Completing AndroidAPS objectives – the developer way

Note: I will not answer any questions how to skip the objectives. If you are a developer I’m sure you figure it out within a few hours, but if not, you probably should complete them as you need a basic understanding how the system works.

Currently I’m testing Android APS with a second pump to get some experience with it and to evaluate if we can use it for our research. Apperently it has an education feature called „Objectives“ which teaches basic knowlege about the system. Even though I think the basic idea is very good, I don’t like the implementation. I thought I should try it, just in case there is something for me to learn but after I finished the first two of them (which were indeed interesting) they asked me questions about their documentation… Yes maybe people should be encuraged to read the documentation, but why should I know how to monitor children?? Or how the documentation author wants me to backup my data ??? And why are the answers written to confuse the reader instead of making the user think about the question ?!

I hated this part so much that I went straight to the AndroidAPS gitter room and complained to the developers that they are wasting my lifetime (and theirs too) with these questions. In my rage I totally fogot that they are nice people, spending their free time to write this application… Well, I apologized a short time later, but my point holds true. These „Objectives“ are a complete waste of time (in my optinion). We as developers are not in charge to keep stupid people from doing stupid things. We should warn them, but that’s all. We should not annoy other interested developers / scientists… I went to the code and looked up the answers to pass this objective.

Afterwards, I came back to my „maybe I should try it“ mode. But the next objective wanted me not only to enact some temporary basals by hand, but also to wait several days … Why should I do the looping by hand??? I do this 30 years by now. That’s what the looping software is supposed to do… And the waiting time serves no reason at all (in my oppinion). But the objective says I could ask for a shortcut code … and now the interesting part … when the developers *review my data* and think I’m experienced enough to start looping. I immediately entered rage mode again: „Who are they to decide if I’m good enough to use this software!“ I thought (Obviously this violated my professional integrity). But ok … I went back to the code to find out how they generate their shortcut code. After finding the respective code I used some standard tools to generete the code by myself. Done. It can be so easy 🙂

FAQ Miniloop

Some people liked my board and got a free sample 🙂 Unfortunately, I’m now faced with some support issues and want to summarize the most important aspects for getting started:

  • First of all: You do this at your own risk! I can’t give any kind of guarantees or support for the board or what you do with it. Please respect local law and regulations when you build your board.
  • NEVER power your Pi with a power supply when the board is connected. The board has no safety functions at all and I have no idea what happens with the voltage regulator or the connected battery when you connect a power supply to the Pi.
  • You have to solder one jumper on the board which was not described in the previous post. I made a picture to show you how to connect. However, in general you should consult the schematic to answer such questions.
  • The oref0 setup doesn’t support the board directly, but you can follow the install instructions for general RFM69HCW radio modules here.

 

BUT NOTE: I stopped working on this board, as Adafruit released the RFM69HCW Bonnet board, which is a Pi HAT with a radio transceiver and a OLED display. It’s also supported by the oref0-setup. I’ll post some more information about it soon.