Winging it

...(i.e. Tracking water for sport, obv.) With the data reporting I was getting with my latest tracker , I had a new idea in the week before my last race... What if it was possible to also monitor, track and report fluids drunk?  I like to run with a water bladder rather than soft bottles, but it's always awkward knowing exactly how much you've had or got left. You can get a reasonable idea from the weight, or patting your bag but obviously it's not as simple as having an empty bottle in your hand. In the past I had tried to use the little Camelbak fluid display gadget... but it was pretty useless on the whole , and impossible to read the tiny display, outside, running, with bifocals on. So I had about a week... and an idea... and already had the framework with the tracker how hard could it be. I ordered a load of random stuff.... and started tinkering. Standard random internet orders, nothing to see here... I picked an  ESP32 board  for this, my idea is to use it to broad...

GUCR 2022 DNF but a valuable and useful technology test, so I don't feel too bad about it. Psychologically that is, physically I'm f***ed. I wasn't going to do this race, after the disappointing race back in January I cancelled all plans and ideas for the year. but in the month or so before I was feeling pretty good and fit*, and I'd got a place, and a hotel room booked, it seemed silly to not at least make a start? After a chat to Alex and Wendy Whearity I felt a lot more positive about taking part, and at the start I saw so many friends and familiar faces it was definitely worth it. (* relatively speaking - I'm getting tendonitis in my ankle treated but that *was* behaving, and I seemed to have recovered enough from last year's shoulder surgery to start swimming again after a couple of years break. so heh - if I fell in the canal I'd be able to swim ok.) Like a Duracell bunny The tracker worked beautifully , still having 74% battery remaining when the hum...

done (for now)... live GPS tracking, with heath and environment metrics. Tracking heart rate, core body temperature, blood sugar, air temperature and humidity. A CoreTemp sensor is providing the body temperature, a GlucoRx Aidex sensor for the blood sugar, and based on a RAK 5010 for the main board. (See the previous post for the blood sugar project). So finally have the reworked GPS tracker up and running, after way too many weeks of coding, tweaking and debugging. Whilst the nRF52 has been really impressive to work with and the SDK is comprehensive with loads of features that are easy to enable, there have been many heffalump traps along the way.... A Core sensor, with some of the blood sensors tried "on the bench" But why Firstly a quick mention for the "why" which has been asked several times along with "but I can do X" on my phone... this is to monitor health during long endurance events *for the benefit of the crew* so they can see what's go...

Sniffing sugar - well decoding Bluetooth data off an Aidex glucose sensor anyway.... Some background on getting the data off an Aidex glucose sensor for my telemetry tracker . The sensor appears to use Bluetooth LE broadcast packets to output its status and data for alerts, which is rather convenient. Realised I hadn't added details of the tools/software used here! The  AdaFruit BLE Friend  is used to capture the data, this can be viewed in WireShark   Interestingly since the Aidex system uses a more advanced (so I assume more expensive) chip compared to the Libre the sensor design is split into two, the sensor contains the battery and the sensor wire which clips into the unpowered transmitter unit. It's a shame to see that the lifespan issue (which I had wondered about) has been solved by including a small disposable lithium battery inside each sensor patch, there must be a better, more environmentally friendly way to build these things. (My first sensor expired so I too...