CamAPS FX follower

[mr-mjb]

Hi all,
This week a new feature for CamAPS FX was released allowing to download the app on a follower phone and setup as “companion” mode based on an invite from the main user, see here - https://youtu.be/q-dRCGMZA_E

Unfortunately there is no iOS app available so many followers are unable to use this app. This has coincided with them introducing up to and hour delay in data upload to diasend so there is no method for real-time monitoring of basal, carbs, bolus etc.

My “idea” is to ask if it would be possible to investigate how the app is working and see if xdrip+ could act as a follower as the companion app does and upload into nightscout?

[Navid200]

If you can get the app to show notifications, xDrip can already get the readings shown in the notifications. So, what you are asking for already exists.

[mr-mjb]

Yes I get your point, but in CamAPS all data in in the app.
i was thinking more along the lines on how the web follower works for libre 3. On reflection maybe this doesn’t need to be in xdrip, and if it’s possible to act as this CamAPS companion it could be done using a script or nightscout plugin directly.

[burnedikt]

Hi, I'm the maintainer of diasend-nightscout-bridge which worked great up until diasend was decomissioned and replaced by glooko. Nowadays, for CamAPS users, I see three potential ways to somehow get the data of CamAPS Fx into nightscout:

1. Setup a "fake" companion which receives all the data of the CamAPS Fx companion and forwards it to nightscout (not to be confused with xDrip's companion mode, which only reads data from notifications, whereas CamAPS Fx Companion mode mirrors all its data to another device). I have shortly tried this but didn't find a way to "intercept" the data sent between the two devices
2. Retrieve the data somehow from glooko.com and forward it to nightscout - glooko per se offers an API but the reduced availability of data via their user interface combined with the fact that the data is only uploaded very hour or so, does not make this a great option
3. Intercept the outgoing data on the device via an app like xDrip and forward it to nightscout. Not very promising as it would probably require root access to the Android device and even then may or may not work

[danbarker]

Hi @burnedikt, just checking to see if you have had any more thoughts about this since the last comment? We have started using CamAPS and need a way to follow on iOS. I was thinking of making a cloud-hosted follower that would run the official CamAPS follow app (eg in a virtual android machine?) and read the data out from it, eg with OCR? And then I was thinking of making a follow app but having now seen nightscout, perhaps can just use that! That's about as far as I got, would love any input. Another thought was to try reverse engineering the follow app eg MITM it to find its underlying APIs

[burnedikt]

@danbarker For reference, my setup currently looks as follows:

• Android Phone running CamAPS
• xDrip running as Companion App (not to be confused with CamAPS Companion) on the same Android Phone, thereby collecting the CGM data directly from CamAPS and sending it to ...
• ... nightscout instance
• multiple iOS devices that simply consume the data from nightscout via either the native nightguard app or the nightscout web app (xDrip for iOS would also be an option and there are a ton of other iOS clients / "downloaders" that can show the data from nightscout out there)

This gets us into the situation of seeing the CGM values in near-realtime. However, all treatments (boli, carbs) are missing. To get those, the only viable option right now is to use nightscout-connect and configure it to load the treatment data from glooko. The downside here is, that there's a huge delay in the data since the glooko api is not intended for real-time use and CamAPS only sends data to glooko once per hour or so. So for near-real-time monitoring, this is not sufficient and the reason why I don't use that solution right now.

For near-real-time monitoring, the best solution in my eyes would be to reverse-engineer the API used by CamAPS Companion Mode since that has all the required data in real-time. Running a second virtual or physical android device with CamAPS as you proposed could work, but I don't see that it'll be easy, reliable and cheap to extract the data from this Companion (e.g. via OCR like you proposed). I tried to reverse-engineer the CamAPS API through MITM but was not successful, likely due to certificate pinning within CamAPS. To be fair, I also did not invest a lot of time into it but it's still the most promising approach imho. There's of course also the option to get an additional Android Phone and just use it additionally to the iOS device, just as a CamAPS Companion.

Personally, I am not investing a lot of time into this anymore as I'm fine just being able to monitor the CGM (although of course treatments would be great to see, it's not a hard requirement, contrary to my initial beliefs). Also, the issue might solve itself anyhow once CamAPS becomes available for iOS in which case you can just use the CamAPS companion mode.

[danbarker]

Thanks for your response!

I managed to get XDrip set up. I didn't initially understand from the thread above that you are able to run XDrip and CamAPS simultaneously on the same phone - although enough people have tried to explain that above, I think this may have been partly because i only saw a snippet of the thread when coming in from Google on mobile. So hopefully your explanation will make it even clearer for anyone else coming in if they make the same mistake I did :)

I'm going to get Nightscout set up too. Just having CGM should be enough for now, I was just very motivated yesterday as we are in the hospital and have switched over, losing our Dexcom Follow ability. And hopefully they do bring out the iOS app soon enough!

[Navid200]

@burnedikt
I have 2 questions and one comment.
1- Is the user carrying only one device for all the three options you have mentioned?
2- Is there anything wrong with using the xDrip companion app mode on the same device that runs CamAPS, and why that is not one of your options?

If the user can carry two devices, the other device can have xDrip on it connected to the medical slot of a G6 and sending the data to Nightscout.

[burnedikt]

1- Is the user carrying only one device for all the three options you have mentioned?

Yes, the user only Carrie's one device which runs the CamAPS Fx app, which in turn connects to a Dexcom g6 and the insulin pump (Dana I pump or ypsomed pump).

2- Is there anything wrong with using the xDrip companion app mode on the same device that runs CamAPS, and why that is not one of your options?
If the user can carry two devices, the other device can have xDrip on it connected to the medical slot of a G6 and sending the data to Nightscout.

Via xdrip's companion mode it's possible to "scrape" the cgm readings but not the treatments or temp basal adjustments that the CamAPS loop frequently issues. These treatments go unnoticed as they're not published as Android notifications. However, the treatments are quite relevant in a remote monitoring scenario, e.g. for kids.

Personally, I don't think xdrip can help here more than what it already does (intercepting the cgm values from the notifications) as the other relevant data (treatments) is simply not accessible. It's either sent to glooko.com (every hour or so) and to any CamAPS Companion. Also to clarify, for anyone on an android phone, the CamAPS companion is the logical choice as it shows all the data natively and without any 3rd party solution, so the "problem" mostly affects caretakers who use iOS devices personally.

The fourth option that I might have forgotten to add previously is to make the caretakers adopt Android instead of iOS ;-)

[BILLYEDIT]

Hello, we are using the CamAPS app alongside xdip on our master phone and follow phones. Its all works very well, on a pixel watch too. :) Xdrip is fantastic, with its predictions etc, it would be amazing if it could access the additional camAPS info (carbs and bols). Here's hoping it will happen one day. Leaving this hello in case something devlelops in the future.
All the best.
BB

[beschikbaar-online]

Hi all,

This week a new feature for CamAPS FX was released allowing to download the app on a follower phone and setup as “companion” mode based on an invite from the main user, see here - https://youtu.be/q-dRCGMZA_E
the youtube video is not
For anyone available It's privatie<

Unfortunately there is no iOS app available so many followers are unable to use this app. This has coincided with them introducing up to and hour delay in data upload to diasend so there is no method for real-time monitoring of basal, carbs, bolus etc.

My “idea” is to ask if it would be possible to investigate how the app is working and see if xdrip+ could act as a follower as the companion app does and upload into nightscout?