Temperature monitor for insulin storage

That would be the first thing an Australian would notice! :smile:

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The company makes a companion item that will push the Bluetooth data through your WiFi. I don’t know what the cost is though

I’m wishing I had one of these at the moment!

I had a bad experience at a conference over the weekend (one of the rare times I asked for accommodations because the conference organizers insisted, but something got messed up with my information about dietary restrictions so I had not one but two mild allergic reactions). I’m headed off to another conference and packing food for the entire four-day trip, including pre-cooked chicken. It’s only a two-hour flight, so I’m not too worried. I’m putting the chicken and other cold foods in a Pack It bag with additional ice. I’m fairly certain it’ll stay at refrigerator temperature, but it sure would be nice to be able to stick a MedAngel thing in there and get a record of its actual temperature throughout travel!

MedAngel records temperatures 24/7 even when out of range of the phone, right?

I’ll probably go buy one for this purpose.

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It records them but you can’t see them until you return to BlueTooth range. It then backfills up to one week of data. I think travel would be an excellent use of this technology.

What it doesn’t do is hook up to wi-fi and send you the temperatures remotely. It is a great temperature witness.

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Sounds perfect for my needs! All I’d want is to look back at the temperature range when putting food in the hotel fridge to make sure my chicken hasn’t sat at room temperautre for hours. And it would probably be good to monitor my chicken in the hotel fridge, too.

I think it would be useful in longer-term power outages to monitor the insulin temperatures without opening the fridge door.

You can scroll this timeline backwards to access history.

Ha, that looks so much like a CGM graph! If only my CGM graph was so perfect! :wink:

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Darn. I ordered the MedAngel One last week. I’m leaving on a short trip tomorrow, but it involves a four-and-a-half hour flight each way, so it would be nice to be able to monitor the food I’m planning on packing (which will include cooked chicken, riced cauliflower, veggies, dip, berries, and coconut yogurt as well as other food that doesn’t require temperature control).

The package arrived today while I was at work, but since I wasn’t home it got sent to the post office and won’t be available for pickup until tomorrow at 1:00 PM. My flight is at 2:00 PM, so that’s not happening.

I’ll likely pick it up on Sunday or Monday, but I’m not sure when I’ll be taking my next trip to be able to try it out!

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Well, at least you’ll now have it. It sounds like you intend to keep up with carrying your own food for trips in the future.

Is the minimum untethered plan still working for you?

Yes, I definitely plan to keep this up for the foreseeable future. It’s impossbile to find food that’s low-carb and also free of dairy, egg, soy, wheat, potato, tomato, banana, and “mystery” ingredients like “natural flavours” or “food starch” while travelling (or even in general!). And eating out at restaurants is hit or miss—I’ve found I have about a 25-50% chance of having a mild reaction to something. So it’s just easier to bring my own food. I have a small Hot Logic Mini “oven” that I can use in the hotel to warm food up, and I carry food in a small Pack-It cooler for travel.

When the weather is warm or cold, prior to my insulin pump, I’d put my pens in an insulated cooler (lunchbox size) and used a refrigerator thermometer inside with the pens; it works like a charm. I even put it inside the hotel refrigerators. One time I had put insulin (a vial to fill my pods) in the hotel fridge, when I wasn’t using the refrigerator thermometer, and it froze. Now, I put the thermometer in the fridge for a few hours before I put my insulin there. I’m going to look at the link you posted about the Med Angel. I have the frio I bought a few years back; they work nicely, but you can’t put them (the frio) in anything that isn’t open to the air (for continuous circulation), so I have to consider that when I want to use it.

It’s AMAZING! I downloaded my Dexcom data this evening and literally almost cried! It’s so good, so stable. I feel like I’ve created an artificial honeymoon period. It’s still a lot of work (micro-dosing and micro-carbing), but I’ve never been so stable for so many days in a row before. I’m going to wait until Sunday to download a week’s worth of data, and I can post it in the Flatliner’s group for anyone interested.

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I’m still trying to wrap my head around the need for precision temperature measuring in the refrigerator. First, if you open the door, the air temperature will fluctuate considerably (probably more so, if there is a teen age son in the house, who feels the need to inventory the whole refrigerator with the door open!) But your food and medications will show almost no temperature fluctuations because they have thermal mass and don’t change quickly.

Different parts of the refrigerator may vary in temperature by design, but I believe temperature will be relatively constant at each location.

If I wanted to inventory temperature throughout a refrigerator, I would put some small bottles or vials in each location. After an extended storage time, I would take a digital meat thermometer and measure water temperature in each bottle.

Since a digital meat thermometer is essential to safe (and tasty) cooking, there would be no added expense for that.

I agree. I don’t intend to use mine at home except maybe if the power goes out (which has happened for two to three days several times). But it’ll come in handy when travelling for hours with food in a cooler in checked luggage to make sure cooked meat and other food in the cooler stays cold during the journey and doesnt get frozen in dodgy hotel fridges (I don’t put medication in those). Also when travelling to hot areas where I’ve used a Frio in the past to keep insulin, glucagon, and epinephrine below 25-30 degrees.

Not absolutely necessary for these things, perhaps, but will be a nice tool in my toolkit. It sucks when you have food allergies and half the safe meals you brought get frozen and ruined! (And for me I can’t see the thermostat on the fridge, so this will be handy in that regard as well.)

So I, for one, am glad this product exists.

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I just received the MedAngel One. Almost broke it immediately by trying to get the battery cap off with a coin (which it looks like you’re supposed to since there’s a coin slot?). Crumpled some of the plastic and then eventually just popped it off with my fingernail. I’m not sure if maybe I used the wrong coin or maybe you’re just supposed to pop it off to begin with. It seems to have come with no instructions at all that I could find, so I don’t know, but am not too impressed that me twisting a coin could crumple plastic so easily.

Anyway, it’s set up and appears to be working, although it’s reading temperature as 2°C warmer than the thermometer I have sitting in this room. The app is gladly mostly accessible, except for the setup video that has no talking whatsoever. If you can’t see this video, it’s just silence:

I’ll e-mail them about the video and the few inaccessible parts of their app.

I’m slightly disappointed to find that I needed to create an account to use the product. I don’t understand the purpose of the account other than for the company to send junk mail to my inbox. It also wants my phone to use location services, which I also don’t understand (it says it makes the sensor more accurate somehow). I’ll definitely only be using this app when I travel.

Another helpful use for this technology: shopping when you can’t drive and want to hit multiple stops along a bus route in 26°C weather and make sure your raw chicken stays safe during your hour+ errand.

Cooler with ice inside this (highly recommended if you can’t drive) grocery cart. Cold food inside the cooler, room temperature food outside. Waiting for the bus to go to another grocery store.
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Current weather.
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Raw chicken is safe.

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Sounds like dry ice might be a good option, Jen. Once in a while I could use some, but don’t have a clue where to buy it. When I was a kid, we used to get it for picnics.

Dry ice freaks me out because I can’t touch it. Any time I handle it I’m perpetually nervous that I’ll touch it accidentally and hurt myself. Wish shopping, dragging my cart everywhere, getting on and off the bus, taking things in and out, I’d be really nervous of accidentally touching or spilling dry ice.

I have various coolers and ice packs that I use for different things. This cooler and the ice in it I use for shopping trips, because it doesn’t usually keep things cool for longer than an hour or two. I have a Pack-It cooler that has ice built into the sides and is much more effective. It keeps things cool for more than ten hours.

My experience with the MedAngel temperature sensors has been uneventful until yesterday. I was online at my computer desk and my phone notified me with a beep and a text message. It warned me that my Apidra insulin was “cool” at 36 degrees F. My refrigerator is set to 39 degrees F, so this is lower than normal and only 4 degrees from freezing.

When I went to inspect my fridge, I noticed that my freezer compartment door was slightly ajar. That apparently caused my refrigerator system to try and keep the freezer compartment below freezing and also affected my refrigerator compartment temperature, too.

MedAngel earned its keep yesterday. This reminds me that I need to put “check refrigerator doors” on my checklist when I pack to travel.

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I’m going to have to check into this! I do use a thermometer inside my refrigerator, but I like the fact it will alert you if it changes from what it is supposed to be!