Closed Loop, The Achilles Heel.
In the wash-up, I need to split my reflections on the trial into two, the first being about the intensity of being a trial participant, the ‘LabRat’ experience, and the second being about the technology itself. I have written quite a lot about my feelings about being a 'LabRat' and I'd like to make some comment about the technology itself. The technology is extraordinary, the ‘algorithm’ that runs all the calculations, the engineering of the components needed to translate radio signals to bluetooth and back again. But there is an achilles heel that I discovered on that final night. I was shocked on waking to do my calibration check, to find that I HAD dropped to 2.9 and the pump alarm and and smart phone alarms had NOT woken me. The thing that woke me was the fact that I had set a 3am alarm on my phone to wake and do the calibration test. My night watcher phoned to see if I was OK, as I was busily drinking the orange juice and contemplating whether it would wreck the tri...