Wanted to get some opinions one something that happened yesterday. It was very strange.
I went to a World Cup game!
It was a huge crowd. About 70,000 people. (And I imagine, about 70,000 phones too.)
At one point I tried to take a bolus and it did not work. I tried sending confirmation beeps and it said there was an issue communicating with the pod. I even tried re-starting my phone, but it still did not work.
I wondered if I had an occlusion. It was so loud I would not have been able to hear the pod alarm!
Fortunately I had brought a very small 'betes kit with me that had syringes and a mini-vial. For an event like this, I have learned you need to have a backup plan! I took a small bolus and things were good.
When I left the stadium and got on the train, I tried a test bolus and it worked.
So my question is: With all of the people there and all of the phones, and everything going on with bluetooth on all the phones, was it just an issue with bluetooth? Has anyone else had an experience like this in a big crowd trying to use their phone for pod stuff?
It’s very difficult to answer yes or no to that without doing in-situ tests. That said it is a very likely problem in any space where there are a lot of people within a few metres.
Years ago I encountered a similar problem in SFO on more than one occasion. This was before Bluetooth LE and I believe that Bluetooth has evolved to handle interference like this much better but many more people use Bluetooth these days. (Back when I detected it SFO was an environment where a large number of travelers were using bleeding edge tech and so it wasn’t typical.)
Think how many wearable devices using Bluetooth LE a single person might have; EarPods, Meta glasses (Eyepods?), a watch and so on. With a little bit of imagination a diabetic could trivially get to seven wearables.
According to the FIFA guidelines the minimum seat size area (based on spacing) is 0.4m^2, so there will be 785 people within 10m of you; 10m is something like a standard range for a wearable.
I have had these sort of issues in concert and sporting events. It drives me nuts. But the interference is sometimes just to much and it seems to overwhelm my tech It occurs with my apple watch sometimes, but more often between my apple 16 phone and Omnipod.
That being said, it is nothing like it was when I was using series 6 and early series 7 devices.
@Eric I’ve read, but not experienced, of others having a similar experience. It appears the pod is overcome by the plethora of BT signals present in a crowd making establishing and maintaining a secure channel difficult. The key word is “appears”; I do not know that is correct, its my layman’s method of communicating. I can’t reference any large studies that confirm this interpretation. The most common approach to resolving the issue is what you did (i.e. resort to non-technical means, or separating yourself briefly from the crowd (i.e. moving a respectful distance from the group, go to an outside area, do what’s needed and return. Note: if you use that last approach, you need to be aware of how long you’ll be in the environment, what your consuming, and know how your device/pump will respond (i.e. will it resort to a basal only? For how long?). Perhaps anyone experience this should set some time of reminder on their phone/watch/what-have-you that will alert you to check your device, how its doing, and check your BG.
This has never happened to me as I have a terrible fear of crowds , but I just wanted to chime in that I have had dexcom issues with accuracy and it directly effects the insulin my OP5 delivers. If my Dex is reading over its “limit,” I can either get a delivery of too much or too little insulin based on what the Dex is telling my POD to do. I can live with the under-bolus, but the over-bolus/corrections can be quite dangerous. But these systems arent perfect…at least not yet. We can either choose to live with them or not. BUT, very wise of you, Eric, as always, having ur back-up with you!!! And I hope you were able to enjoy the game. Which game was it?