Issue with uploading data from the PDM to a computer

Diabetes Technology Insulin Pumps
1
Hi All,
I posted this in the general Insulin Pump forum, & only then found out about the OmniPod Users group -- this is probably a better place to ask...

(I'm new here, & will get around to writing an intro soon hopefully...)

I started a 1-month evaluation of the OmniPod a few days ago (I'm a T1, and have been on a pump for 8 years). I really like it so far, esp. having all the data (insulin, BG values, carbs) together in one place, but a crucial point for me is being able to upload
the pump data to a computer. This is supposed to be simple with the OmniPod, but haven't managed to do it so far.

I'm using the CoPilot software with the OmniPod plug-in, on WinXP. The CoPilot software itself installs & works fine in terms of displaying graphs, reports etc., and I can also upload data to it from my older FreeStyle meter with serial cable with no problem.
However, every time I try uploading from the OmniPod PDM, I get a "data read error" from the CoPilot software, and on one occasion, I got a "PDM error" on the PDM, necessitating a hard reset & ruining the current Pod in use.

I've tried this on our two computers at home (we're a Mac household, so I did this using WinXP Pro running under Apple's Boot Camp, which should work according to posts I've seen on TuDiabetes & elsewhere) -- no dice.

I also tried a real PC -- a Dell laptop -- running WinXP Pro with the same result. Interestingly, uploading the PDM's settings (the "PDM Settings Report" button in the CoPilot software) works fine in all these configs.

After spending several days on this using many permutations (changing USB ports, changing cables (which all work with other devices), upgrading WinXP from SP2 to SP3, uninstalling & reinstalling the software many times), I'm all out of things to try.

I'm in Israel; OmniPods have been sold here for the past couple of years, but the local OmniPod distributor isn't very knowledgable about the software. They say they've never had any issue like what I'm encountering.
They did try uploading data from my PDM onto a computer in their office, and it worked fine, from which they conclude the specific PDM I have isn't faulty;
the only other suggestion they had is to download a USB cable driver they provide on their site. Otherwise the SW they provide on the Israeli site is the same as what's on the Insulet US site. It's not clear to me why such a driver for the cable would be needed in the first place (the Pod appears to the system as a simple USB Mass Storage device like a USB flash drive), but I retried all the above permutations with this driver installed & still no luck.

Anyone encounter such a problem & managed to solve it? Any ideas about anything else I should try?

I'd really like to get this working, either on a Mac running Windows or a PC -- if need be, I'll consider getting a cheap PC just for this.

~~~MountainDolphin
2

I tried running the software on two computers with Windows Vista and never had any luck. I finally got it working with Windows 7 and the new PDM. I know the old PDM is supposed to be compatible with Windows XP – which PDM do you have? (It’s old if it’s a black and white display, and new if it’s a color display.) I don’t think it’ll run on a Mac OS at all. Can you call the 800 support number? If not, why don’t you try emailing Insulet directly? There’s a link to email them at myomnipod.com.

Once you get it running, the software’s pretty cool. You can generate all kinds of different reports.

3

Serena,
Thanks.
I have the new, color, PDM (a.k.a. UST200).
True, the software doesn’t run on Mac OS X directly, but a couple of folks here & elsewhere have both reported success using Apple’s Boot Camp (essentially, it allows installing Windows as a native OS on the Mac) and that Insulet reps told them this should work.
Anyway, I’m fine with getting it running on a standard PC.

Since this looks like some very specific PC-SW problem, I don’t expect Insulet’s support people to be able to help – I’m hoping someone here with a tech background had encountered the issue and managed to diagnose & resolve it.

4

I had a problem at first. I called tech support. They said there were two downloads required to read the omni system and they had to be downloaded in the correct order otherwise it wouldn’t read the meter and I would get read meter error. Of course, now I can’t remember the order but their tech support should be able to tell you. I am on Win7, was on Vista before this. It does fine now.

5

I have a Windows laptop with Windows XP and my software works fine. If you’ve first installed CoPilot, then installed the Omnipod add-on then it should be ready to go. I have a couple of questions.

  1. When you plug the PDM in via USB port does the PDM screen show the “preparing data” (or something similar) message?
  2. Once the PDM is ready a file (that I’ve never actually figured out how to use) should appear on your screen, have you seen this?
  3. In CoPilot, how are you asking it to read the PDM? The default settings will not let you just click on the “Read Device” button and get the info from your PDM, you can change these setting or use the file menus to tell it to read the PDM.

The fact that you’re getting the PDM settings report makes me feel like you’ve got all of that right so far, but those are the only problems I had when trying to get it to work. I hope you can figure it out!

6

Yes, I downloaded both in the correct order (the CoPilot SW from Abbott’s site, and then the OmniPod plug-in from Insulet’s).

7
  1. Yes, the PDM always appears to recognizes it’s connected. I get the “preparing data” for a few seconds, and then the “Ready” message, like the instructions say I should.
  2. Yes, I always get the .IBF extension file show up, just like I’ve seen described on the Web by several people (including here).I can read the file via Notepad, and although it’s in some binary format, I can recognize a few strings like “OmniPod”, “Insulet” etc.
  3. I’ve tried both reading it via the OmniPod specific menu command, as well as assigning the “Read Device” button to the OmniPod and then usingthe button. The instructions say both should work, but neither do for me, and I get the same error message.

Yes, since I can read the Settings Report, it does seem like everything is behaving as it should, but I still can’t read the data – really frustrating.

Thanks! People, keep the suggestions coming…

8

When you upload, do you get a pop up window telling you what was read? The next time I upload, I will double check what mine says.

When you run reports and get no output, try clicking the Report Configuration button (to the right of the date range) and make certain that your preferences aren’t excluding everything. On my Logbook Report, every check box is selected.

9

The popup I get is an error message saying
"An unexpected error ocurred while reading data from the OmniPod PDM. Please attempt to read data from the OmniPod PDM again, or call Customer Care for assistance (code 2). Cannot read data from device", and when I click the OK button, a 2nd one saying “An error occurred while reading data”.

That is, I never get to the later popup which has the reading progress bar, and no data are actually read. If I connect a standard FreeStyle meter (I have one with a serial cable, which I use with a USB-serial converter), I do get the progress bar and data is read in with no problems.

Therefore, it’s not an issue with the report configuration; the prefs are the default, for virtually all data to be shown, and both when I tried entering various records (carbs, insulin, BG values) manually and after importing from the FreeStyle meter, I can see all the tables/charts/graphs properly.

10

OK, an update:
My PDM was replaced yesterday due to an unrelated issue (BG meter conked out); I was also told that the date format the OS is set is critical, as well as the primary OS language ,which needs to be US English (although the CoPilot SW version saystates it’s International).
The Windows machine date has to be set to display the US-type MM-DD-YY format rather than the DD-MM-YY format we use here.

I then recalled it indeed used to be an issue almost 10 years ago, in the original TheraSense FreeStyle software before Abbot bought them out, although it only caused log printouts to look odd – there was no issue reading the data.

Anyway, I don’t know whether that did it, or the physical change of PDM, but reading the PDM data works now, with no issues or error messages (I didn’t reinstall the SW).

Thanks for all the replies… The date issue is not a biggie for me, as it’s on an OS installation I use only for the OmniPod (otherwise I’m mostly a Mac user), but I’m idly curious whether any Europeans here have gotten it to work using the Euro format.

Onto another question:

I liked the fact that the BG meter allows supports BG tags, like my old OneTouch did a while back, and even adding your own – I’ve used that extensively despite the pain of the inpu method; one of the downsides of the previous CoPilot SW was that it categorized BG values by time slots only, which doesn’t work for me at all (one of the advantages of a pump is the flexibility of mealtimes, and of course having tags for exercise, hypoglycemias etc. should make it very easy to look at those event types & analyze them).
I was really disappointed to find out that nowhere in the CoPilot SW are their options to group mealtimes by tag rather than time slot, or even to simply report BG values by tags – or any references to the tags in the SW at all.

Am I missing something here? It sounds beyond stupid to have tags if they’re not used later (at least they do show up in the XML files imported & exported by CoPilot, so the info is definitely present & maintained internally).