MiaoMiao Reader and iOS App

Hi, @wallanaise , the issue is being widely discussed on this thread:

https://gitter.im/SpikeiOS/Lobby

Many of the people on that thread are closely involved in the development of Spike, particularly Johan Degraeve who coded its precursor, iosxdripreader, so keep an eye open for his posts. Scroll back a bit and he seems to be working on an alternative.

As @Knikki says, the Tomato app which is the MiaoMiao inhouse app is an option for ios, I have no idea of how good or bad it is.

Not trying to steer you away from ios if that's your phone preference, but it's fair to say that quite a few folks have just walked away from the current uncertainty, and got themselves a cheap and cheerful android phone and run the android app xDrip+ on it. xDrip+ was really the "daddy" of it all - it came first, then Johan developed iosxdripreader from it, then went on to join Spike.

xDrip+ is pretty solid, been using it for well over a yr now, on a cheap 100 quid LG K8 2017 phone, latterly with miaomiao, and it will never have certificate issues.

wallanaise said:

Thank you for your reply, what is really frustrating is im a big Apple user (yes, im one of those) the whole attraction to the MiaoMiao device was the fact i have an Apple watch and i could have my BG's shown on the device. Seriously considering sending it back at the moment.

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I'll tag @Mel dCP for you, she's on ios with spike and will be more up to date with the current state of play at the moment - the online community seem to be coming up with a number of workarounds.

I'm not an ios user but a brief glance at the miao miao inhouse Tomato app says it'll work with Apple watches. How good Tomato is, I don't know.

http://tomato.cool

There's an overview of what's going on here:
https://medium.com/trit1dtech/devas...own-on-distribution-of-spike-app-ef57138b6163

Scott-C said:

xDrip+ is pretty solid, been using it for well over a yr now, on a cheap 100 quid LG K8 2017 phone, latterly with miaomiao, and it will never have certificate issues.

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Whilst specifically that point is true, Scott, xDrip remains not allowed on the Play Store in the same way it's not permitted on the App Store. It isn't too far a leap to see the option of third party APK installation being removed from a future version of Android. Whilst it would obviously be a blow to the platform, never say never feels like an appropriate phrase.

Apple's focus for their iOS platform has been so they can shout 'security' and 'privacy' from the rooftops which inevitably comes at the expense of 'usability' and 'features'. The way Spike was being distributed was only ever a workaround that was being let slide because nobody had abused it on a massive scale. Then, Facebook.

db89 said:

Whilst specifically that point is true, Scott, xDrip remains not allowed on the Play Store in the same way it's not permitted on the App Store. It isn't too far a leap to see the option of third party APK installation being removed from a future version of Android. Whilst it would obviously be a blow to the platform, never say never feels like an appropriate phrase.

Apple's focus for their iOS platform has been so they can shout 'security' and 'privacy' from the rooftops which inevitably comes at the expense of 'usability' and 'features'. The way Spike was being distributed was only ever a workaround that was being let slide because nobody had abused it on a massive scale. Then, Facebook.

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Cheers, db89. Just out of curiousity, if one already had the xdrip+ apk up and running on a phone and deliberately never updated it, would that historic version just carry on running even if there were those sort of android changes?

When I first got blucon and xdrip+ to work, I deliberately decided not to update the download and even now with a later version and miaomiao, I avoid upgrading not only xdrip but also knock back any invitations to update android and wearOS. I've seen too many people saying that after upgrades to any of the three some glitches appear, so I prefer just to run outdated versions which I know work instead of risking losing it.

Who knows, there might eventually be a thriving black market for wildly out of date android phones found collecting dust in cupboards and ancient apks stored on discs!

I would say the only way that could happen really is via an OS update or potentially Google Play Services (which has unrestricted access to the devices for core functions) could hobble the feature in some way if they really wanted to or claimed they had to.

There are so many Android devices and implementations out there it would be impossible to say for each one but usually there is a way to go back on most of them and revert OS updates (can't comment on WearOS). You could, in theory, have a second device that was used offline with Bluetooth running xDrip+. This is the way one of the insulin pump manufacturers have been trialling with an extremely locked down Android device to server the purpose of pump controller.

Android as an OS can be taken from source and adapted to work on any device so it's safe to say there would be ways around it but similar challenges would be presented that would make it inconvenient (inability to use on your primary device for example) like is being seen over on iOS right now.

Spike will be back, the team have a workaround and are busy coding it. The guy who invented and codes Spike is T1 himself, has a job and has recently lost two family members to cancer, as well as working all out to get it running again. We just need to be patient, he has hundreds of hours of work to do. But it will be back.

In the meantime, the Libre+MiaoMiao rig is still usable, through two collector apps. Tomato, which is the MiaoMiao dedicated app, and an old version of xdrip for iOS, which is very simple, but does collect the data. PM me and I’ll give you the xdrip link, you’ll need to download an app called TestFlight from the App Store.

Both of these apps will upload your data to Nightscout, which is a cloud based CGM data storage service. Using that, you can push the data to a smartwatch. It’s a bit of a faff to set up and really needs to be done on a computer, but run through the instructions step by step, and you’ll get there. It’s worth doing not just for the watch and storage bit, but it also generates very useful reports which can help your overall management. The app to download to your phone once you’ve set up the account is Nightscout X and maybe Nightguard as well, which gives you a nice interface if (like me) you like to have a full screen nightlight of your levels at night! I do that with Spike when it’s working, husband keeps half an eye on my level if he wakes up in the night and I can just squint blearily at it without having topic, up the phone!

These are the instructions:

http://www.nightscout.info/wiki/welcome/set-up-nightscout-using-heroku

If you get all the apps up and running now, all you need to do when your MiaoMiao arrives is charge it, stick it on, connect and go. I’ve also got an ancient S4 android phone with glimp etc loaded and connected to Nightscout, so if my iOS system fails, I have a backup ready to go stashed in my handbag.

My son (7) is fairly newly diagnosed T1, he went onto a pump last week (amazing) and my wife and I monitor his glucose via a libre and miaomiao.

My son has an iPhone that goes to school etc with him and my wife and I follow his cgm from that.

My wife is IOS and been using Spike which, as stated above, is now not working. She has switched to Sugarmate which is pretty good it seems though not as functionally rich but easy to load and set up.

I am blackberry and use Glimp. It is good when it works but buggy as when I close it it sometimes takes 15 mins to start delivering readings when I restart it. Also the other night it dropped to 0.6! Had massive panic but my son was fine it was just a weird reading for several hours.

We are about to try the Dexcom G6 (self funding) to see how this compares as my sons arm gets very red raw under the miaomiao after a r few days.

HTH

Steve

Sorry also forgot to say my son was using Spike but we changed him onto tomato. It is fairly simple but then he doesn't need much, just a medium to transmit his cgm to nitescout for us to view remotely.

Averysteve said:

Sorry also forgot to say my son was using Spike but we changed him onto tomato. It is fairly simple but then he doesn't need much, just a medium to transmit his cgm to nitescout for us to view remotely.

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Hi I have just got MM2 I was using tomato app and really liked it very simple but could not get my mum set up for low blood alerts so now I am using xdrip I dont line it I find it confusing and difficult. Is there a app my mum can use I seen you wrote Glimp or sugar diabetics above how dose this work if I set my MM2 back to tomato app. TIA

So I’m not a Miao Miao user yet but I’ve done so much research. You can get XDrip on iPhone if you want but there’s an extra step involved.

Because the real app is not approved yet for iOS users, you can download the beta version of XDrip but you have to download Test Flight before that. Test Flight is an app that allows you to test apps not usually available on the App Store. It is an app offered by Apple for free so it doesn’t involve any jail breaking.

This contains the instructions:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/6ZqKUGpm