Samsung Galaxy s9, Dexcom G6, XDrip+, and too much free time

Tips, Tech & Gear
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Hey everyone, I’m new here, so hopefully this won’t seem like an insanely stupid first post!

I’m diabetic, type 1 - I have been for more than half my life now. In the interests of saving money and better diabetes management, I’ve been experimenting with XDrip+… and have had almost zero success.

Everything below is working with a Samsung Galaxy S9, the dexcom G6 sensor, and whatever build I snagged off of github about a month ago. Please note: I’m somewhat of a luddite - I’m not on Facebook, I can’t program whatever ‘apks’ are, and technology is equal parts friend and foe.

So! My first attempt at XDrip+ was during jury duty (bleagh), and I tried to run the dexcom app at the same time as XDrip+. Dexcom app ran just fine! XDrip+ connected sporadically for about a day, then never reconnected.

Alright, time to research. Apparently running both at the same time causes failures. Okay, cool - uninstall the dexcom app at the end of that session so that only XDrip+ is running and try again!

Start sensor? Great! 2 hour warmup: about 15 minutes in it tells me that it won’t work because something about the time sync is out. Well,the countdown timer is still running, so I’ll roll with it.

Countdown timer finishes! 2 calibrations required! …alright, I used to have the g4, I understand calibration, sure, let’s go.

CALIBRATION REJECTED, SENSOR STOPPED.

…wait, what? Uhm. Meter says one thing, I’m pretty sure that meter’s right. And why did you stop my sensor, app? For that matter, how do I restart it? The menu says ‘stop sensor,’ not ‘restart sensor,’ or ‘start sensor’… so… I… guess it’s time to join FUDiabetes and start asking questions?

I honestly have no idea what the hell I’m doing with any of this, but extending the life of sensors seems like a great thing, and having more customizability with the alerts also sounds wonderful. So I’m very enticed by the potentials of this all, and yet I’m very turned off by how challenging it’s been so far.

Does anybody have any suggestions or tips? Or even where the hell to actually get started with any of this? I’m a fast learner, and I can actually be pretty damn good at this kind of thing, but so far it’s just been smashing my head in to a brick wall. Suggestions are more than welcome, and hopefully somebody can point me in a direction that isn’t just turning my phone off and on and being bothered that it didn’t work!

Thank you all so much in advance,

-Matt

P.S. - I’ve read a lot of the XDrip+ topics here (lurking) - you guys seem like a very knowledgeable group, and I hope someday to fully join your ranks!

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Hey @Pastadude welcome to the fold! Glad you’re here.

You sound like you’ve really been around the corner with xDrip+. I think the best thing you can do is take a deep breath…and start over from scratch.

So first uninstall xDrip+, and then download the latest nightly version
https://github.com/NightscoutFoundation/xDrip/releases

Make sure Bluetooth, location, and Wi-Fi are turned on. Then open the app and run the Connection Wizard. If you can’t find it, long press the xDrip icon at the top of the screen and a box will appear allowing you to select it. Make sure you have your transmitter and sensor attached to your body and their serial numbers.

Remember that bluetooth needs to always be on.

After you get it started poke around the app. There is a lot there with which you can customize. XDrip+ makes the Dexcom app look like a toy. The only thing you can’t do is upload to Clarity, but there are duplicate stats. You can even run directly to a watch without the constant need for the phone, which is what I did because it wouldn’t work on the Galaxy Note 4 at the time.

If you have any problems after doing these steps let me know. If you succeed, let me know that too.

Good luck!

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Welcome @Pastadude! Really glad you posted. Yes, much of the tech isn’t as plug and play as we would like. Even though I am pretty technical, I have struggled to get things connected. Then I take a deep breath and hope it keeps working. You are now in Doc’s amazing hands, so I will step back and let the adults work.

If you feel up to it, you may want to introduce youself here:

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Alright! Step one, several deep breaths, cool, I can do that :wink:

Deleted everything. Redownloaded everything. Weirdly my phone decided to stop being connected to any networks (bizarre, but okay…), reset phones antennas (didn’t even know you could do that!), reconnected XDrip+, and so far so good!

Thanks for the tip on longpressing the xdrip logo - I had no idea those options were tucked in there at all!

I’ll have to start poking around to see what it can actually do and everything means (why are some dots purple and tiny, while some dots are blue?), but it’s looking promising so far!

Thank you guys for the support and suggestions, now I’ll be heading over to that link that was posted earlier! :wink:

-M

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Hmm… another dumb question, but is it possible to set up XDrip+ on an iphone as a follower?

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Yes, with the Share function.

Download Dexcom Share onto the iPhone and on the Android go to settings>Cloud Upload and set up Dexcom Servers.

But that’s not like being a follower in xDrip+. If you go to settings>sync settings you can learn how to have an exact copy of xDrip+ on multiple Android handsets.

Glad you got things working!

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Awesome! Now I’m up and running on two devices. Thanks so much! I feel like it’d be a great asset to have a user’s manual written up for XDrip+, but after hefting the dexcom one, I can see why that alone could be a pretty massive undertaking… but I’m very grateful to have your help in figuring this all out!

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Oh goodness. It’s that time of the year when candy is almost as prevalent as high blood sugars! Hooray!

Diabetes has been fun this past month - dealing with my insurance trying to get approved for an insulin pump has not. But that’s neither here nor there, and hopefully things will get sorted soon.

I’m loving XDrip! There’s still a LOT that I haven’t figured out - I have no idea how to tell it that I’m taking a certain amount of insulin and not have a weird green line show up at the bottom of the graph, but maybe I’m not inputting enough info (IE my current blood sugar, what time it is, etc)?

But again, none of that is really the reason why I popped in - I’m actually trying to figure out how to invite new people to follow me on Dexcom share. I’ve uninstalled the Dexcom app altogether, but I’m not sure how to use XDrip to send new follow requests? Or is it even possible? The first person I set up (who’s now my fiance!) is still getting all the data, but I’d like to be able to add more followers as well.

If anybody has any suggestions, I’d greatly appreciate it!

-M

P.S. - HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

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Congratulations!!!

I think we should promote this way to use xDrip :slight_smile:

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Hi @Pastadude Glad your trudging through the inner workings of xDrip+.

It’s easy to invite followers. Settings>>Cloud Upload>>Dexcom Share Server Upload>>Manage Followers and click the Invite Followers button. Then fill in the form and send the Invite. When they accept they will show up in your followers list.

As far as entering treatments (carbs, insulin, Bg tests) just click the medicine dropper on the right side of the screen. It will bring up an applet where you can enter anything. But you’ve pretty much figured that out, because the weird green line is your current insulin activity.

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HAH! I actually had NO IDEA why the green line wasn’t starting at where my blood sugar was at that moment - but in one simple sentence it’s now perfectly clear, brilliant! (No sarcasm there, seriously, thank you!)

As for the followers, I’ll have to give it a shot immediately!

-M

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