It seems that I don’t get more than a year from these even though it is warranty is for 4 years. I’m betting this is by design so that there aren’t too many extra PDM’s floating around. This really sucks when you don’t have a backup and cannot get a backup.
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Wow I didn’t even know this was a thing! Thanks for sharing and sorry this has happened to you. So far ours is hanging tough since Sep 2016 :: knocks on wood ::
They replace and overnight the new one to you hopefully?
Yes, but a very long overnight when you have a 5 year old not accustomed to routine injections anymore… 
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Yeah, my thoughts exactly…now that we’re on the POD, I hope I even REMEMBER how to do MDI. 
Hope you get the replacement soon!
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24 posts were split to a new topic: Pump insulin: vials or pen cartridges?
Given that the PDMs are probably worth a hundred bucks, I would like to purchase a spare in case I have a failure. I have a spare meter, spare pens, spare pods, but only one PDM. BUT - they want to charge $6300! and overnight shipping is not an option when you are hiking in the mountains or traveling in another country.
It would be nice if Insulet shipped 2 x PDMs for the $6300 CDN my insurance company had to pay.
Grrr…
As a side note, my back-up is an insulin pen with cartridges that I carry with me along with my meter. Yes - I am weird and do not use the PDM meter (or the PDM bolus calculator).
I just order insulin in cartridges and use the cartridges to fill the pods. If I ever have a pod problem when I am on the go, I use a cartridge that I carry with me. The cartridge I carry will be the next cartridge I use to fill a POD. As a bonus it is at room temperature when I need it.
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@Aaron,
It has been shown by 2 brilliant minds in Canada and the U.S. that the Canadian and U.S. Pods work interchangeably with each other on Canadian and U.S PDM’s…
canadian-u-s-omnipod-swap-test
Now if only you could find a person in the U.S. who has your shipping address, and has a propensity to flaunt convention and would be willing to ship you a U.S PDM that he buys specifically for you for from Insulet for $300…
If only you had the ability to contact such a person via PM on this site…
If only…
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OMG…this literally just happened to us just now. We’re on the phone with Tech Spt now. I was attempting to check Liam’s BG’s, I lost control of the PDM and it dropped (only a foot or two to the ground)…and I kind of caught it with my foot on the way down which softened the blow. When I picked it back up, it was in the process of resetting, then I received this exact error with a long alert.
Looks like they’re wanting us to do a reset on it atm. We’ll see how it goes.
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So we were able to reset our PDM with a paperclip! We had to do the following:
- Insert paperclip for 2 seconds (in the battery compartment area.)
- Dispose of the current POD
- Reset the date/time/etc., on the PDM.
- Apply a new POD
And…for whatever reason, they said the bolus calcs in the PDM would not work for 4 - 6 hours so we’ll see what happens.
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Do you guys have a gelskin on it? That can help protect it a bit.
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I do as well–although mine wasn’t dropped. It happened in the middle of the night while we were sleeping.
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We also have had the PDM give the scream of death/scary error message and done the paper clip reset, a couple of times in 2 years. It has worked and we’ve never had to actually get the overnight replacement but it is unnerving. I keep an old pen (and backup script for cartridges) and lantus (which is expired but still on fridge and would work in a pinch). For backpacking we take old fashioned syringes and novolog.
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I google searched for “reset failed Omnipod PDM” and came across this old thread as the first search result.
The paperclip trick on the PDM worked for me and I am now back in business with the PDM except for not being about to use the bolus calculator for 3 hours and 15 minutes.
Background - I woke up and did a bolus and walked away from the PDM. The bolus started but I guess the PDM did not get an acknowledge back. When I walked back in range of the PDM the pod went into scream of death mode and the PDM was stuck on an alarm screen.
I tired pulling the PDM batteries but it did not do anything as the PDM alarm kept going. To reset I opened the battery compartment on the PDM and stuck a paperclip in the little hole below the batteries and managed to reset the PDM.
New pod is now on so I can go back to sleep 
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Heh. Pretty nice the Google search gave you FUD right away. God forbid you’d have to use results from another forum 
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Wow. Another PDM error about 1 year 2 months later and google took my to this thread. This one happened about 1 hour after a PDM better change and I went to bolus.
I left the pod on all day but i can’t tell anymore if I am getting any basal so I will do the paperclip reset and chamge the pod.
Will call tech support about a new PDM too.
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Is this anywhere near the expected lifespan of the internal battery? The only PDM failure I’ve ever had was because of the dying battery, after about a year and a half. Guess that makes me due for a failure this spring.
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The internal battery on my PDM is no longer any good. It is not a problem for me, I just replace the batteries every few weeks when I am doing a pod change. It requires a clock reset, but that is the only issue.
I think that is preferable to having to get a new PDM and reprogramming everything, and losing all the history.
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This is my problem - I forget and run the batteries right out and then end up changing with an active pod.
If I was better at changing the batteries when I change my pod I would not have any of these problems and would not have to worry about a dead internal battery.
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