[pimeys]

I'm a programmer and I've had a type 1 diabetes for the last 21 years. It is one of the most complex things in my life to take care of when all of the insulin therapies don't really work that well and I don't wake up to the nightly hypos. Luckily I'm in the German insurance system and getting an insulin pump first and later a CGM. Already I'm using an NFC chip in my arm giving results to my phone and from there to InfluxDB and Grafana. Later with a proper CGM I also get automatic alarms which wake me and my partner if the sugar gets to low.

There are great open source systems for us technical people, but the tech is very expensive without an insurance and requires you to solder an extra device to get the values to your phone. At least with an NFC device you can wrap a smartwatch over it to get the readings automatically to your phone, rooted of course.

[gumby]

> Luckily I'm in the German insurance system... I'm using an NFC chip in my arm giving results to my phone

Poor you. If you were lucky enough to use the greatest health care system in the world, USA, you could also get the Freestyle Libre CGM but would be protected from the NFC data. In the US those data can only be read by a physician; patients do not have access to the readers. Oh I notice the disposable pucks that go on the arm cost more here on Blue Shield than I would have been paying with DKV in Germany.

(Fortunately you can buy the readers OTC in France if you have a friend with a French address and can speak French. Even in Germany you can only the hardware by prescription).

[pimeys]

And xDrip Plus works, if having an NFC enabled Android device. Hardware is by prescription, but if you are able to get the chips, any NFC device works with proper software.

Of course you must know what you are doing. The readings should be calibrated every week with blood, but if you do this, your Android device with xDrip Plus is giving more accurate readings compared to the official reader.

REMINDER

Do not try to do any of this if not knowing what you're doing. There is a risk of dying if you follow wrong readings and take a wrong amount of insulin.

[yourapostasy]

Fascinating work, thank you for undertaking it and sharing your results and code. Have you compared your readings with venous blood draws? I've read that the reason people got excited over Theranos was because they were handwavey promising venous-grade results from capillary fingerstick blood collection. There is a marked difference between the kind of blood collected between the two. I suspect we won't resolve that difference other than through calibration, until we will get to the point where we're directly sampling from implanted devices powered inductively.

[pimeys]

The values from Libre are almost always different compared to the blood from fingertip. But using the great work from the Nightscout community one can calibrate the readings and they are very accurate.

The Libre chip stores 8 hours of measurements from every five minutes and even if the scale is wrong without the calibration the trend is right. It is absolutely useful to always see the trend and being able to react before anything bad happens. xDrip can, when correctly used, estimate how the sugar will react if I now take N units of insulin or eat M carbs.

Officially we will never get anything this nice, but if you're smart, just start building your own system. It takes time and depending where you live lots of money. But if I can understand my body better and I don't need to be afraid that I die at night, it is definitely worth it

[taternuts]

> Already I'm using an NFC chip in my arm giving results to my phone and from there to InfluxDB and Grafana. Later with a proper CGM I also get automatic alarms which wake me and my partner if the sugar gets to low.

Very cool! I've recently become friends with a type 1 diabetic and have been learning a lot about it myself. It really is an incredibly intrusive thing that involves constant supervision even with automatic pumps, constantly switching spots to place the needle that much stay in him constantly. He's actually getting a service dog in a month that's trained to wake/warn him if his blood sugar levels get too low. Have you open sourced your solution?

[pimeys]

https://github.com/jamorham/xDrip-plus

This is the fork I'm using and I made the support for InfluxDB. If you want the cheapest CGM solution, it might be the FreeStyle Libre with a rooted android watch wrapped next to it. By paying more there are better solutions but you still need to solder an extra device to carry if you want the readings with Bluetooth, at least in Europe.

Nightscout is an open source hacker community in Europe providing support and tools if interested.

http://www.nightscout.info/

[pimeys]

Here's my notes how to use Grafana and InfluxDB to monitor blood glucose levels. https://github.com/NightscoutFoundation/xDrip/blob/master/Do...

[Nilef]

Interested in hearing more about that - How does the NFC chip get results?

[pimeys]

It is the FreeStyle Libre, which has a small needle and a radio. The provided reader is not the most accurate, but you can read the results with any NFC enabled device. For Android xDrip plus is my choice and I've already contributed new features.

A disclaimer: do not use any of these if you don't know exactly what you're doing. If you do acknowledge the risks and have some backup system for measurements, this system is making the life of a type 1 diabetic much easier...

[bbrian]

IIRC, you're not even supposed to rely on the Freestyle Libre exclusively, you've still to take the traditional finger pricks reasonably frequently to be sure its calibration isn't wrong.

[pimeys]

I know that. But with calibrations xDrip can adjust its values which is not possible with the official device. For me it is enough to test from fingers about twice per week.