In my 20s, I felt a certain attachment when returning to my hometown. Driving “home” felt wrong, as if I was leaving again to a foreign place. This complex feeling of nostalgia and unease persisted for years.

Today the kids and I took a day trip to their grandmother’s house to visit a state park with their cousins. Memories live on, but after two decades, time has–for the most part–marched on. Friends and their families have all relocated to various parts of the country. My childhood best friend’s house is occupied by strangers. I still remember time with my baby sitter in the late ’80s. Her two-story house is gone without a trace: the house has been demolished and replaced by an empty grass lot. Neighboring houses have been remodeled. The field I remember walking home from elementary school is now occupied by new construction.

A tire store occupies what I remember as a packed, new buffet restaurant in the 90s, where my friend’s older brother worked. Lowes, Starbucks, Panera, Culver’s, and Chic-fil-A have moved in, along with countless other chains.

The roller rink–built by a classmate’s parent’s–was a regular hangout in 5th and 6th grade. It’s gone. And I recall her father died of cancer in his late 40s. So sad.

The car audio shop I enjoyed visiting in high school is also long gone.

The tree in which my beloved treehouse resided is gone as well.

The old mayor’s name is now bestowed upon a large park.

Progress.

Sitting on my mother’s deck, she points out a 70-year old plant she’s recently acquired from my uncle, passed down from her grandmother.

Now as I leave, hugging Mom to say goodbye, I recognize the illusion of permanence. We have only impermanence. I finally feel that I am heading “home” with my children, but know that it’s all a mental trick of human emotion. The “home” we have formed will be nothing more than memories in just 30-40 years, if we’re so fortunate to live on. Friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and pets will come into my children’s’ lives. Eventually they will reach adulthood and find a unique path.

Time, Health, & Money

Some say it’s rare to have all three. Emily struggles to find an abundance of Time and Health. We’ll soon reach FI, and I have health for now. Which leaves just time to solve. Having an abundance of time will become easier as we transition away from M-F work. But what is it that we all seek? Time marches on while we live in the moment, doing what we do.

I tried Dexcom’s G7 app with an iPhone 12 last year and returned to xDrip+ within a matter of hours.

Dexcom released Direct-to-Watch support for Apple Watch recently, so I had to give it a try. Below are my initial thoughts, along with setup notes to self for the future.

Initial Setup

I disabled Bluetooth on my Android and the iPhone Dexcom G7 app picked up my sensor immediately. Not a single lost data point. So in theory, moving between devices is feasible.

Enabling G7 Direct-to-Watch was also pleasant, with a brief explanatory video found within the app. The Apple Watch re-paired directly to the G7 sensor and hasn’t missed a beat in the first 3 days!

G7 to Apple Watch Impressions

The G7 app is super basic. Too basic. Here’s what you get on the Watch lock screen. Just a number and an arrow:

Tapping on the G7 glucose number reveals a rudimentary plot of your glucose trendline, sadly with no extra detail. Tapping more cycles between 1 hr / 3 hr / 6 hr trendlines:

I’d strongly prefer to see the delta readout from the previous data point (i.e., +6).

A timestamp of the current glucose reading would be nice, but perhaps unecessary since the Apple Watch has been a reliable collector. Dexcom indicates that a phone icon will appear the Bluetooth connection fails.

Alerts

High and Low alerts are attention grabbing from the G7 Watch app, however, xDrip+ does a far better job predicting possible negative outcomes. My xDrip+ setup provides verbal warnings, such as, “Low predicted in 23 minutes,” and gives warnings well in advance so that I take appropriate action.

G7 arrows are less assertive, and I do not trust the app’s low warnings! The picture below was taken in the YMCA parking lot shortly after realizing the deception of the G7 arrow on my Apple Watch. The arrow had been “flat” each time I’d checked, but my glucose had slowly dropped to 71 without a single warning from the G7 app. xDrip+ would have delivered warnings–and yes, I’d had a snack before I entered the building.

After the YMCA experience, I made sure to keep xDrip+ running in the house and keep an eye on trendlines. It’s not uncommon for xDrip+/Nightscout to display a slightly downtrending arrow, while the G7 app shows a flat arrow.

The G7 delivers a static “55 in 20 minutes” warning, with bold haptics when I cross the 70 threshold. By the time G7 app warns, though, I’ve already taken action several data points earlier thanks to other apps.

Running xDrip+ Concurrently

I’m now running xDrip+ as a Dexcom Share follower, with Nightscout reconfigured to pull from Dexcom Share as well:

Prior to all of this, xDrip+ received data directly from my Android (paired to G7 sensor) and fed data to Nightscout for reporting. It’s possible for xDrip+ to receive data from the Dexcom Share and pass along to Nightscout, but this seemed less ideal since my Android would need to remain in service.

Self note: Setting Nightscout to bridge mode is accomplished by adding the bold sections. Restart server after changes.

export API_SECRET="api_secret_goes_here"
export ENABLE="careportal food boluscalc bwp cob bgi pump openaps rawbg iob upbat cage sage basal bridge"
export AUTH_DEFAULT_ROLES="readable"
export PUMP_FIELDS="reservoir battery clock"
export DEVICESTATUS_ADVANCED="true"
export BRIDGE_USER_NAME="email@address.com"
export BRIDGE_PASSWORD="password" 
export BRIDGE_SERVER="us"

Better Apps?

I’m fairly content running Shugga alongside the G7 app, which is basically a stripped down build of xDrip. It presents a helpful trendline on my home screen, showing the much needed sugar delta:

I tried Sweet Dreams. It seems well designed with a clean UI, but I gave up since its Watch app is behind a paywall.

The Shugga Watch app displays what I want to see. However, it lags the G7 direct sensor reading by 1-9 minutes due to the Nightscout bridge, and requires that my Apple Watch be near my iPhone for the Dexcom Share upload (eliminating the point of direct-to-watch).

For now, my primary Watch face is set to display the Dexcom G7 direct reading, and another Watch face quickly reveals the Shugga app.

Shugga is not perfect. It’s missing many of the advanced features found in xDrip+, like insulin decay curves, advanced alarms and text-to-speech warnings. But it’s better than the G7 app alone.

Dexcom Share Uploads?

Direct-to-Watch is currently involves the Bluetooth link between the G7 sensor and Apple Watch only. The G7 app remains responsible for transmitting data to Dexcom Share. Rumor has it that Dexcom will add Share upload capability to Apple Watch next. Hope so! This will remove the final constraint of keeping a phone nearby.

Ending Thoughts

Dexcom Direct-to-Watch changes the game. For the first time in years, I’ve spent the entire evening away from a smartphone. Thank God. Now I can go to the pool or ride a rollercoaster without gripping a phone.

If anyone at Dexcom is paying attention, please keep expanding predictive alarm functionality, and learn from what has been accomplished by the diabetes community. xDrip+, xDrip4iOS, and apps like Shugga and Sweet Dreams would not exist if we T1Ds felt that Dexcom’s software was adequate.

It’s been only 3 days, and while I do not fully trust the G7 app, the combination of Shugga with G7 Direct-to-Watch is enough to be my daily driver. I’ll keep xDrip+ running on my nightstand to be safe…

We had driven down to my Mom’s house one day in 2019. She took me to her dimly lit, breezy garage and guided me to a box along the far wall. “Look inside!”, she said. The box was full of tiny kittens. Why the neighbor’s cat had chosen her garage was a point of frustration, nevertheless, Mom enjoyed watching the kittens grow and play throughout the summer, feeding them from her deck every morning and evening.

Pete and his siblings spent their first summer learning to pounce, stalk, and feast:

Up to this point, I had only watched from a distance. Mom occasionally shared amusing cat pics, and our toddler learned to “hold” cats at Grandma’s house.

Year 2

At wits’ end, Mom planned to re-home the full-grown cats.

As Emily remembers:

. . . Pete (and Penelope) was a feral cat we adopted from my mother-in-law, who unintentionally ended up the caretaker of a cat colony thanks to an irresponsible neighbor.

We “hired” Pete and Penelope to address the mice problem at this house right before the extensive exterior remodel (and incidentally COVID). When adopting a feral cat you keep them in a cage for 3 weeks before releasing. My MIL misunderstood our housing plan and released both cats in the old storage room under the sunroom. Pete and Penelope offered instant entertainment as we tried to care for them and recatch them! After release day, we weren’t sure they were coming back.

One evening a week later, a very scared and vocal Pete showed up, Penelope never came back. It took months for Pete to warm up to people (but winter proved a good motivator). . . .

Gaining Pete’s trust took time. Jarred by the unpleasant move and neutering experience, he spent several weeks in the forest after release, secretly hopping back in through the storage room window for cat food.

Pete remained feral through the summer. When construction crews demolished the storage room, I moved his food/water dishes to the front porch. He caught on quickly.

By fall, Pete had befriended neighbors and began adopting me as his human friend, curiously following me around and biting at my shoes.

As temperates dropped, I moved his food inside the front door for his evening meals.

Pete decided that being indoors was not so bad once winter arrived. He found warmth in our laps and furniture, and took pleasure biting Emily’s feet at 2am for months!

Year 3

Spring arrived again and Pete demonstrated he was a member of the family, often joining us for walks while meowing loudly from a distance. Neighbors asked, “Is that your cat?!”

Pete revealed his refined hunting skills, bringing us prey several times each week. Not just birds and mice, but snakes, rabbits, and squirrels.

Pete and I became close throughout the summer. Together we enjoyed walks to the lake and long hikes through the woods. He often relaxed on my lap, sometimes licking my beard or hands.

Pete often darted outside on warm summer nights. Or perhaps he bit Emily’s feet at 2am for a chance to go hunting. I worried about coyotes howling in the distance; Pete had the sense to hurry home for refuge on the deck. Each morning he’d yawn, arch his back, and stroll inside for breakfast.

Pete immediately accepted baby Archie. For most evenings of the year, both napped in my lap. He did not mind when Archie grabbed his fur or ears; he purred and enjoyed the company.

Pete cursed winter, as his hunting season came to an end.

Year 4

Our family caught a string of colds well into February. Pete began struggling around this time–he had lost his appetite and was staying indoors despite the season change, so I took him to the vet. He had a slight fever, had lost 2 lbs, and was prescribed amoxicillin.

Two weeks went by without improvement. We went to another vet. Pete had lost another pound. The vet was concerned, as Pete still had a fever, and imaging revealed fluid in the abdomen and an enlarged spleen. She had no answers. Our family had just recovered from strep and administering amoxicillin had been no easy task, so he received a shot of antibiotics and a prescription for pain.

Pete remained indoors throughout March and April, only hobbling outside for minutes at a time to go potty. He developed congestion and sneezing and had lost more weight. We returned to the vet again–more antibiotics. No answers.

Last weekend Pete walked outside and settled in the mulch. I thought he was pulling through, and took his picture. He must have known his days were numbered.

Pete followed me outside after work on Friday, took a stroll around the house, and came back inside. He collapsed in the hallway an hour later. Still breathing, I lifted his limp body and rushed him to the emergency vet, but it was his time.

I held Pete as he passed, unable to hold back tears. I lack words to adequately describe the hole in my heart for this wonderful being. Pete brought comfort, curiosity, adventure, and love to our lives. I’m left asking, “Why?”

Aventon currently provides no Installation information, and instead suggests hiring a bike repair shop:

IMPORTANT INSTALLATION INFO

We highly recommend having the retrofit kit installed by an authorized Aventon dealer or a mobile bike repair and assembly service such as Velofix or Velotooler.

If you are the original owner of your Aventon ebike and are still within the 1-year warranty, it is a requirement to get the retrofit kit installed and verified by one of the options stated above in order to maintain the existing 1-year warranty.

• Additionally, getting the retrofit kit installed by one of the options stated above will qualify your ebike for a 90-day warranty extension after the installation regardless of your Aventon ebike’s current warranty status.
• In order to qualify for the 90-day warranty extension, you must provide proper documentation proving it was installed professionally and must be the original owner of the ebike.
• If there isn’t a nearby Aventon dealer or mobile bike service near you, please contact customer service before installing the retrofit kit to your ebike: Contact Support

Installing the Controller

In case anyone wishes to waive their warranty rights as I did, here’s how the installation process went. Time spent: about 20 minutes.

1. Remove the battery, then unscrew the two screws from the lower battery tray:The old controller is packed in the bottom of the tube.
   
2. Disconnect the 48V supply wires (black and red wires with blue crimps).
3. The controller has three wires: display wire, motor wire, and brake signal wires. Carefully disconnect the two smaller wires. The waterproof connectors can be disconnected by hand (pull HARD).
4. Disconnect the motor controller wire from the motor:
   
5. The motor wire is held in place with a plastic retaining clip near the tire. You can release it with a flathead screwdriver. There were a couple zipties on my wire bundles, which snapped as I began working. You may need to clip these as well.
   
6. With the motor controller wire free, pull the old controller out of the frame. I removed the rubber grommet on the bottom of the frame to make the process easier. Not sure if this was necessary–it was a pain to push back into place.
   
7. Install the new motor controller: Start by routing the motor controller wire back through the rubber grommet, but leave the motor disconnected until all other wires are connected, as you may need to reposition the controller and other wires while reconnecting the brake, display, and 48V leads. Connect each wire firmly.Important: Observe the orientation arrows on the motor/brake/display leads! Also be careful to position wires so that they are not crushed or damaged by the controller. It’s a tight fit:
   
8. Reconnect the motor and reattach the plastic retaining clip to secure the wire:
   
9. Reattach the battery tray with original screws. Done!

Installing the BC 280 Display

Aventon provides a PDF guide for this part. It’s straightforward: unscrew and unplug the old display, then reconnect the new model.

First Impressions

So glad I upgraded, despite the expense! The Pace 500 feels much smoother, and I can now unlearn three years of habits to avoid throwing myself from the bike at standstills.

It’s All Firmware…

Here’s the original controller:

And here’s the new Throttle on Demand controller. Notice both are marked Tongsheng Powertrain KZQW22A3-JH-TDGW22700C:

The controller has an unused 4-pin header. Could this header be used by Tongsheng for programming? I could be wrong, but if loading firmware is possible using a generic serial programmer, I would have preferred this over swapping perfectly good hardware. Most likely the necessary tools and knowledge are outside the area of expertise of the average bike repair shop.

Edit: Reading/writing firmware is likely possible using an ST-Link programmer. I have one of these somewhere, and will try to dump firmware from both controllers soon…

‘No,’ I replied as I struggled to sit up and move towards the door. My body hit the wall…’I can make it,’ I thought to myself.

“Sit down. You didn’t look like a person that’s alive. What happened?” She handed me a huge cup of juice.

A finger prick read 52: almost the point of non-deadly, but by no means safe, especially considering the natural rise from feet on the floor and the sheer duration of the mistake. I sat on the bed staring at the closet doorframe in a haze. Short lows are annoying, but long lows while asleep can kill. I felt like death.

I’d switched from Afrezza to Fiasp for the day due to allergies and totally misjudged the insulin decay rate after dinner. So I ate a large apple an hour before bed (normally a straightforward dose of Afreeza) and waited an extra long time for the upward trend before what I thought was a conservative bolus of Fiasp. After falling asleep I managed to mute the CGM alert at 11pm, then proceed to roll over onto my phone for an hour. And I have zero memory of this.

A second downward trend alarm woke me two hours later. I drank more juice and fell asleep again.

Looking at the curves today, the first event was not a logical decision. Did I even look at my watch and phone at 11? How did I grab my phone and dismiss the alert in my sleep?

Technology did not fail me. The curve was clean and clearly downward trending. The G6 alerted as expected. Had this happened during waking hours, there is no chance I’d have gone low, let alone for an hour. Which begs the question: would I be alive today had she not noticed something was off?

This is why I cannot buy life insurance. Nevermind my 5.6 A1C, regular exercise, and otherwise young and healthy body. One wrong move can kill.

Somehow I felt well and grateful by morning, recognizing I could die tomorrow or 60 years from now. Such is true for anyone, but the possibility has always felt remote until now.

To give some background, the server is running MySQL 8.0.22. All records in every table have been fully converted to utf8mb4, so data is in perfect unicode:

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_connection | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_database   | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     |
| character_set_results    | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_server     | utf8mb4                    |
| character_set_system     | utf8                       |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation%';
+----------------------+--------------------+
| Variable_name        | Value              |
+----------------------+--------------------+
| collation_connection | utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci |
| collation_database   | utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci |
| collation_server     | utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci |
+----------------------+--------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

The good news: Endicia, UPS Worldship 2020-2021 and FedEx Ship Manager are all compatible with the MySQL ODBC Connector v8.0.23 driver (longstanding bugs in ODBC v5.x have finally be resolved in v8.0). Our utf8mb4 tables imported perfectly into Endicia and FedEx Ship Manager on the first try.

UPS shipping labels are limited to the latin1 character set. So, I expected Worldship to import valid latin1 characters successfully, and only reject characters beyond ASCII 0xFF. That is how FedEx, Endicia, and other ODBC apps behaved under the same ODBC connection. However, Worldship produced 100% mojibake. Some latin1 characters rendered as “?”, others were replaced by multiple, random characters, and some entire address fields imported blank/empty.

The solution: Leave “Character Set” blank in the ODBC Data Source Configuration.

I had selected utf8mb4, which worked fine in all other apps, but this field breaks Worldship for whatever reason.

Success!

To check if the joystick is installed, connect the radio and choose USB Joystick mode. Note the blue color scheme is backwards on the TX16S as of fall 2020 (choose USB Storage to use USB Joystick mode, and vice versa).

In Win10 –> Start –> type game controllers and open Set up USB Game Controllers. A broken driver will show no joysticks:

Zadag is NOT required, and will not help!

Solution

1. Open Device Manager and locate the radio –> Right click and choose Properties.
2. Go to Driver tab –> Choose Update driver –> Browse my computer… –> Let me pick from a list…
3. Choose USB Input Device

Confirming it’s Okay

Go to Start –> Type other devices to open Bluetooth & other devices –> open Devices and printers on the far right.

An FrSky Taranis Joystick should now be visible under Game Controllers.

And from Zadig’s perspective. Again, do NOT install drivers under Zadig; none of them are correct. HidUSB is correct.

Some say the Project SuperG+ flies well with default PIDs. That was a reasonable conclusion under Betaflight 3.5.7, if you ignored wobbles in windy conditions. Betaflight 4.0 flew terribly with default values, so I stuck with 3.5.7 until v4.1 came along with RPM filtering (thanks, @joelucid!). Betaflight is targeted towards 5″ frames, and needs to be tuned for larger builds.

Partly due to complacency with almost smooth flights, and mainly time constraints, I flew BF4.1 for months with a less than stellar tune. You can see overshoot and instability in the PID response even during a short flight with little throttle input:

Betaflight 4.2

Upgrading to BF4.2 this week, I followed UAVTech’s 7″ tuning guide and was instantly impressed. My 7″ SuperG+s finally feel locked in and smooth!

PID response has improved tremendously. This flight was over 5 minutes, with power loops, flips, rolls, and yawspins that should have induced propwash (what propwash?!). It’s an awesome starting point:

While tuning is a work in progress and build dependent, the starting parameters below work well on both of my current SuperG+s:

• Flight Controllers + ESCs:
  Matek F722SE + 4x Spedix ES30
  BrainFPV Radix + Hobbywing 4-in-1 60A
• Motors: Brotherhobby Avenger 2806.5:
  One running 1700kV, and another running 1300kV
• FPV Antenna: TrueRC AXII Long
• Props: HQProp DP 7X3.5X3 V1S
• Batteries: Tattu 5S 1300mAh and RDQ 5S 1800mAh

Here’s what I did:

• RPM Filtering, DSHOT300
• Apply BF4.2 “Cinematic” Tuning via command line
• Adjust Gyro and PIDs as below

Motor Upgrade & Further Tuning 

Edit: I rebuilt the first quad with a CaddX Vista, new 60A ESC, and FPVCycle’s “7-8in” motors a few months ago. The larger motors boosted authority, finally giving the quad adequate power to smoothly fly with heavy packs. A major retune was necessary.

• Flight Controller: Matek F722SE
• ESC: Hobbywing 4-in-1 60A
• Motors: FPVCycle 30mm 1420kV
• FPV Antenna: TrueRC AXII Long LHCP + CaddX Vista
• Props: HQProp DP 7X3.5X3 V1S
• Batteries: RDQ 5S 2200mAh

Hope that helps someone get started!

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Countless meteorites collide into the forested valley, with smoldering trees miles out. A bush ignites as I walk up the road and towards the lodge.

A sign on the glass door reads, “Come on In”, and so I enter.

Souls from the past are welcoming, never-mind the burning world outside.