Built a little bedside screen for a colleague that just shows the number, so the phone can stay on the charger at night
A colleague of mine has T1D, and the thing she described as quietly wearing her down wasn't the highs or the lows — it was the ritual. Wake up, find the phone, unlock it, wait for the app, squint at a bright screen at 3am. Every single night.
So I spent a few weekends building a small screen for her nightstand that does exactly one thing: show the current value, the trend arrow and the last few hours as a graph. Nothing to unlock, nothing to swipe. During the day it sits there like a clock; at night it either dims right down or switches to a dim amber display that doesn't wreck your night vision. It talks to Dexcom Share, the same way the follower apps do.
Two things surprised me while building it. First, how much difference it makes to just glance at a number instead of performing a whole sequence of actions to see it — she checks more often now, and worries less. Second, the official developer route from Dexcom is deliberately delayed by an hour in the US and three hours in the EU, which makes it useless for anything live. Share is the only realistic path, which explains why the whole DIY corner of this world is built on it.
To be very clear: it's a hobby build and absolutely not a medical device. Values come through Share so they can lag, drop out or be plain wrong. Every actual decision still happens on her official app or with a fingerstick. The very first screen the thing shows says exactly that, because I wanted the device itself to keep reminding us both.
What I'm really curious about is how the rest of you handle nights. Does your phone live on the nightstand, or somewhere you have to reach for it? Would you want a screen like this to alarm on its own, or does a second alarm source just add noise to something your app already handles? And for anyone who's been at this a lot longer than me — what would you put on a screen like that which I probably haven't thought of?
(Everything I wrote is public under an open licence for anyone who likes tinkering, but I'll keep links out of the post — happy to point people the right way if the mods are fine with it.)