I’ve seen some comments about the (rather irritating) touchy Tslim x2 touchscreen. I don’t know if they could modify the screen sensitivity through software adjustments (doubtful - seems like a hardware issue), I have some thoughts on improvements that could be made which would eliminate some of the problems. (I invite all additions and corrections (or scoldings about trying to cheat the 10 unit thing).
Put a cancel button on the Fill Tubing screen. OK, OK, I shouldn’t be here, but I screwed up on your touchy screen while aiming at the Fill Cannula button. It’s a small screen. So now I must either pump 10 units of precious insulin or work a fakeout (Remove the cartridge before ‘pumping’, pump air and stop it after 10, then insert the cartridge again BEFORE the pump starts detecting insulin. That ‘before’ is most important; you don’t want to damage the piston by inserting a cartridge while it’s adjusting.)
After inserting a new cannula and priming it and agreeing that it’s done priming, just automatically start the insulin again. Why do I need a screen asking me if I want to restart once I have affirmed that the cannula is full? If I don’t want to restart (and I can’t think of a reason I wouldn’t), I’ll go to the menu and stop the insulin. (Anyone else forget to restart it on occasion? Bet you have. Fortunately the pump does start yelling at you after it’s been off for some time.)
Come up with a larger, more centralized login routine. Space the buttons out better so you don’t accidentally miss when you were aiming for the 3 and have start over again. Again. And again. And again. (I despise you, tiny number buttons.) Or perhaps only show the one, then make it disappear once pressed and only show the two in a different space on the screen, then disappear and move to show the 3.
Give us the option to use larger fonts. At 3am, my eyes are all bleary and reading the warning which woke me up (I hate you middle of the night alarms) is nigh impossible.
#1 and #2 get me sooo often! I also find it irritating that there’s no “back” button when you want to fill tubing without changing a cartridge.
Another one that bugs me is how easy it is to accidentally “pocket push” the bolus button. Most often when my pump beeps it’s because I slipped my pump into my pocket without turning it off and it hit the bolus button. 2 minutes later my pump is mad because I didn’t finish my bolus. (I know you can set this to vibrate- after forgetting to hit all the check marks a few too many times to finish blousing and going high later I have it on beeps. Otherwise I’d have it on vibrate. Still, having a buzzing thing is still irritating!!)
That’s another thing! All those check marks for giving a bolus- I always forget to push that last one! I get why there’s so many (so you don’t accidentally give yourself the wrong amount and go low/high later), but still…. Why so many!? I doubt everyone takes the time to read how many hundredths of a unit they’re giving themselves 3 times every time they eat.
I’d also appreciate more options on the ‘options’/settings menu. Like instead of alerts being listed under ‘My Pump’ I’d appreciate it being its own bar! Now it feels like every time I want to adjust something I have to really search for it, unless I want to dig up the pump manual and go through that doozy.
Maybe this counts as a separate topic, but I also wish there was a simpler way to adjust the screen brightness, like on an iPhone or something. Now you have to push like 15 buttons to get to the adjustment screen. (Hmmm trying to find that setting now and I can’t cause it’s buried under like 5 other drop down menus. I’ll find it- just give me a few seconds ) Eventually, maybe a sensor for automatically adjusting the screen brightness might help? Tandem should really team up with Apple for some of these things…. Remind me how much we pay for this device that we use more often than our phones? (Rhetorical question)
I’ve found that if you get a screen protector (especially a thick one) for your pump the screen isn’t as sensitive. That helps!
Yes, that is most annoying. It happens to me frequently and it isn’t from putting it in a pocket, it’s from holding the pump to put in back into my belt clip. This seems like a problem with the oversensitive touch screen. (And I do have a screen protector. I had one before I even got the pump. Makes me wonder how bad it would be without.) The Medtronic had a button you could use to bolus and I really, really, really miss that thing.
Add a physical button for bolusing. Not everything has to be on the stupid touchy touchscreen.
Speaking of alarms…
Include a record of the past 10 or so alarms somewhere. My Medtronic had this and sometimes it really helped. (Like when I get up at 3am bleary-eyed and accidentally pressed the OK button and didn’t manage to read the dumb thing.) Maybe there is a way to access this, but if so I haven’t found it. It would be really useful for seeing what date was on the replace the transmitter site alarm as well.
Provide a way to access the time until the transmitter battery runs out of juice. I recently stuck one in that didn’t have enough life left and the pump told me to remove it. So if you know it doesn’t have enough battery life left, you know how much battery life it has. LET US SEE IT SOMEWHERE! (Makes me anxious not knowing how much time is left, particularly when I know it’s getting close which is something you tell me and that is STILL MORE PROOF THAT YOU KNOW THIS VALUE.) (I had to go online to figure out how to remove the battery without removing the new transmitter site. My insurance company is pretty stingy with those things.)
I’m not a pump user but I try to stay current so take this with a block of salt.
The log is under Home\Options\History. I looked but couldn’t find it in t:connect where it would be more useful.
The transmitter battery alert is in Home\Options\History\CGM History but since the Tandem pumps generate so many alerts I’m not going to say that is a solution. Consider using the Dexcom app to always do sensor and transmitter changes. The app will force you to pair a new transmitter when the battery won’t last another sensor session before letting you input a new sensor code.
@Chris, you are correct, there are a listing of the alarms there. Thanks for pointing them out, I had not found them before. (My pump educator may have pointed them out, but I clearly forgot that bit amongst all the other things I was told.)
Having looked at them, I find them rather disappointing. They only show what the alarm was, not what the actual values were. So in the first case, it would still be helpful in seeing the last alarm (provided you knew if it was a pump or a CGM alarm), although the print is even tinier than the print on the actual alarm. But it is there. I think this is what @6yGodsGr was talking about. (And, in that case, I agree with her about making it more obvious on the screen.) However, in the second case, it does not tell me the time left on the sensor, only that the alarm occurred. So that is useless for figuring out how much time is left on the current sensor site or sensor battery.
So i would suggest they put them all on one screen - CGM and Pump Alarms - and show the actual alarm text as I recall Disetronic doing it. Then I could at least see the values. Although it seems to me they could just put the sensor site and sensor battery life under an entry like CGM Info under My CGM where it would actually make sense.
I haven’t had the fill tubing issue. But the 1-2-3 lock trips me up so often. I’ve complained about it, and everyone just tells me that it’ll get better with practice. I’ve been using this pump for two years. I’m still annoyed by the lock screen.
I’ve also done the “inadvertently start a bolus while putting the pump in my pocket/on my belt” thing multiple times, although I’ve gotten better about remembering to hit the power button to turn the screen off before putting the pump in my pocket.
That’s what the “quick bolus” is for. I don’t use it. But you can if you want. It allows you to use the power button to program a bolus. Also, if your phone is compatible, you can do a remote bolus from your phone, so at least you’re using that touchscreen instead of the pump’s.
I’m assuming you mean the Dexcom transmitter. It would be good to have the battery life available. (And it’s really annoying that it sends off alarms telling me I’ll need to replace the transmitter… a month from now. Gee, thanks.) That said, you can go into the Dexcom app to see what date you started the transmitter. It’s supposed to last 90 days. (Mine often lasts a little over 100 days, so I can get one extra sensor in. But it’s supposed to be that one transmitter lasts for nine sensors, which is three boxes.)
All that said… My endo said Tandem will soon be announcing their next generation pump, so hopefully some of this will be fixed/improved.
This option was turned off on my pump and the pump educator didn’t mention it. (That I would have remembered since I used it on my previous pump.) That’s two things of interest I’ve learned in this conversation.
As for using the phone to bolus, my phone doesn’t allow it… yet. I am sort of hoping they will develop support for it as they have some other phones recently because this is mine for the next several years.
True, but can all be done by modifying the software (even the quick bolus button could be done via software if it wasn’t already in there). So they could add these features to the current pump in the next software update if they wanted to.
Interesting. So I’ll be eligible for an upgrade when it comes out next year. But probably won’t be able to get it because the way they were able to make it so small is by moving all the controls to your phone. My old Android phone still isn’t included with the current remote bolus software, and that page specifically says it’s for iPhone users. Oh well. My current pump works well for me. But that does resolve the touchscreen issues we’re grousing about here, by eliminating the touchscreen. Not sure what happens if you lose or break your phone (or have to turn it off for a long flight or something), but I’m sure there’s a contingency plan for that.
Side note: We call it a coin pocket now, but that little pocket in your jeans was originally intended to hold a pocket watch. Jeans date back to the 1849 California gold rush. (Overalls were made out of spare tent material, designed for prospectors wading into the river to pan for gold.)
I love using the quick bolus thing! My endo saw how often I use it and commented “you obviously aren’t eating exactly 50 carbs for lunch every day” (I have it set on 10g increments) but I love that I don’t have to take my pump out of my pocket! Funny how much the little things make a difference in day-to-day living with T1D.
Does anyone else’s tandem pump have trouble keeping the time? My pump keeps running slow. I thought it was a glitch in my old tandem but then I got a new one (moved to Europe and stuck with the tandem) and this pump has the same issue. Every few weeks I have to reset the time and after a month it’ll be 5 minutes behind again.
I suppose that my expectation that a “sophisticated” “intelligent” device that I’m trusting to keep me alive would be able to tell time properly was just a bit too much?
Yeah, mine does, but it only slips a few minutes over a period of months. If you Google this, you’ll find it’s pretty common for Tslims. Come to think of it, my Medtronic did the same thing. Honestly, it doesn’t bother me because everything used to be like this. (I’m thinking of the ancient past… before we got smart phones which can get the correct time from the internet… )
) Eventually, maybe a sensor for automatically adjusting the screen brightness might help? Tandem should really team up with Apple for some of these things…. Remind me how much we pay for this device that we use more often than our phones? (Rhetorical question)
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