I have a few questions about xDrip. I am wondering if anyone can point me to a technical guide for it. Like how it is built, setup, etc.
Also, I understand it lets you bypass the 3 month battery restriction. Can anyone tell me the basic premise of how it works? I assume the battery sends out a flag when the time is up, and that prevents the receiver from starting any more sessions. And I am guessing that the xDrip setup just ignores that flag and keeps churning away. Is that right?
Also, how come it only runs on Android? Why can’t you just use an Apple developer account and compile the code and put it on an iPhone?
Anyway, any references would be appreciated. Thanks!
And yes, it just ignores the date and works until the battery dies. I kind of think the date issue is in the receiver portion, not the transmitter. I think the transmitter just sends the date, irregardless.
I see they have the code on the site. That’s what is confusing. It seems like someone could just take the code and port that over to make it compatible with iPhones. And then just use a developer account and run it on your iPhone for a year, like you can do with Loop.
It is all open source. No nothing is hidden.
Not sure how much works on the apple platform, but the code/information is all there for everyone to see. Notes and all.
The thing about the iPhone is that you can’t install anything unless it is approved by Apple or you find a way to install non-approved apps. xDrip+ on Android is (last time I installed it) non-approved and has to be installed manually. Spike requires you to be an Apple developer; this is how it gets round the restrictions.
I got the impression that the 100 day limit was, like the sensor 10 day limit, pretty much a war of attrition between the xDrip+ developers and Dexcom. So there are ways that change with time round the timeout in both cases. The transmitter timeout was, apparently, stopped by Dexcom revs; the transmitter obviously knows when it was activated so it is possible for it to do a hard timeout, but it doesn’t seem that Dexcom did that originally. I’m not up-to-date enough to know if the latest transmitters have a hard timeout.
The transmitter does emit load and no-load battery voltages, so that could be used to deduce if the transmitter is running out of juice, but my experience was that those numbers don’t reflect how long the transmitter has been active. So I suspect that some transmitters, like some cars, will just keep on chugging along and others will fail in the first 3 months.
The receiver also knows the elapsed active time; no flag is necessary. The only issue is if the transmitter simply shuts down after, either, a number of active days or a too-low load or no-load voltage. I doubt the latter because the G6 regularly drops out.
Current android xdrip can get up to 110 days, but G4/5 could go on much longer than their 180 day limit.
Some i have stopped and use new transmitter, if I’m starting a new sensor anyway. The extra 20 days to 110 gives a good cushion between 90 day orders. If you stock up, then battery may slowly drain while dormant.
The sensors are much higher cost for me, so I’m happier with sensor restarts more than a 2 weeks of transmitter that may die after 90 days just due to battery loss.
Good luck trying it on iPhone. If it was easy as you say, someone else would have it. Spike was IOS, but not sure if still valid.