BgMetrics is now reading its first glucometer. The Accu-Chek Advantage is working at this time. It is also possible that the Accu-Chek Easy will work with BgMetrics also but we haven't tried it yet.
The meter reading window has the following options before the meter is read:
- Meter type - Holds a listing of all supported meters. (The Accu-Chek Advantage is the only meter supported at this time).
- Com port - Select the com port your serial cable is connected to. If you make the wrong choice the program could crash but I have tried to allow for incorrect choices to the best of my ability. (I know next to nothing about serial port access).
- Wait state - The default wait state is 3 (tenths of a second). This tells the program to wait between commands it sends to the meter. If you are getting incomplete information from the download try increasing this. It is common for a 100 place memory on a meter to return only 95 pieces of data if you have control samples in the memory (apparently).
- Mode parameters - These are set to what worked on this machine. I know so little about it that I can't make many suggestions so I have included this to allow the user to "tweak" it.
- Read meter - Press this button to attempt a download. Be sure your meter is hooked up and it is on or off as per the manufacturers instructions. (For the Accu-Chek Advantage the meter is turned "off" when downloading)
- Cancel - Close the window.
After a meter has been read the window appears differently.
The new options are:
- Select item to update - The listbox holds all readings that did not match an existing record. When clicking an entry, BgMetrics will try to scroll to the closest match it can find in the data window.
- Update highlighted record - Replaces the "Date, Time and BgLevel" of the currently highlighted record in the main data window with the data highlighted in the listbox.
- Add new record - Adds the "Date, Time and BgLevel" data highlighted in the listbox to the main data window as a new record.
- Records - New - Duplicate - Information on how many records were downloaded, how many are duplicates of existing records and how many are "new". New in this case means that there are no records that exactly match the "Date, Time and BgLevel" of any record.
- Cancel - Closes the window, all remaining data is sent to the bit bucket.
When the download is finished you are presented with a list of items that are not common to your existing data. Any exact matches of the "Date, Time and BgLevel" of any record will not be shown. As you select the items (or down arrow through them) BgMetrics will attempt to find the closest match for you.
You may then:
- "Update" the existing highlighted record.
- Highlight a different record and "Update" it.
- "Add" a new record.
A Puzzle?
BgMetrics also writes a refreshed data file with every download called "BgMetric.raw" that contains the bulk of the raw data downloaded from your meter and the conversion of it. If you like puzzles, and are downloading from an Accu-Chek Advantage, take a peek at it and see if you can figure out where the year data is. I have a pretty good idea but am to tired of looking at it for a while to figure it out. (smile) Your hint for the puzzle is that each record is exactly four bytes long and contains the Date, Time and BgLevel. The file lists the raw 4 byte record along side it's decoded data.
Tips :
- Although there are choices for "Sort Ascending-Descending-None" It is best to use "Sort none" in the program. There seems to be a glitch in the container control when "Adding" records in "Sort ascending" mode where the newest record that matches a specific date is always pushed to the top of the matching (date) records and we have not found a way around it.
- Try using a monospaced font for the new meter readings by opening the system font pallette and dragging one to the listbox. System Monospaced or System Vio are good choices.
- For some reason, although I believe all functions are shut down after doing a meter reading, some of the dialogs are slower opening. This has been noticed with the "Progress meter" and the "Opening/Closing Splash screen.