Free Style Libre

@Glassymtn . Welcome to the forum.
I'm a dexcom user myself, wonderful piece of kit.
Not used the Freestyle libre so can't help with alarms.
I do know they can be hard to come by at the moment. Demand seems to be out stripping supply.
I'll tag @Scott-C in the hope he will come online.
This guy knows all there is to know re the libre, especially how to adapt it to function like a CGM.
Have a look at the Blood glucose monitoring sub forum as well. Some useful tips there.

Freestyle Libre doesn't have alarms, so it won't be right for you. Should you still wish to use the Libre (because of costs or such), there are ways to turn your libre into a cgm including alarms, but that's not approved by the manufacturer. If Scott-C doesn't turn up you could have a look on facebook. There's a group called Libre Rebels Dynamic diabetics.
Good luck!

Glassymtn said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.

Antje77 said:

but that's not approved by the manufacturer.

Click to expand...

I'm a rebel! I was at a DAFNE yearly review last year shortly after I'd blinged my libre with the blucon. The dietician asked me, in all seriousness, "Look, Scott, is this, like, you know, legal ?".

Was chatting to one of the other T1s on the way out, he was quizzing me about where to get the blucon and xdrip+, told him about how xdrip was plastered with warnings about how it was a "use at own risk" gig, we laughed a bit about the dietician's caution and agreed, f*ck, man, we're T1, we take calculated risks every day. The thing which swung it for me on the risk front was that, and I could be wrong on this, but the impression I've got from their threads is that the lead developer's daughter is the T1, not him - he's not going to risk her safety with a dodgy app, so I'm fine using it.

Hey, thanks for the tag Scott. I’ve only had the MiaoMiao (used with an iPhone 8, the Spike app and a very old Pebble watch) a few days and already I can’t imagine life without it. I’ve been woken up at 2am one night with my blood going high, so I could correct it without running high all night, and again early this morning with a hypo.

It’s £160 and arrived from China within a fortnight, with no customs charge (I understand Bluecon deliveries to the U.K. are subject to a charge), and charged from cold in 15 minutes with a magnetic charging usb cable. It connected straight out of the box via Spike and was sending data to my watch in minutes. It’s waterproof too, and doesn’t stick up much - the profile is barely more than the sensor itself.

If you can get Libre on prescription, you can turn it into a fully fledged CGM for less than two hundred quid - I paid £30 for my Pebble watch.

Scott-C said:

I'm a rebel!

Click to expand...

Of course you are, @Scott-C ! But I haven't tried those tricks myself, so not fully confident advertising them and besides, I wouldn't know the answers to any questions asked after mentioning Blucon, xdrip or MiaoMiao. Also, I'm treading carefully on this forum where bending rules might be involved because I like this forum and the admins have enough to do as it is. And I'm too lazy to look up the exact rules every time I post.

Hi

I have just got a trial of the freestyle Libre and planning on purchasing sensors until I can get them on prescription as it has made such a difference in just the first week!! I am really intruiged about bluecon and miaomiao, can anyone tell me if you can carry on using the Freestly Libre meter with a sensor as well or if it is a one or the other choice.

Any further information would be brilliant.

Thanks

Tom

Mel dCP said:

Hey, thanks for the tag Scott. I’ve only had the MiaoMiao (used with an iPhone 8, the Spike app and a very old Pebble watch) a few days and already I can’t imagine life without it. I’ve been woken up at 2am one night with my blood going high, so I could correct it without running high all night, and again early this morning with a hypo.

It’s £160 and arrived from China within a fortnight, with no customs charge (I understand Bluecon deliveries to the U.K. are subject to a charge), and charged from cold in 15 minutes with a magnetic charging usb cable. It connected straight out of the box via Spike and was sending data to my watch in minutes. It’s waterproof too, and doesn’t stick up much - the profile is barely more than the sensor itself.

If you can get Libre on prescription, you can turn it into a fully fledged CGM for less than two hundred quid - I paid £30 for my Pebble watch.

Click to expand...

A lot of folk online using this Chinese variant seem to always use it with a watch............I assume this is optional......the phone will work just as good....?

novorapidboi26 said:

A lot of folk online using this Chinese variant seem to always use it with a watch............I assume this is optional......the phone will work just as good....?

Click to expand...

Yes, the watch is just a nice extra. Spike gives alerts on the phone, it’s totally customisable.