On a new site insertion, does anyone know if a sensor will ever recover after giving immediate ??? after two hour start up? This happened at 3AM last night with my two year old - we already had one sensor failure around midnight and had to insert a new sensor, and then the new sensor showed ??? after the two hour start up. I really, really, really didn't want to wake him up again and put another new one on. I toyed with going through another two hour start up time to see if it would come back and we were all so tired, but decided it probably wouldn't work and did another site insertion. Just wondering if anyone has had this experience on a new site insertion, and what happened.
Yes. I see it often, particularly when Caleb is asleep when it starts. It has always come back for us.
Happens to me, frequently (and I'm a lot older than your son).
I usually try to give it several more hours. Sometimes it works and sometimes I give up and insert a new one. It's frustrating.
It's hard to be patient, though...
How long does it take yours to come back in this situation? I gave it a half hour and gave up. Usually I wait about three hours, but was uncertain because it was a brand new site i.e. I thought a new site that immediately came up ??? might be hopeless.
Good to know - I will try and wait next time. Diabetes does force us to be more patient people.
Very true!
I have seen all this nonsense and I decided to agressively checkout.
When I am in low RF interferor environment, it rarely happens - if ever. In a high noise environment it happens far too often.
I used to think sensor bad - not so.
Typically, I would pur receiver in fridge to force disconnect or in trunk of car - or wrap with aluminum foil temporarily.
I would leave environment in when problem occurred and watch in 1/2 hour or less receiver would link back up to MY transmitter and I would see in the quiet environment, system would perform well/correct with proper readings and/or I could easily do 2 hour calibration in quiet environment without interference and system would start up correctly.
One sequence of events I would see while operating, the receiver display line would start falling fast for no apparent reason ( fingerprick - static on trend) , then when I walked outside, I would see my receiver disconnect and when it reconnected, the dreaded ??? would appear because the receiver had been fooled into thinking there had been an excessive value change - bad sensor.
Strangely, if I caught at beginning of cycle before it had dropped too far and walked outside fast in quiet space, correct readings would show up and system continued working fine.
Many times afte this curious exercise and getting back up, I would find nothing wrong with sensor/receiver pair and worked just fine.
As for what is happening, I do not know.
One aspect of this is that receiver/sensor pair always work in car and out with the jack rabbits in Mohave wild open space.
All my trouble is in my condo and in my trailor in big pine which is extremely disconcerting.
Is someone hacking me - dunno. How many back door interfaces are on this technology - dunno. Is there also a blue tooth 11/52 meg capability left on.
One issue is that interfering RF can cause excessive interrupts in tiny micro.
Micro overflows stack, looses data and reloads incorrect sensor data after interrupt causing false ??? error indication.
So far I have successfully stopping this nonsense by causing disconnect on receiver and move to quiet RF environment or in car and repeatedly watch system recover and put out rational in spec readings.
Notwith standing my above comments, lately I have watched excusrsions on my receiver/sensor pair that completely violated my normal patterns, speed of body chemical process, fingerprick readings during offending behavior as though I was watching a movie being played out on my receiver as somehow my trasmitter was being overridden. This only ever occurred in my condo/trailor system.
In the end ,my data has been specific and clear that in quiet RF environment without any other interferors, the system has been working properly and saving me grief making my life better.
In my condo and trailor, this product has taken over my life watching and checking bizarre behaviour that should not be happening and validating with extra fingerprick readings.!
Some simple advice from actual traping of cell phone causing ??? on dexcom.
I had case where I had my solid state rf field meter had signal trap running in my trailor that snapped my cell phone ( on but not calling)
attempting to reach cell tower and immediatly caused dexcom to flag ??? while doing the thwo hour initialization.
I left trailor for quiet zone sans cell phone and re ran 2 hours without incident.
My guess is that keep cell phones away and turned off - stuffed in fridge during this initialization process to reduce opportunity for (false) ??? error traping on dexcom. Even though not on call, cell phone sits there interrogating possible cell sites or talking to them while turned on.
I too am way older than Jack, but I find that my Dex and I do so much better if I insert and wait between 4 to 6 hours (like overnight) before starting a new sensor. I tend to have the ??? otherwise - either the Dex will not allow me to enter start up sugars at the 2 hour time frame or I get ??? within the first few hours of use the first day. I also tend to think that if my sugars are rapidly changing when the Dex is getting close to or has ask for the start up sugars, then I tend to get a ??? instead of trending arrows. So I almost always now insert at bedtime and start sensor in the morning - new sensors only. The second week restarts I just hit go and wait for the blood sugar prompt.
Yes, we have gotten a lot of ??? in the first 12-24 hours after a new site insertion. However, it's usually when he's down for a nap or at night - he sleeps 15 hours a day - and we have to put his sensor on the other side of a wall or above his room so we can read it without having to go into his room constantly. Of course the data gets a little muddled going through walls and ceilings / floors which was why I always assumed we got the ???. I can not WAIT until the new Dexcom gets here that can go 30 feet!
However, it's very reassuring to know that if I get ??? on startup I should just wait and it will probably come online. And I can go back to sleep.
We go in there so much as it is he's starting to yell at us in his sleep "Dark! Night Night! No beep beep (he's on an omnipod which beeps for boluses). What are you doing in heeeeeere ....." all without waking up.
I am unhappy with the aspects of the ???. I believe that was originally there to catch readings out of range or defective - ie interstitial tissue issues. That is partly true. I suspect and agree.
It also seems to catche some very suspicious other goofy values having nothing to do with sensor readings and more to do with excessive interrupts and improperly controlled and carefully scheduled machine operation that prevents stack overflow and erroneous data sneaking into the process.
One of the classic ways to shut down an old DEC computer was to put excessive interrupts on the interrupt line from an open serial io line feeding a serial line input line and watch the vax brought to its knees with excessive interrupts.
Oh that's to cute! I am sure it has got to be a way bigger struggle dealing with the little guys and being diabetic. Back in my early days of being diabetic I remember my mom sitting beside my bed spoon feeding me sugar and trying to get me to drink some OJ, "guessing" (no pumps, cgms, or finger sticks back then!) I was low because I was soaking wet with sweat but not running a fever. It's got to be somewhat easier with the Dex when the Dex cooperates! Maybe we need to get Dex to make a unit that shown numbers all the time so parents can set up a "Dex-cam" and be able to view the Dex without needing to go into the childs room and punch buttons! (i'd like to be able to plug my i-pod into my dex at night to wake me up with alerts since I sleep through the alarms!) Good luck with figuring out what works best for Jack and his Dex.
VAX. Wow, that took me back. I am a software engineer by trade.
I know I am super lucky to have a CGM. My husband (who works in wireless technologies) and I talk all the time how we would love to have the Dex talk to our phones - or any remote device for that matter. But no we have useless info transmitted - where did you go for dinner? - but not for medical stuff. We always keep hoping for the "Steve Jobs" of diabetes.
People I know complain about the Dex, but I always say SOME information is better than NO information.
Yes I know - my age is showing.
Got to see old IBM tube computer in Santa Barbara - 1969. Worked on GE 245 - all discrete transistors, diodes etc. As well as early PDP 8, 11, 12, 15 et all. IBm 7040, 1620 411 tabulating machines.
From steam engines to lap top high performance computers and trick advanced cpu chips with branch target cache's, multi pipleline, multi word, multi execution internal units - super scaler operation.
Apologies for walking good folks up.
Aha, a light bulb has just gone on above my head. I had my cell in the same little bag as my receiver last week - this seemed like a wonderfully efficient development given the increasing number of fiddly high-tech toys I have to carry around - but I kept getting ???. So I took the cell out and put it back in my purse, and the ??? went away. Hadn't thought about it since, but hey, thank you so much for the insight.
Thank you Jim for all your good info on the ???. I just finished my first box of sensors and have had it with dexcom from all the ??? readings. I do insert at night, and wait until morning to start the sensor, but usually within the first few days i get the ??? and stays for hours and hours. My last sensor did ??? all day yesterday and then 'sensor failed' this morning.
Imust admit, I'm not aware of where my cell phone was and how much RF is in the house, but will from now on, do you fridge trick and sit outside and hope that it will recalibrate and start working correctly.
These sensors are expensive so it's quite annoying having them disrupt this easily.
Thank you for comments.
For reasons that escape me; I found it was wise to force disconnect on receiver - put in fridge or cover alumin foil. I would then move to a different environment, and I would see after about 1/2 hour, the ??? would drop and then unit would read a value that matched caveman machine ( +/- 10 points) indicating that sensor was in order. I have done this about 5 times.
Somehow the receiver gets latched up and hangs onto bad values longer than it should and disconnecting link as indicated seems to free things up.
Originally, I used to think ??? was a sign of bad sensors. Today; I am not sure.
Dexcom's advise is one should wait to see if it clears. My experience says about 1/2 hour in quiet RF environment after link dropped/recovered in clean RF environment clears ???.
So far I only have had one sensor recently that really was not working well after stopping and starting. There was no sensor error message while resetting on 2 hours. There was no ??? during initialization. AFter up and running, it struck me sensor was off, so I replaced it and found issues under the sensor platform where I had bled a little and fluids drifted under the transmitter contacts.
I am unclear but the steps I mention so far have got sensors drop ??? after 1/2 hour. For some reason, my impression is that once linked receiver declares the ???; it gets latched on hard unless link dropped and then linked back up in an environment sans no RF Traffic. And in fact it will hang for hours otherwise.
somehow, in noisey rf environment keeps the ??? test period extended - hours?
The only other solid data is that my unit works great in my car, out with jack rabbits in mohave and sage brush and around vacant lots , open fields etc. ( and out of line of site of Point Hueneme Military base and airfield.
some more data and ideas on dexcom and wireless link.
1. if you live in freestanding newer home that has aluminum barrier material
on outside structure, cross interferene in home usually - but not all of grief may be greatly reduced. Usually windows that let visible light in also let in all rf in from the neighbourhood. Condos/apartments and older wood structures, the wood is like glass on the windows allowing all rf signals in.
2. closely spaced townhouses/condos/apartments are serious grief time as there really should be at minimum - aluminum barrier sheets between units. Otherwise while thw walls provide appearance of privacy and from networking/rf/rf polution; one is living in glass house. Burglar alarms, wireless routers, baby alarms, wireless cameras, wi/fi-bluetooth and assorted other neat toys all fight and polute the communal living space.
3. trying to seal off this crap after the fact is like relining space lab with the trick aluminized 3/16 thick mylar film insulation. Reduces heat and rf.
4. Dexcom's unit as I understand it, implements a unlicenced low power rf link with an extremely high gain receiver that is even to me very sensitive to any level of signal sneaking around that can easily override the sensor transmitter pair. that probably explains why in super quiet environments, the system works great unhinered while in communal rf swamps, the link is struggling to overcome all the interference. I really believe that more security and error analsys as well as a user created password one can enter when having trouble just like in a house to keep the pests out, changing the locks with ones own new key helps ensure security. on any system where security is critical for safety and security, changing the password/locks is key critical. Using the transmitter serial number only does not seem to be optimal to me.
5. one off the tricks, I use; is to make a aluminized mylar plastin insulation about a foot long enough and sufficient diameter to slip over my arm and enclose the dexcom receiver/near transmitter pair to help exclude the interlopers. Sometimes that helps as a test. othertimes the strength of the interferor will still overcome. As previously indicated whatch where your cell phones are shut-powered down at critcal times.
6. like cell phones this product from my experience suffers from all the same issues as hot and dead zones where for dexcom, you really want to operate in dead zones - opposite to cell phones.
good luck and happy hunting.
Good luck. problem I see is that extra RF floating around while decom has ??? turned on will keep the ??? turned on. Sometimes I hop in car and go down street to open lot ( away from stores -business's) and I will see it repeatedly drop the ??? after 30 to 45 minutes and go back reading. The inital reading after a ??? has in my mind tracked actual body value and good correlation to fingerprick.
ie while Dexcom receiver stalled out displaying ???, transmitter has been clicking along ok. In past I mistakenly assume trhat ??? is bad sensor and replaced. Not the case. Lately, they all were good after recovering where one sensor was sloppy ( not failing) and I replaced it.
As in quiet environment, unit recovers in reasonable time and I remember that Dexcom field service response is just wait and it should recover. Yes in a quiet rf environment and no cell phone transmit punches.
From your comments I suspect you have a lot of Higher energy RF polution sneaking around in your home environment.
Watching how fast the Dexcom receiver relinks after disconnection is clear indication how quiet your rf environment is.
Many times , I find it relinks quickly standing behind my condo front doors I checked that they have metal cores and no measureable leakage on RF smog meter. Elsewhere it can take minutes - 5 to 10 to relink as receiver struggles to relink.
Another sign is when you are sitting peacefully with receiver within 2 feet and linked up, and it suddenly delinks, that in my mind is clear example of a higher power RF blast that just walked thru your air space.
I also meant to point out that these new remote reading power meters really punch out some racket. Some operate on 800 MHZ region and some others operate on 400 Megahertz region. There not supposed to interfere but the chatter out there says something else.