InPen experimental feature

xDrip has experimental support for the very nice InPen insulin pen.

This is a bluetooth enabled half-unit insulin pen with a form factor pretty much identical to a regular insulin pen.

xDrip can automatically sync with this in the background and add treatments to the graph. What we have been able to do with pump data can now be possible for pen users.

Because of the various bluetooth issues on different handsets, the real-world performance of this may vary, but it should be at least as good as the existing support for Bluetooth glucose meters.

There are different models of this Pen. The one I had for testing will only work with Android 6.

Understanding how Priming doses are interpreted

Many pen users will change the pen tip and eject a priming dose in to the air before dialing up the actual dose. To use the pen with xDrip, your priming dose must always be the same amount of units. By default this is set to 2.0U and must occur within a number of minutes of the real dose to be considered a priming dose (which are not used as a treatment entries by xDrip) - By default the timeout is set to 2 minutes.

If you sometimes do not prime your pen then you can uncheck the Ignore Orphan Primes setting so that a dose that matches your priming units (which is not followed immediately by another dose) will be treated as an actual dose.

Before doing anything else in the settings, make sure to set your priming doses up properly. xDrip will sync data from the last 3 days, so if you already have doses recorded on the pen before you understood about the priming settings then these could easily end up confusing xDrip.

How to pair

Unless you have already paired the pen with your phone or if you have moved the pen between phones, it will need to go through the pairing process.

When pairing, the last reading on the pen must be a priming dose and the pen will only remain awake for some seconds after each time a dose is delivered. So, dial up the number of units you use would for priming 2.0U by default. Then enable the InPen Support slider, or if it is already enabled tap the Find New Pen section on the settings page. As soon as you have done that then press on the pen top to deliver the priming dose in to the air.

Now return to the xDrip home screen and use the System Status menu item and view the InPen tab to get an idea of what is happening. This page updates in real-time.

If things go well then you should hear a beep noise and see data in the Last record status section. If it doesn't work the first time try again with the same process. If you get stuck please contact me.

If you have a large number of doses already recorded on the pen then it may take some time to sync all these. After you have heard a beep indicating new data. Wait several minutes (or however long your priming timeout is set to) and then dial up another priming dose and deliver that in to the air which will cause the pen to wake up and more records will get synced. If this situation causes a problem, please get in touch.