BluCon Review

I'm a total fan of searching, trying and knowing every possible thing about diabetes and all the technology that's out there!

About a month ago, I came across the blucon. Blucon is a small device that works with the libre to transmit to your phone. Ultimately, I was super interested in the device to get alerts for night time lows and why the heck not try it out...seems like something cool.

The blucon is a small circular device that fits on top of the libre sensor. It is slightly bulky upwards. It's the size of 3 libre sensors on top of each other.

The device costs $110 Dollars. However, it's a onetime purchase, unlike the Dexcom transmitter. The blucon lasts much longer as the battery in it is interchangeable. A little downfall is that the device is not waterproof. (so don't be forgetful like me and jump in the shower with it)

There are a few ways in which people attach the blucon on top of the libre, my favourite is using velcro dots. Other options are tegaderm on top of them to keep them in place or a blucon armband.

The following apps that I will mention, in which the blucon transmits reading too are all still "apps in progress". None are perfect but, I definitely prefer some over others.

Let's start off with the actual blucon app LinkBluCon. The application is definitely still a work in progress. I personally wasn't a fan of it due to connectivity issues, however, many have said it works well for them. While the libre and the blucon read differently due to different algorithms the app reads super accurate. The blucon has both a share app and links up to the apple watch. While the blucon is accurate without the need of calibrations both the main and share app are super basic. The alarms are loud, so you're sure to hear them, however, super annoying and repeat every 5 minutes with every update until you're back into range. The app does not have a solid graph, the graph creates itself using your highest and lowest blood-sugars during the selected hours of graph preview. Personally, I wasn't the greatest fan of that. I would rather have a graph showing my range targets. With the blucon app, I am a fan with how it is displayed on the Apple watch. It has the target zones you set and is even colour coded. The blucon app seems to convert the blood sugars from mg/dl and display them in mmol/l and hence it shows blood sugars in 2 decimal places.

The second application I tried is spike, I would    say this app seems to suit my needs better and has a much better set up. While once again its a work in progress and infect in order to download it, you need to download it through test flight as it isn't available in the App Store yet. 

The application, similar to the blucon doesn't have a set graph, it creates it as your numbers fluctuate. Something I really like about the app is the ability to colour code the graph depending on blood sugar ranges. ex.  I colour coded anything below 4.5 is in red, anything above 7.5 in yellow and anything above 10 to be in orange. That way at a glance I have an idea of how my blood sugars are doing, big picture. Also, at the bottom, there is a pie chart which is a neat way to present the data. You are able to customize your alarms and determine the snooze timing of it. Another thing I like about the app is that it shows you the difference in your blood sugars to 2 decimal places. This gives me a good idea of how fast or steady I am climbing or dropping. Having an idea using numbers helps me think ahead and avoid overriding a pump I can see I am not drastically climbing. This app needs a calibration every 12 hours and 2 calibrations once a sensor is started, similar to Dexcom. For the people in the US who need to change their libre out every 10 days, the blucon will continue reading numbers up to 14 days using the app. So while you can not use your libre meter the past 10 days the blucon will work the full 2 weeks.

Unlike linkblucon, at this current moment spike does not have a share app.

Other apps that people use that I have not tried are night scout, night guard, and xdrip. Some are better features on the android phones than iPhones due to security reason on the iPhone. However, as the apps keep developing they will function better and better with fewer bugs. And eventually be available in the app store