Strange Loop/Pod/Bluetooth(?) issue

Type 1 & LADA
1

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?

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2

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.

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