to go for libre blinged up with blucon or miaomiao, you'll likely be in a queue for a while.
But, one of the reasons for the demand is that some areas have decided to put libre on prescription for T1s. I'm lucky enough to live in one of those areas, Mel does too, so for folks like us, it's a no-brainer: free libre on script and a 100 quid to make it alarm, as opposed to 100 per month for dex.
I don't know where you are, but I'd suggest having a google to see if you can find out what your ccg/formulary position is on prescribing libre. It-s a postcode lottery at the moment. If you're lucky enough to be in a libre prescribing area, with libre and blucon or miaomiao, you'll be getting alarms at no cost, apart from the small transmitter outlay.
