[Diabetes-Talk] Animas Vibe, I'm live!

[TALey at ups.com]

Hi

Audio Bolus Increment
I have my pump set to dose a half unit with each audio bolus button press. 

It appears for audio bolus, Animas limits the number of presses of the audio bolus button to 20 per audio bolus. So if your audio bolus increment is a half unit, like mine, and the pump will only allow up to 20 presses for a single audio bolus, then I can take a max of 10 units with a single audio bolus. 

My carb to insulin ratio is 6 grams per unit, so for me, that's a max of 60 grams with a single audio bolus. If I ever need more than ten units, no big deal, after the first audio bolus is finished, I just enter a second one. 

Low Battery Alarm
Usually, my low battery alarm comes at an unexpected time - by this, I mean not when I'm expecting a low cartridge alert. So if I changed my cartridge a day ago and get an alarm, I'm suspecting it is low battery, especially if it's been a while since a battery change. 

Here is an interesting feature to note regarding low battery you may find helpful as a blind user. At least on my Animas pump, after the low battery alarm sounds and it is cleared, from that point on, if I press any of the three buttons on the pump for working the menus, and the pump is "asleep" the pump beeps once when it wakes up. I think this is to alert everyone that the battery is low. So, if I suspect the last alarm was for low battery, I wait a while for the pump to go to sleep and then I press one of the arrow buttons. If it beeps, I know it was the low battery alert. 

Animas Pump Software
I believe Animas still provides software for Windows computers for uploading your pump data to your PC. This software also allows you to create or select different music patterns for the alarms. It was possible to have a different music pattern played for different types of alarms. As I recall, though, it uses the same music pattern for both low cartridge and low battery, so I was never able to get the pump to distinguish with the alarm sounds the difference between low battery and low cartridge. 

Tom