{"id":3415,"date":"2015-01-22T14:22:06","date_gmt":"2015-01-22T14:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/?p=3415"},"modified":"2016-05-07T07:44:33","modified_gmt":"2016-05-07T07:44:33","slug":"a-dummys-guide-to-building-a-dexdrip-wearenotwaiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/2015\/01\/22\/a-dummys-guide-to-building-a-dexdrip-wearenotwaiting\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dummy’s Guide to Building an #xDrip – #WeAreNotWaiting"},"content":{"rendered":"
NOTE: <\/strong>xDrip used to be called DexDrip so you might find some references to the old name in this article.<\/div>\n

 
\n
\nIf you don’t know what a xDrip device is take a look at this page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"AdaFruit<\/a>I was tickled by someone on Reddit who linked to yesterday’s blog about the components required for a xDrip<\/a> which was entitled “An “Amateur” builds a module for DexDrip”. So here it is, this amateur’s guide to building an xDrip\/DexDrip. (The article actually referred to DexDrip as that what xDrip was called at the time.)<\/p>\n

Interested in further posts about this subject? Why not like this blog’s Facebook page<\/a> and get notified of updates, or click ‘Follow’ using the button at the bottom-right of this page.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nPLEASE READ THIS ADVISORY<\/strong><\/p>\n
\na) Never make a medical decision based on a reading from any<\/strong> CGM device, whether certified (eg Dexcom) or not (eg xDrip). Always perform a fingerstick blood glucose check first.
\nb) xDrip is a DIY product, decide for yourself if you wish to use it. Build it, test it, test it again and use (if you want to) in conjunction with a certified receiver.
\nc) The fact that it is working for us does not mean it’s right for you.
\nd) Never build a xDrip for anyone else and never sell one.
\ne) The blogs are provided for information only. We are not endorsing it for use by others, nor promoting it, just merely publishing our information as well as answering questions from previous blog articles.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A baptism of fire<\/del> heat<\/strong>
\nAlthough I received lots of offers of help to solder the components together the guys at work told me I’d have no trouble doing it myself, so I decided to try.
\nFirst I ordered the soldering kit (iron, solder, stand, helping hands, solder sucker) from eBay and a practice board to train myself with. The ‘helping hands<\/a>‘ turned out to be worth their weight in gold.
\nI soldered my first pin, inspected it and then soldered three more, choosing to solder them right next to each other as it seems that a common problem for amateurs is putting too much solder on. With four pins soldered I tested everything for continuity issues, to make sure no excess solder had spilled on to the adjacent contacts and shorted anything out.<\/p>\n

\n\"practice<\/a>\"practice<\/a><\/div>\n
\nSo far, so good.\n<\/div>\n
\"AdaFruit<\/a>Attach LiPo-charger connector to battery<\/strong>
\nMy AdaFruit LiPo-charger came with a connector, my battery came with a connector; they weren’t the same.
\nFirst job then was to cut the wires from each and solder the battery wires to the LiPo-charger connector.
\nNOTE: some people remove the connector terminal on the LiPo-charger and solder directly onto the charger board, I didn’t fancy this as I like to be able to disconnect batteries and swap them easily.
\nDO NOT connect battery to LiPo-charger.\n<\/div>\n
\"AdaFruit<\/a>Solder wires to AdaFruit charger<\/strong>
\nThe AdaFruit Li-Po battery charger then needed a power (red) and ground (black) wiring up.
\nFor my first try I soldered a four-piece-header-pin to the board and used jumper wires to connect to it, but within a week I removed the header pins & soldered the wires directly onto the PCB.
\n1. Red wire, solder on to 3.3v (marked as BAT on mine)<\/a>, first on the left as we look at that board. Make sure you don’t solder on to the 5v connector.
\n2. Black wire, solder on to one of the GND connectors<\/a>, for ease I chose the 3rd from the left.<\/div>\n
\"WIXEL<\/a>Connect wires for bluetooth module to WIXEL<\/strong>\"WIXEL<\/a>
\nPrepare four wires (red, black, green, blue) with one female header pin at one end and bare wire for soldering at the other.
\n1. Black, solder to GND<\/a>
\n2. Red, solder to 3V3<\/a>
\n3. Blue, solder to P1_6<\/a>
\n4. Green, solder to P1_7<\/a><\/p>\n

Other possible options<\/strong>: The header pin option is the simplest way to connect from WIXEL to HM-10.
\nThe hardest (but not too bad) option is to desolder the HM-10’s header pins, then solder wires with two bare ends onto the WIXEL and to the HM-10.
\nThe middle option is to solder wires with two bare ends, one end onto the WIXEL and one bare end onto the relevant header pin on the HM-10. Whilst this might seem easy I think it’s simpler to desolder the HM-10s header pins as above.\n<\/div>\n

\n\"WIXEL<\/a>Connecting the HM-10 Bluetooth module<\/strong>\"BLE<\/a>
\nWhat you do next depends on what you chose to do on the ‘Connect wires for bluetooth module to WIXEL’ step:
\nIf you soldered wires with female header connector at one end<\/strong> when you did the step above then all you need to do next is to slide the correct colour wire’s connector onto the correct HM-10 pin as per the diagram here<\/a>.
\nIf you soldered wires with two bare ends and left the header pins on the HM-10<\/strong> then you need to solder the bare wire ends to the correct HM-10 header pin as per the diagram here<\/a>. This is tricky to do (for me) but not impossible as I found when I made a second xDrip. I choose to wrap electrical tape around each soldered pin\/wire afterwards.
\nIf you soldered wires with two bare ends and removed the HM-10 header pins<\/strong> then just solder the bare ends onto the HM-10 as per the diagram here<\/a>.\n<\/div>\n
\"WIXEL<\/a>Solder LiPo-charger wires to WIXEL<\/strong>\"WIXEL<\/a>
\nWith the LiPo-charger disconnected from the battery (and micro-USB power) you now need to solder its wires to the WIXEL.
\nRed, solder to VIN<\/a>
\nBlack, solder to GND<\/a>\n<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
The finished product<\/strong>
\nHopefully by the end of it you’ll have something that looks like this:
\n\"20150109_205710\"<\/a>
\nNote: the picture shows header pin connections for the AdaFruit Li-Po charger but I’ve now soldered the wires directly to the board, it now has a much smaller footprint.\n<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Interested in further posts about this subject? Why not like this blog’s Facebook page<\/a> and get notified of updates, or click ‘Follow’ using the button at the bottom-right of this page.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOTE: xDrip used to be called DexDrip so you might find some references to the old name in this article.   If you don’t know what a xDrip device is take a look at this page. I was tickled by someone on Reddit who linked to yesterday’s blog about the \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[51,97,72,70,71,98,78],"class_list":["post-3415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-xdrip","tag-animas","tag-cgm","tag-cgm-in-the-cloud","tag-dexdrip-2","tag-nightscout","tag-wearenotwaiting","tag-xdrip-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3415"}],"version-history":[{"count":47,"href":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4475,"href":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions\/4475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circles-of-blue.winchcombe.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}