Sorry, that part makes no sense. What new receiver?
I think he is talking about the new touchscreen receiver Dexcom came out with. It supposedly fixes the receiver shutdown death problem.
1 Like
Thanks for the elaboration. Very confusing since ânew receiverâ could mean a number of things. Since we donât have this ânew receiverâ it is still a VERY RELEVANT issue for us and anyone who doesnât have this new touchscreen device. Also, the lady in the video has is using the old receiver alsoâŚnot even sure how the new receiver came up in this as it wasnât relevant to the OPâs video.
Will Dexcom trade you out if you call them? Is there added cost or is it 1:1 swap?
I shut down my G4 frequently. Sometimes it doesnât want to wake up, and I found out some solutions recently. The person I talked to didnât suggest I shouldnât shut down.
Iâve now been without my Dexcom for two weeks while I get transmitter batteries replaced. Iâm surprised it hasnât bothered me much. Two hours is nothing!
1 Like
@Beacher
I have a spare G4 Receiver if you need one.
Unlikely we will use it before such point in time as Dexcom stops distributing the G4 Transmitters. I just tested it. Shocker - it even turns on as I might have other assumed the battery would not have lasted this long. Bonus. Let me know if you want it.
The shutoff issue doesnât pertain to the G4. Only the G5 to my understanding, so @Thomas shouldnât be shocked that his turns on. 
Thank you for the offer, but my receiver is fine â and was replaced in the 11th month of its warranty, so Iâm good for a while. Itâs the transmitter I donât have, though my refurbished one should be arriving today.
1 Like
I donât post here often, but I do keep up on whatâs going on, Iâm just kind of quiet 
So I just wanted to let everyone know I tried this on Saturday when it was time to change my daughterâs sensor and I will detail how it went.
First I did change the sensor when I had 2 hours and 10 minutes left so that the phone would not end the session in the middle of the test.
I put the new sensor on a swapped the transmitter without stopping the session. I then took the receiver (not that it matters but it was the old receiver not the new touchscreen one) and stopped the session and immediately started a new session. Now I donât know if it would matter, but I did this when there were three minutes to a new reading just to be sure that the phone didnât pick up the new session (again not sure if that mattered). I then placed the receiver in the microwave and closed the door.
We continued getting readings on her phone and share over the next two hours and even calibrated once for a false low. Once two hours were up I went to the microwave and retrieved the receiver. It showed signal loss for 2 hours and 1 minute. We waited for it to connect and then it showed a small slice left of the warmup.
Once the five minutes passed both the phone and the receiver came up with the enter first blood glucose value screen. I entered two readings and boom we were good to go. We lost one reading in all this when I was giving it the two readings but other than that we had readings the entire time.
We are pretty excited about this because we absolutely hate going blind during that time, and although I know it can be wonky itâs still nice to have something in my opinion.
Let me know if you have any questions, but for us this worked!!!
8 Likes
Thanks for sharing @finny1981. I would be cautious, however, about calibrating before the end of the 2 HR hotswap. What I mean to say is that the enzyme on the sensor takes some time to completely saturate and settle the numbers. Calibrating before can screw up your calibration curve⌠Possibly. If you donât have this issue, nevermind. But that is the reason for the 2 HR blackout in the first place. I donât mean to yuck your yum and I plan on trying this out (but waiting to calibrate till the end).
1 Like
Thanks, for the info. We have hot swapped in the past and I never realized that you shouldnât calibrate for two hours and I know we have before. We have never had an issue (the current one is right on), however I will keep from doing it in the future. No reason to take chances with it.
3 Likes
Did this and can confirm it works! The key is you have to restart the sensor more than 2 hours before the next sensor restart is due. If you do that, then one will go through the 2-hour warmup inside the microwave while the other will know nothing is amiss.
1 Like
We tried this this morning ourselves and it didnât work the way we did it. As suspected, you need to have at least 2 hours remaining BEFORE the sensor reset is required.
Hereâs what we did.
At 11:30 AM, we had 30 minutes remaining before the restart had to take place. We stopped the receiver and restarted it. Put receiver in the microwave. We continued getting readings on the phone until 12:30, then it cut out and has the âTap to start 2-hour sensor warmupâ message. So this is a bust today for this experiment.
Another problem we encountered by not waiting 2 hours is that, after having been in the microwave for, what ended up being an hour, after we took it out it made us âStart Sensorâ again. So, this means weâre out of status for over the 2 hour period we normally would be had we done it the normal way.
My question would be, though (just canât remember right now), whether you see any messages BEFORE the 2 hour warnings start popping up? Or if you just have to keep an eye on the receiver sensor status to know when it was started. It would be nice if you received a message at the 2.5 hour mark, but I donât think you do.
Tried it and it worked perfectly. I will just have to get in the habit of creating an alarm right after starting / restarting a new sensor. This is a complete quality of life change for us since the 2 HR blackout seems to always come at the worst-case possible time. Thank you so much for sharing! (My wife was skeptical and was wondering if I lost my mind when I put the receiver in the microwave)
1 Like
I think you have to set a reminder on your phone or some such. For us, we have the time of a sensor restart on Night Scout , so we set it earlier than it really was.
1 Like
I hope you guys are unplugging the microwave when you do this, to help prevent someone from accidentally cooking it.
We have a broken microwave that we used
1 Like
honestly you could put it anywhere as long as itâs out of range. The main thing is that you need to remember not to accidentally wander into that place then, whereas with the microwave you donât. But we have been doing it when Samson is in bed so we could just as easily put it on the table in our front room and the effect would be the same, with zero nuking risk.
Yeah, our biggest screw up during this test is in not doing it prior to the actual 2 hour window. Weâll do that this next time.
Well, we tried this again this morning (right now itâs in process).
Sensor was set to expire today at 0952. So, at 0730, I stopped the receiver, started the receiver and put it in the microwave.
Hereâs what I see now on our phone:
When the last reading came through
Current screen:
Now, maybe this is unrelated because we have had question marks before that fix themselvesâŚbut I just find it strange that itâs happening now when it hasnât happened at all for the past 7 days.
could be coincidence? Weâve been using the microwave trick successfully for the past three restarts nowâŚ