It's very important in Software development to know when to pull the plug on something that isn't working. At least whenever that happens you've learnt important lessons along the way.

My latest project I was working on was a way to improve my Diabetes management. Right now I have a glucose monitor that records up to 450 measurements. You can get a special plug for it that connects to serial and you can download those measurements on to your computer. The software then graphs things for you nicely and you can see important trends. Frankly it's great - except that it's serial! RS-232! .. WHY?

So this is fine, I guess, but what I really want to be able to do is record how much insulin I'm taking, what meal I'm eating - and to get insulin amounts based on the carbs in a meal and my current insulin dosages. There's a nice piece of software called Diabetes Pilot which runs on Palm OS and WinCE and Win32 x86 which does just that. It's priced fairly. It does not, however, read from my glucose monitor (or anyones for that matter).

So I came up with an idea.. I want the next generation - a combination of glucose monitoring and diabetes management. I want it mobile and I want it wireless. So here's the plan: Get a Windows Mobile device, get a RS-232 to Bluetooth adaptor, implement my Glucose monitors protocol and download its data in to Diabetes Pilots database.

• Step 1: Implement Glucose Monitor protocol. This went pretty well. This device is not open at all - which required some reverse engineering. With a fair bit of work, snooping on the protocol and searching the web, myself and another guy called Chris Ridd have managed to get together a good webpage on the protocol of the Optium Xceed blood glucose monitor. Chris implemented the protocol in Python so that he could run it on Linux and MacOSX instead of just Windows. I implemented it in Smalltak (Public store - see package OptiumXceed) so that I could run it on the ARM processor and x86 (Windows Mobile and regular Windows Desktop)
• Step 2: Reverse engineer Diabetes Pilots database. Simple, this turned out to be sqlite3 - found this with my friend James. Smalltalk already has a sqlite3 database driver for VisualWorks. I plugged that in, looked at the tables for Diabetes Pilot - vwalla.
• Step 3: Download results from Glucose monitor in to a running copy of Diabetes Pilot. A complete success - no problems here what so ever. I can now sync my glucose measurements in to this other program. It provides the same sorts of graphs (though not as detailed, but better looking) as Precision Link (the software that is for the Xceed glucose monitor).
• Step 4: Purchase an RS-232 to Bluetooth adaptor and get that working. I already bought an RS-232 to USB adaptor, that's what I'm using on my laptop right now. So I know the cable works, I know adapting the cable works.. however, my $250 BlueportXP which I got a week ago has been a complete and utter failure. We cannot get even the simplest of RS-232 devices to work with it. I can talk to the device itself, I just cannot get anything to talk through it. This was most disappointing.
• Step 5: Test all of it on a PocketPC before purchasing my own PocketPC. I haven't done this step.. read below for the final decision I've made.

So it comes to this. PocketPCs do come with serial adaptors - if you purchase them. But, the cables are unwieldly. It's just plain impractical. Unfortunately, I'm reaching for next gens diabetes management and next gen is too far for the makers of the glucose devices. Right now there is one bluetooth glucose monitor being prepared to be sold by a German company. Their estimated release is mid next year - if we're lucky.

Without the bluetooth, this approach just isn't worth it. Ultimately, it would be best if the two devices were one - and the German company making the GlucoTel is intending to do just that - although their first version won't include a food database like Diabetes Pilot has. All in all, this is disappointing. Without the bluetooth I don't want to go ahead - so I'm canning the project.

It's nice to see that Smalltalk made the software development part of this project really easy. I guess I'll just stick with the basics for now and perhaps in a few years time the industry will have matured a bit more.

Now.. on to my next project!