[HN Gopher] Building a T1D smartwatch for my son from scratch
___________________________________________________________________
Building a T1D smartwatch for my son from scratch
Author : andrewchilds
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-01-28 16:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (andrewchilds.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (andrewchilds.com)
| mattboyle wrote:
| This is really really awesome. I applaud you.
|
| I had my own project trying to achieve a similar outcome to you,
| I wrote about it here: https://www.bytesizego.com/blog/keeping-
| alive-with-go. Your approach is much more hardcore. I hope you
| find a path to make them available to more folks.
|
| If there is anything I can do to assist you please let me know!
| andrewchilds wrote:
| Thank you! I remember reading your article! Even though you
| have to maintain it, it's actually way better than what's
| commercially available since you actually have control over
| _how_ you're alerted, not to mention when to escalate to
| friends or family. I've heard Type 1 kids going away to college
| is a huge source of stress for parents/caregivers for this
| reason - Sugarmate and the SugerPixel help with this but it
| still feels like a huge problem (a Type 1 sleeping through a
| low).
| bdcravens wrote:
| This is great. I do watch my Dexcom on my Apple Watch, but
| there's times I just want the number, ASAP. I was hoping it'd
| talk about eliminating the need for the iOS app ("...where he
| shouldn't have to run around with a phone strapped to him...")
| but it sounds like it's just not possible to avoid at least
| periodic polling.
|
| Reading through the product development, I'm curious why you
| didn't use a dev kit like the Pine Time?
| (https://pine64.org/devices/pinetime/) I bought one a few years
| ago and it's just been sitting in the box, waiting for a project
| to build on it. I may take a stab at something similar.
| andrewchilds wrote:
| Thank you! It should be possible now with the G7 to have the
| watch pair directly with the sensor. We're still on the G6.
| Agreed that would be much better than having to go through the
| iOS app and up to the cloud.
|
| Honestly I don't remember why I ruled out the PineTime. I
| purchased a Bangle.js and while it's very small, it seemed very
| limited in what I could do with it. Of course with the Pebble
| announcement yesterday, that might change things.
| lagrange77 wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| I love the texture of the enclosure. I guess that's not possible
| with an FDM printer, right?
| andrewchilds wrote:
| Thank you, I do too! I wish it was possible to leave it
| uncoated, but it develops a worn look pretty quickly. Printing
| MJF through Fictiv was pretty cheap, especially if you don't
| need a rush delivery.
| ilynd wrote:
| Did you ever look into an e-ink display?
| andrewchilds wrote:
| I did, but they're surprisingly expensive, and a black-and-
| white display isn't all that exciting for a kid. An always-on
| display would however be perfect for this use case though.
| wanderingmoose wrote:
| First of all -- awesome!
|
| Second, if you aren't aware or in case others are interested, the
| main dev from the xdrip project released a custom watch as well:
| https://bluejay.website/ There are some posts on reddit from the
| dev. (for others -- the watch is available for purchase, and
| allows integration w/ xdrip).
|
| Third --> we've come a long way in a short time. When I was
| diagnosed I had to collect urine samples and drop chemical
| tablets in them to see how much glucose was present. And now you
| are building an custom solution tailored to your and your son's
| needs...wow. I really applaud you.
|
| Fourth --> I'm hoping the new discoveries in the synthetic
| signaling w/ insulin will finally give us a biological solution
| and the tech will no longer be necessary. Here's to hoping!
| andrewchilds wrote:
| Yes! The BlueJay watch project is amazing, very encouraging to
| see that he was able to connect directly to the sensor from the
| watch with the latest version. Totally agree with you - one of
| the biggest sources of hope for us in those first few weeks
| after he was diagnosed was knowing how far the tech had come,
| and how many huge advancements were in the pipeline.
| martyz wrote:
| Incredible work - so cool to see Dad being a tech and health
| champion for their kid. T1D is so tough and to have such
| incredible support is great to see.
| jablongo wrote:
| Nicely done - it's crazy that you could do this solo and the
| multi billion dollar device makers haven't been able to do it in
| many years. Would be a nice peripheral for them to sell along
| with their CGMs (instead of those old receiver devices that
| everyone stopped using in favor of smartphones). Wishful
| thinking, but maybe try to talk to Abbott or Dexcom to see if
| they will fund another open source production run of these?
| Output to them could be a report/collection of user feedback to
| help them w/ product strategy...
| FL410 wrote:
| This is really cool. Having gone through some of the same
| challenges for hobby projects myself (learning Fusion, learning
| to make a PCB, learning to make the 10th revision of the PCB),
| you're being quite humble - each one of these things is _hard_
| with a steep learning curve.
|
| Awesome work!
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Hi Andrew, amazing work and done for the best of reasons!
|
| I see you are replying in the thread, in your closing notes you
| wrote:
|
| > I would not have been able to get past the initial stages
| without ChatGPT.
|
| One of the coolest uses of LLMs for me is indeed exploring a
| problem domain where I am not a subject matter expert.
|
| The problem is if it leads you down a dead end or hallucinates a
| solution. Then, at the edge of your knowledge, you actually have
| a very small foothold with which to challenge these chat replies.
|
| Did you also face this on the more HW 'heavy' part of your
| project? Any tips on how to navigate terra incognita with LLMs?
| summermusic wrote:
| > I learned that One Does Not Simply put glass in front of a TFT
| display. It will look like a first-generation, low-budget Android
| phone if you do.
|
| Do you happen to have any before-and-after photos of what this
| looked like, and more details on how your tortilla press DIY
| method works? I recently received a little hackable music player
| device with a TFT display that looks kind of bad and I wonder if
| this is something I can do to make the display look good.
| RandomUser4976 wrote:
| T1D parent here. My 11yr old has T1D. We use SugarPixel and this
| watch you've built would be amazing to have. Great job! We need
| more people like you
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-01-29 23:00 UTC)