CPAPtalk.com

As mentioned in another thread I'm testing some options for wireless CPAP software.

If anyone can tell me if your SD works with an extra file that would help move things forward.

The steps to check this would be:
1). Using Windows or Mac, create a new file on your SD card. Can be anything, like hello.txt.
2). Put the SD card back in the Phillips, turn on, and see if any error is displayed.
3). Go back to your computer and see if the file is still there. Delete the file you just created.

You do not need a special SD card to try this, it's just about knowing if it works with an extra file.

Any help appreciated,
FM

I have a 660 PR S1...I can test it.
Should I put it in the P series folder or just outside it in the SD card?

Okay...just did the test...both outside the P series folder and inside it.
The PR S1 660 didn't seem to care.
No error messages or anything when I inserted the altered SD card. Same quick "reading" of the card and then promptly took me back to main menu.

Using Windows 7...PR S1 660 BiPap Pro machine...SD card is the plain SD card that came with the machine.

Excellent Pugsy, thank you.

Next up I need to test with my wireless cards to see how long the 660 keeps power on to the SD slot.

Since I live next to cpap.com, I'm going to see if they might let me stop by and test one.

Pugsy wrote:Okay...just did the test...both outside the P series folder and inside it.
The PR S1 660 didn't seem to care.
No error messages or anything when I inserted the altered SD card. Same quick "reading" of the card and then promptly took me back to main menu.

Using Windows 7...PR S1 660 BiPap Pro machine...SD card is the plain SD card that came with the machine.

FattyMagoo wrote: Since I live next to cpap.com, I'm going to see if they might let me stop by and test one.

Well, that must be some really fast service when you order from them. lol

This is cool, I'm going to be watching this thread with considerable interest.

What kind of card do you have? I'm looking at a Toshiba FlashAir 8GB which claims to be fully functional and transparent to the device. Two things are holding me back. One is the fact that I'd need to transfer the data using a "browser tool". It would be cooler if I could map it to a drive and forget about it (failing that I'd imagine that there might be a way to run a batch job to fetch it every day or so). The other issue is that I'm not entirely sure I want to spend $42 pimping my cpap. I will concede that if it saves the wear and tear on my card slot it could be cheaper than a repair bill down the road. I can just see my DME grumbling because of my excessive use of the efficacy data.

Diggah wrote:I'm looking at a Toshiba FlashAir 8GB which claims to be fully functional and transparent to the device. Two things are holding me back. One is the fact that I'd need to transfer the data using a "browser tool". It would be cooler if I could map it to a drive and forget about it (failing that I'd imagine that there might be a way to run a batch job to fetch it every day or so).

I just looked at that and it seems we are tantalizingly close to being able to do this, but blocked by the the simple lack of SMB sharing in addition to or instead of the browser interface.

>>What kind of card do you have?

All of them. . At least any I can find, that are not ruled out by inherent limitations like the eyefi card.

The Toshiba is a nice card, but it turns out it requires certain files to exist on the card. ResMed machines don't allow for extra files, and if you try to hide them it still doesn't work. I have been able to create a special hidden partition of files that works with ResMed, but the cards like the Toshiba that require their own files then don't know where to look for them so it breaks the WiFi functionality.

It would help everyone if there were one card that worked for all devices. For one, the more time you spend supporting and validating different products, the less time you get to create useful functionality.

Another concern is that even if Phillips can be made to work today, if this becomes popular what's to prevent them from trying to lock it down like ResMed does? Solving this problem for ResMed means it will be more difficult for anyone to deny us the right to use our own machines as we see fit.

One option I'm looking at is modifying the firmware of the WiFi cards. This would solve the problem and also provide lots of new possible features. Most of the time it's not possible to just buy electronics off the shelf and start adding your own firmware functionality, but it may be possible in this case.

Independently of all this, probably the next biggest obstacle is finding out how often our machines allow the SD cards to have power. Should know the answer to that soon...

Diggah wrote:This is cool, I'm going to be watching this thread with considerable interest.

What kind of card do you have? I'm looking at a Toshiba FlashAir 8GB which claims to be fully functional and transparent to the device. Two things are holding me back. One is the fact that I'd need to transfer the data using a "browser tool". It would be cooler if I could map it to a drive and forget about it (failing that I'd imagine that there might be a way to run a batch job to fetch it every day or so). The other issue is that I'm not entirely sure I want to spend $42 pimping my cpap. I will concede that if it saves the wear and tear on my card slot it could be cheaper than a repair bill down the road. I can just see my DME grumbling because of my excessive use of the efficacy data.

FattyMagoo wrote:
Another concern is that even if Phillips can be made to work today, if this becomes popular what's to prevent them from trying to lock it down like ResMed does?

Back when the System One was rolled out three years ago Philips made a big deal of the fact that their machine's SD card would work even if the user had put it in their camera to take pictures and then put it back in the CPAP (up to capacity, of course). I'd suggest they already have the mindset that the machine should keep on recording data to the card no matter what we do.

The other thing to consider (especially if power-on issues become a sticky point) is that the PRS1 system will check the card and write to it when it has been put back in -- for instance when I've left it with my computer overnight. The waveform data does not get placed on the card, but all the event data and their time of occurrence. It allows EncoreViewer to report everything that might otherwise have been lost. You might find there is an advantage to this, tricking the machine to send the general data via wifi whenever we stick the wifi card in the slot.

--SleepyCPAP

good to know this kind of thing, thanks for the tip -

SleepyCPAP wrote:

FattyMagoo wrote:
The other thing to consider (especially if power-on issues become a sticky point) is that the PRS1 system will check the card and write to it when it has been put back in -- for instance when I've left it with my computer overnight. The waveform data does not get placed on the card, but all the event data and their time of occurrence. It allows EncoreViewer to report everything that might otherwise have been lost. You might find there is an advantage to this, tricking the machine to send the general data via wifi whenever we stick the wifi card in the slot.

--SleepyCPAP

FattyMagoo wrote:
... Independently of all this, probably the next biggest obstacle is finding out how often our machines allow the SD cards to have power. Should know the answer to that soon...

The biggest obstacle is not "how often" power is allowed, rather "how much" power the machines provide to SD card slot. My guess is, when you are using the machine at night, power is on continually.

Having said that, I came so close to setting up fully automated file copy from my cpap machine over wifi. I have full remote access to the Transcend Wifi SD card i.e. setup sshd service on the card firmware and can copy *any* files (not just camera files) from the card remotely from my linux desktop. However, I was very very disappointed to learn that my PRS1 60 keeps beeping saying "SD card error" when the Transcend Wifi SD is inserted. First, I thought it was because of the size or type of card, however, PRS1 doesn't seem to care for all the combination of cards I tried (SD, SDHC with different size 2,4,8 GB, cards with tons of other files present etc) and it worked with all of them but the Transcend Wifi SD! This led me to believe that there may not be enough power on the card slot of PRS1 to boot the firmware therefore, PRS1 thinks the card is bad. I have one last ditch effort left to try i.e. setup to externally power the card and try it.

On a side note, if anyone has Transcend Wifi SD card and wanted to have full command-line access to automate copying camera files or any files on card, you can read my HOWTO blog post here http://blog.selvans.net/2014/05/howto-s ... cp-to.html

Thanks
-Arul

FattyMagoo wrote: Another concern is that even if Phillips can be made to work today, if this becomes popular what's to prevent them from trying to lock it down like ResMed does? Solving this problem for ResMed means it will be more difficult for anyone to deny us the right to use our own machines as we see fit.

I think the reason S9 machines can't stand non-standard files on the card is due to amateurish software coding, not due to a deliberate "lock out" function.