Comment by sublinear
1 day ago
Which ones?
The most humble meters come free in a kit, since you're really buying the test strips, and they all have onboard memory and an optional app.
It's extremely unlikely the owners of those meters would even be able to use any other app. There's no standard for the device data sent over bluetooth to the app. There's no USB port. Beyond 90 days of data (many meters have 99), A1C is preferred. Reverse engineering to support alternative apps is also unlikely since there are always new devices to hack.
SugarTrack, and other apps like it, sit in a weird deadzone. The most likely users either have a nicer meter that already does offline export, or they have a crappy meter but prefer the official app or tracking their stats on paper anyway (in their food journal). Again, the app is always optional unless it's from a super sketchy brand that isn't even cheaper.
There's no room left for doing weird somewhat low-tech things in principle anymore. The market has moved on. The most common layperson user wants integration across all their health apps. The most common nerd user buys the nerd device. The manufacturers have known this for at least a decade.
> It's extremely unlikely that owners of these meters would be able to use any other app.
I've been using Xdrip+ for 2 years now with the Dexcom CGM instead of their proprietary app. Works great and gives me the ability to export my data or sync it with a self hosted database if I so please. Why would I trust a corporation with my private health data when they have continuously shown that they will sell it or lose it to a hack the first chance they get.
You might want to consider using a self-hosted database to store your data. Telemetry Blocklist (free) can help prevent any apps from phoning home, but it's not specific to this use case. If you're concerned about data security, you might want to explore other options for storing your health data offline.
Thanks for the advice. XDrip+ doesn't require internet access, and if it did then my GrapheneOS phone has a toggleable network permission for each app that I could utilize if I was worried. I wanted my data stored and backed up on an external database that I then backup nightly as part of my Proxmox homelab. With an external database I can build /use other tools to pull data from the database for that I would not be able to do from a phone app.
I've used Xdrip before, and it's device support is not that great either.
I'm not arguing against the idea. I'm being realistic about what devs and users can do about this situation.
If you're lucky enough to find something that works, I'm not knocking that.
"Kimi decompile this proprietary APK and find the communication channels used to communicate with this model GCM. Let me know what software you need to to install to achieve this "
The world is your oyster if you have some self motivation.
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