Getting started with G6 & xdrip

Thank you for the suggestion! I will look into the Jelly phone. Small and light is important to her. We are more concerned with the cost of data and we also don’t want her to be sucked into using the phone for anything besides BG and phone calls/texts. There are ways to lock things down, some more effective than others and some that add even more cost. As long as she’s not interested in a smartphone, I’m happy for her not to have one. I will look into the possiblities, though.

We homeschool, but she does go out and about in the neighborhood with friends and that’s when she really needs a handy way to see her numbers. There are also times when she paticipates in an activity without us like today’s river rafting trip and the occasional sleepover. As you read in my original introduction post, she often doesn’t hear and/or ignores her Dex when busy with friends, so the watch will hopefully help her be more mindful.

This is what we are seeing now. Phone/watch is showing an impossibly straight line. Pardon the extremely high BG. We are still recovering from the nasty low.

Do you think this is just the initial craziness for the watch or something else? When I first set up the watch, we didn’t see any weird numbers. Maybe we were just lucky?

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@sahmcolorado Did you verify with a fingerstick? Maybe it’s right.

As an alternative you can use the exact same algorithm as the Dexcom.

In settings, go to G5/G6 Debug and check " native algorithm" then check preemptive restarts, restart sensor, and fallback to xdrip. This will give you the transmitter’s filtered number, same as the re river gets. This is pretty new and doesn’t work all the time but it may be worth a try.

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We did verify with multiple finger sticks. It was WAY off for hours but the Dex receiver was pretty close. It’s causing us to second guess using xdrip and consider getting her a phone and using the Dex app & watch face with the phone as collector. Really hate to give up on having the watch as collector, but we don’t want her relying on bad info. I’ll try the native algorithm option today and see what it does.

This is working beautifully. :smile:

That’s Great!:grinning:

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I got my g6 last Sunday (first cgm) and started it with the dexcom receiver, and it’s been running well since then. Ordered a Sony smartwatch 3 which arrived earlier than expected, so trying to get that to work now. I set up the latest version of xdrip+, and that is running on my android phone (an old Motorola E running Android 5.1). Although an old phone, xdrip seems to be running fine on it. But I’m having trouble getting the watch to work.

I installed android wear app on the phone, and paired the watch. It went through several updates and resets over night while I slept, but seems happy now. Both the dexcom transmitter and watch are connected as Bluetooth devices on my cellphone. And the watch app to “find my phone” is working and they are still paired, so the phone and watch seem to know about each other. But I see nothing on watch to suggest it knows about xdrip. No xdrip app on the watch (should there be one?) I looked through available watch faces, but nothing from xdrip. I enabled WiFi and location on the watch, though that may not be necessary.

Does this make sense? Any ideas what I should look at? Could it be system permissions on the watch - if so how should those be set?

@jag1 The only reason xDrip+ is not on your watch is that it has yet to sync from your phone.

Open Wear on your phone. Scroll down and look at “advanced settings”. First tap on “storage” to confirm xDrip+ is not on the phone, then hit back. Then scroll to the bottom of advanced settings and resync all apps. XDrip+ should show on the watch shortly.

If you haven’t already, enable location on the watch. It’s often necessary for bluetooth connections.

Hope this helps! Let me know.

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Thank you! It was apparently the resync was not being done, since indeed xdrip prefs was not listed until after the resync. Maybe lack of resync was because I’m running an older android version, or maybe always needed?

Anyway, after resync and enabling Android Wear Integration, I got the watchfaces and got my current BG display, but it isn’t being updated on either the phone or the watch, error msg Signal Missed on the phone. I assume this is some setting on the phone xdrip app being incorrrect? I’ll go through the print of your options above, but there are some diffs due to me loading the most recent version of xdrip.

Ok, never mind, it looks like I next needed to pair the watch with the dexcom transmitter in Bluetooth. I am now getting live data on the watch (but not the phone - as expected I guess. So any time I want to switch back to data on the phone I change the Android Wear Integration option, right?

Awesome start, I’ll try some more customization. Thank you!

@jag1 In xdrip+ settings>>G5/G6 Debug, check “Use the OB1 Collector” and “G6 Support”, and “Allow OB1 initiate bonding”. Also in Less Common Settings check “Bluetooth watchdog”

See if that helps. Let me know.

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@jag1 Just be sure to uncheck “Force Wear” in Smart Watch Features>>Android Wear Integration, Also uncheck “Only use wear”.

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I’m afraid I spoke too soon. Even with all those settings set as you indicated, the updates are erratic. I will lose a couple on both the phone and watch, then both will get an update. Don’t know why they sometimes get through. Resetting the phone or isolating it (microwave) did not seem to help. I don’t have any more time now, but willlook at it again tonight. Do you know of a tutorial that explains the different settings and the effects they are supposed to have? Thanks again.

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@jag1 That’s great! Now, happy exploring! If you need any more help just ask.

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@jag1 Best to leave It for awhile. When I started my watch ( about 1 1/2 years ago) it only ran at about 60% collection for a day or so. Then it picked up every day later til it reached 95-100%.

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Yes, good advice, step away from the watch …

I too was seeing about 50 percent loss and was driving my wife and self nuts trying to figure out why I was losing updates (putting various phones, receivers, watches in the microwave, unplugging WiFi router and TV or anything with a remote, generally being a pita, …) That said, it did seem to do better when out on the road away from the house, though maybe I just wasn’t see any of the missed updates.

You mentioned you use the watch as primary receiver, as I want to do. How do you sync your data to store it, or do you not bother? So far I haven’t tried to set any of that up.

P.s. I just noticed your xdrip settings wiki. Perfect timing.

I generally have the phone within Bluetooth proximity of the watch. But when I don’t, the data that the phone originally missed is backfilled.

You really need to connect the phone and watch a couple or few times a day. Lots of the functionality of the app us lost without the phone, like calibration, share and followers, reports, etc.

So as you predicted the failure rate for missed updates has substantially improved on its own. Cool.

The only real problem I have now is that I need to have my phone in range of the watch for the watch to get updated BG readings, since the watch is apparently not connecting to the dexcom transmitter directly. I thought that was the sole advantage of the Sony smartwatch versus other watches, but it isn’t working for me yet. The “enable collector” option is set in Xdrip Prefs. Clearly the watch is Bluetooth connected to the phone since I am getting updates from the phone, and I see the watch and transmitter both Bluetooth connected in the phone’s Bluetooth devices. But I don’t see the phone or transmitter in my watch’s Bluetooth devices. That seems wrong, but I don’t know how to fix it, other than do a full reset and reinstall of the watch. Do you have a clue what else I should look for?

Shouldn’t the SW not have to read the data or be connected at all to the phone since it’s a stand alone collector?

@jag1 No, the watch will in no way connect to the phone to send xDrip+ Readings except via Bluetooth. The watch has no data connection. That is why the phone and watch need to be in proximity of one another for a couple times per day.

You should see a Dexcom transmitter Bluetooth connection on the watch. It will be the serial # of the transmitter. Otherwise the system seems to be working as designed.