Help starting out on Loop

[Michel]

@Sam

Please don’t ban me

I won’t ban you as long as you agree to post the ebay links with good Loop pump deals you find.

@Thomas, I am trying to contact the seller for that 715, thank you!

[Eric]

@Michel

And, if I need to, I will buy a 4-year reserve of pods for his college years if that’s what I need to do. It would be worth it to possibly save his life and my sanity while he is in college.

But it’s not like medtronic, where infusion sets have a practically infinite shelf-life. The batteries in the pods will not last forever. 4 years is about $12,000, and there is no guarantee how long they would last.

In reality, this isn’t really a sustainable plan.

[Thomas]

There should be a plethora of closed loop systems commercially available within the next 2 to 3 years.

Whether you like any of them or prefer to run your own system will be the question.

[Thomas]

My college plans are the Tandem closed loop system.

I will be one very mad unfamiliar vaguely marsupial creature if the Tandem system is not acceptable.

[amymc]

and i will have an answer for anything that does

[Michel]

@amymc

i will have an answer

I hope it will be a good one

[Michel]

@Thomas

My college plans are the Tandem closed loop system.

Mine, right now, are the hoped-for official Omnipod closed loop. But the 670g has been such a bust that I am not ready to trust anybody’s closed loop plans.

One issue, of course, is how FDA requirements will impact their flexibility. It is not impossible that any system will have similar problems to the 670g, and make them unusable by #unlimiteds.

So I think that looking into Loop is a good option anyway! The other issue, as you mentioned, is that there will likely be many good opensource options. In 5 years, looking back, we may decide that the opensource options always were the best option. There are so right now.

[Aaron]

@Michel - If you want to ease into this whole looping thing with an Omnipod, why not tryout AndroidAPS and “open Loop” or as I would call it - “basal suggestions”.

It just needs an Android Phone running two apps - AndroidAPS and xdrip+ - no fancy hardware required except a watch is helpful.

Some guy wrote about it on this website here…

AndroidAPS and Open Looping on an Omnipod

So anyways… There had been a bit of chatter on FU about how a few of us want a pump that calculates IOB based on both bolus and basal insulin. I use xdrip+ to capture my CGM data and I use Nightscout for reporting (I use a Dexcom G5 transmitter, a Sony SW3 watch as the collector, and a Samsung Galaxy S5 phone). xdrip+ does a great job of tracking IOB for boluses and doing BG predictions based on carbs on board; however, it does not take into account either temporary basals or extended bolus - …

I talked to him today and he still uses it - His 7-day average is 104 (5.8) with a 27 (1.5) standard deviation. His trick is to always use a slightly higher basal rate then needed and have AndroidAPS set temp low basals.

[Thomas]

@Aaron

His trick is to always use a slightly higher basal rate then needed and have AndroidAPS set temp low basals.

I was wondering if we might be able to do that with the Tandem PLGS when it is released. I guess it all depends on the algorithm.

[Aaron]

I like that line of thinking… use PLGS to “tune” your basal needs.

It is funny but basal insulin is one of those things where 1 + 1 does not equal 2 for me. Here is an example from the last week or so.

I was running a basal rate slightly higher than needed (too lazy to change really) and then do temporary suspends (0 U/hr for about 1/2 hour) when I was seeing a slow drop. Overall I was getting a very nice CGM line. In total I was “removing” 0.4 units of basal insulin over 1/2 hr from a basal program that was 4 hours long.

I got less lazy and thought - maybe I should cut my insulin by 0.05 U/hr for say 4 hours to eliminate the slow drop so I do not need to do a temporary 0 U/hr thing. That would be 0.2 U of missed basal over 4 hours. When I did this I got a steady climb in BG which I eventually needed to give like a full 1.0 unit to correct. (I tried this for a few days).

So in this example over 4 hours (compared to my “normal basal rate”):
Case 1 - Total insulin is 0.4 U less than the original basal and everything is ok.
Case 2 - Total insulin is 0.2 U less than the original basal but then I need to give +1 unit extra correction so I need 0.8 extra insulin in total.

Weird but true.

[bkh]

@Thomas

unfamiliar vaguely marsupial creature

That turn of phrase is never going away, is it.

@Michel

In 5 years, looking back, we may decide that the opensource options always were the best option. There are so right now.

Modulo the need to use fossil pumps. I would love to see the pump companies implement open protocols for secure radio-controlled insulin dosing commands, but I doubt they would do it because that would tend to undercut their own artificial pancreas business. And I don’t know whether the US FDA would allow it. (We’ll have to see whether the US ever gets the SOOIL pump from Korea that has an open remote-control interface.)

[jroth]

In the German ebay there are still 2 or 3 veo starting at 350 Euro.

That was my start to my loop using explorer board and intel edison.

Try to search worldwide for a veo and you will find a not so expensive one.