Conquering life living with Type 1 Diabetes

Friday, October 19, 2018

Restart Dexcom G6 sensor with x2 and phone updated

I restarted yet another G6 sensor today using my Samsung Galaxy S8 and my x2 Tandem pump. The same instructions should work with an iphone.


I still find it perplexing that so many people keep having issues doing this.

In this post I will attempt to simplify the directions in an effort to help more people who are struggling.

1. Phone and pump alarmed for 6 hours left on the sensor.


2. Go to the picture folder I keep on my phone for the current sensor code or wherever you have yours written down.

3. Turn phone side ways/landscape view of the graph to wait for a brand new b.g. reading. If you hold finger on current dot/bg reading it will tell you the time it received the reading.


4. Wait one minute.

5. Press stop sensor on phone ONLY! Do not do anything to the x2 pump. It will just join the new session all on its own.

6. Still on your phone press new sensor, enter code, press start.

7. Watch for blue circle start up graph to appear then quickly shut off blue tooth and leave it OFF. You MUST do this in the time frame between when your transmitter is NOT giving data to your phone and pump.  If you mess this up the sensor session on your pump will stop because your phone app told the transmitter you hit stop sensor, the transmitter talks to the phone and pump which it what keeps your phone app and pump or receiver synced. So move through these steps quickly!  Then go into settings and be sure it shows your insertion time.  If it doesn't show anything you shut your blue tooth off too quickly.  Turn it back on and wait for the blue circle for the countdown to show up again.  Then check settings and see if it now shows insertion time.  Then shut blue tooth off again.  Be sure to keep doing these steps as quickly as you can. 

8. Set timer on phone for 2 hrs 10 mins.

9. Enjoy still seeing your blood sugars on your x2 pump or Dexcom receiver if you do not use the x2 pump.

10. Timer goes off on your phone.  Take the x2 pump off and out of range before you turn b.t. back on.

11. Turn on blue tooth on your phone.

12. Open Dexcom app.  Watch phone say it has lost signal, then go to 5 min remaining and thennnnn.....

13. Your bg readings reappear on your Dexcom app and it should say set up complete.

14. Go get pump that you placed out of range and put it back on. Pump will join new session and aligns with what your phone says for the current sensor session. In cgm history it will say session joined.

15. Tada! I hope that helps!

You can also do this backwards if you do not use the x2 pump.  You can keep bg readings on your phone and use the receiver to do the restart. You just need another step of using a mirowave or faraday bag to block the blue tooth signal on the receiver since there is no way to shut off blue tooth on that device.

I am sure you can also keep bgs going on receiver (if you do not use the x2) but do the restart on your phone instead and be sure to keep phone blue tooth off during start up.

These steps are all of course when you still have time left on your current session and will NOT expire while in the 2 hr start up time frame.

The steps for if it has expired are a bit different. If your session expires I am told you can start sensor on your phone with no code, wait 15 minutes, stop the session, then start the session again with your code and it will start up.  I have not tried this method. 

8 comments:

  1. Megan, thanks so much for this post. I had seen other posts for this, but yours was the first that matched my situation (X2 with G6 Mobile) perfectly. I tried your instructions this week and they worked flawlessly. One little helpful tweak I found is that you don't really have to take a photo of that sensor code. If you go into CGM history/Sessions & Calibrations, the code you entered previously will appear.

    - Jim

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  2. Megan, Should we not start a new sensor at the same time with the X2? Will the X2 somehow assume you did a new sensor and not time out?

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    Replies
    1. Hi Jenn,

      Do nothing to the x2, it will join the new sensor session all on its own.

      Delete
  3. What happens if you don't put your pump out of range? I'm in a spot right now where there's nowhere out of range that's safe to place it.

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  4. I have successfully completed this process on my X2 pump with the Basil IQ update. Unfortunately, in both cases, I only got one or two extra days out of it before I started having significant gaps in the readings and it finally went more than 3 hours without a reading and I had to replace the sensor anyway. I'm just curious if anybody else is getting better results out of the extension?

    I noticed that you have added the "take the X2 pump off and out of range before turning on the Bluetooth" and, in my case, I didn't do this since it wasn't part of your original instructions. I haven't had any issues with the pump joining the session but am curious why you added this additional step to your process?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I added it because when I did not have it out of range my pump alarmed and said no restarts and then my phone followed and said no restarts, all this after the 2 hr 10 min blue tooth being off. So next time I moved it out of range and it worked.

      Delete
  5. Megan I'm giving this a try! I successfully restarted a sensor using Katies instructions one time, since then I keep getting a 'no transmitter id' error after I clear the BT setting and stop and start the sensor.

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  6. Hi Megan, I am so thankful I found your instructions on how to extend the life of these G6 sensors with the X2...it really does work! I'm new to the G6 and have extended every sensor by any extra 10 days. The first time I tried it, I had some problems but it ended up working without a code and had to calibrate which was a pain but worth being able to go an extra 10 days without changing it out.

    The second time I tried it, I ran into all sorts of issues and it even expired but I kept at it. I was at work and couldn't stick it into a microwave or anything but I stuck my pump into my RFID blocking purse so it couldn't sync with anything. Then, I ended up entering a previous code on my phone, let the warm up process begin for about 10 minutes, stopped the sensor and re-entered the correct code on the phone and followed the rest of your directions for restarting the sensor, turning off B.T. and letting the warm up happen. After the 2 hours 10 minutes, I turned back on my B.T., waited the 5 minutes and it synced with the transmitter and all my readings showed up on my phone. Once this happened, I brought my pump out of my RFID blocking purse and it synced right up.

    Now, I just extended my third sensor!! The first thing I did was put my pump into a faraday bag and put them in my back pocket and proceeded to follow your instructions; I even stuck my phone into my RFID blocking purse after I turned off the B.T. just so nothing could sync with the transmitter...all the sensor could do was warm up. I waited the 2 hours 10 minutes and followed the rest of your steps to sync it with my phone. Once that was done and readings were showing up, I brought the pump out of the faraday bag and it too synced right up without any issues. Hooray!!

    Thanks so much for posting how to extend these sensors!

    ReplyDelete

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