I want to share something cool that happened today. It's a bit of a story, though so bear with me. It starts with me being diabetic. I'm Type 1, and was diagnosed in 2000 when I was 30 years old.
2/ I've been insulin dependent for the last 18 years. I have to manually test my blood sugar, and administer insulin through a pump. About 2 years ago, my friend @kamens introduced me to a cool solution that creates a closed loop.
3/ A closed loop is a system that acts like an artificial pancreas by using open source and home built hardware to bridge the gap left by FDA approved medical technology.
4/ I use the FDA approved Dexcom G5 to measure my blood sugar continuously. And I use a Medtronic insulin pump to administer insulin. But I have to use my brain to examine my food and figure out how much insulin to take. It's tricky, and it doesn't self-correct if I screw up.
5/ So @kamens introduced me to github.com/LoopKit/Loop which is an open source solution for iPhone that takes glucose measurements and food estimates and calculates how much insulin to administer. But in order for that to work you need a way to control your insulin pump.
6/ So some cool folks created getrileylink.org which is a tiny home-made electronic device that can speak bluetooth to my phone, and radio-frequency to my pump and allow the app to take over my pump and administer insulin at the right times. Like when I'm sleeping.
7/ There are lots of baked-in safety measures. The developers treat this _very_ carefully. We are all diabetic and this can be dangerous. But the proof is in the results - my A1C score went from ~8.0 to ~6.5 in 18 months. This is a life-changing health improvement for me.
8/ But last night my RileyLink broke. The charging USB port snapped off. Here's what it's supposed to look like: 
9/ But a piece got snapped off of mine and this morning. Here's a photo of the piece, and a photo of the part of the board where it's supposed to live.
10/ I was heartbroken. Also, for the first time in ages I was without a closed loop and this made me very anxious! I checked in with the RileyLink community: gitter.im/ps2/rileylink and my buddy @ps2 suggested that it was fixable with a hot air pencil. I am not a hardware guy.
11/ I ordered a spare RileyLink. But then I also did some research, looked on Amazon for hardware, read a guide on soldering. It's a little daunting. I should practice before I start trying to learn hardware skills on a critical piece of my medical setup.
11/ But this story has a happy ending! Beause it's fixed right now. I started calling around electronics repair shops and heard the same story over and over- we don't do custom soldering. But I managed to find cbaelectronics.com!
12/ I called up Maria, the proprietor of CBA Electronics and asked her if she'd do it. She said sure, come on down and we'll take a look. Long story short, she took a look at it, called over one of her techs and they happily fixed it for me for free. I am deeply grateful to them.
13/ I had never heard of CBA before. But it turns out they build custom hardware prototypes for local businesses. So let me put in a plug for them. Working on a cool hardware product? Get a quote from them. They have great karma.
14/ And if you're #T1D and want to learn more about any of this - reach out to me! I'll happily help you get set up the way that I am. It's life-changing technology that is prolonging my life. I'm deeply grateful to the whole community for their hard work!
