The Dash sucks. I know you all have said this a million times.
I’m walking around with a nightmarish amount of tech. My purse weighs 70 lbs. A lot of that is medical waste, but there are too many devices. It needs to be consolidated.
Should I upgrade to Omnipod 5 and keep dash as a backup?
This dash is not robust enough to last. It’s super brittle and could break at any time. Will I like the 5 better? Integrated with a cell phone?
An internet friend said the Dash controller is actually lighter than the 5. Frankly I don’t think you would save too much by changing.
If you are having a lot of problems with the Dash, the Omnipod 5 is probably not for you. The biggest concerns with Omnipod are with the catheter insertion trauma, the size of the cannula, and with tunnelling. These problems are the same with Omnipod 5. I use the Dash with Loop, and thankfully don’t encounter these problems. I’m lucky that I don’t need to carry anything extra as I can always go home or stop at a pharmacy(I’m in Canada)
I have been using Dash and a diy hybrid closed loop algorithm called Trio. I built it on my pc and used Apple TestFlight app to get it on my iphone. So now I only carry my phone and it functions as my controller and allows me to start and stop pods, to bolus - both from my phone and my apple watch, The algorithm constantly modulates basal insulin, isf and cr for easy management. I have access to 24/7 help on FB and am very comfortable with the safety features built into the app. I use 85 as my BG target and just increase the target when I am exercising. I never considered the Omnipod5 because I was already Looping with Eros and now with Dash.
This hardware doesn’t look like its gonna last. The port where I plug into power is most concerning.
I’ve heard you can loop with the 5.
Its as if they found the cheapest possible cellphone body to be the controller. But if I upgrade to 5, it might just be another cheap POS. I need to see one in real life.
The O5 controller is just another cheap POS. It’s a Samsung android that they just picked up a bunch of rejects and stripped them down to a single purpose.
Damn it.
Here is part of the recent email from Insulet. Soon there will be an iphone app for Omnipod 5:
“ We’re excited to share that the highly anticipated Omnipod® 5 App for iPhone is expected to be on the App store in mid-October. In the coming weeks we’ll provide helpful resources to get started on iPhone control with Dexcom G6.
The Omnipod 5 App for iPhone will first be compatible with iOS 17. Please note that iPhone 16 models will not be available with the Omnipod 5 App until it is fully compatible with iOS 18.”
Android aps will seem intimidating at first, but i promise you it is worth it. If you follow all the steps, including a nightscout account, build the device apk, as well as the wear apk, when you have it all set up, it works very well. Itll probably take a day or 2 to set up the program and about a week to get through the objectives, but definitely worth it…the only reason I’ve used it for about 1 1/2 years is because the omnipod rep was maybe 20% confident the phone would work, definitely not confident about phone updates, and my endocrinologist emailed the omnipod rep asking about watch support. And she received the quickest “no” she’d ever received from a representative…i am currently using lyumjev 200/u for approximately 400 units per 3.3 days, although if you are concerned with possible occlusions, u200 humalog or novolog will probably work better…remember your keystone and all passwords as there are a few you’ll want to write down somewhere…i had to update for the g7 last year, but it was relatively painless as long as you remember your passwords, otherwise it tells you youll want to update, but I’ve never seen any requirements yet