Newbie with Airsense11 - SD card question

[DeputyDawg]

I have been my Airsense11 a week now. I didnt even know, until discovering this group, that it has and SD slot.

I would very much like to use one and send the data to SleepHQ

Resmed (of course) told me it HAS to be their brand, HAS to be 8GB and will only save data for a year then re-write over it. But I would have to
order this which takes days. I want to start using it today.

From reading here it would seem I can go out to my local best buy and get one

1) Is there a specific kind of SD card (did I read correctly about SDHC?)?
2) Certain brand better than others?
3) Looks like it needs to be formatted as Fat32 - I'm on a mac which appears to do that - will this work?
4) When I plug in the SD card, does it just start writing? or do I need to do anything
5) Will the data I have for the past week be there?
6) any other questions I forgot to ask

Thanks so much for your help!!!

[jdm5]

Welcome!

Any SD card will work…suggest 32gb or less. I personally would “splurge” for a brand name but shouldn’t really matter (they are so cheap these days).

Also suggest getting OSCAR - free/open source software to import and present your data: https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/

Good luck!

[Pugsy]

1) Is there a specific kind of SD card (did I read correctly about SDHC?)?

No any kind of card will work along with any brand.
It does NOT have to be a ResMed brand card....and it does NOT have to be limited to the 8 GB card.
Don't go getting huge capacity cards. Waste of money because the machine will eventually likely overwrite the data but past machines didn't overwrite at exactly the one year mark. We don't know how soon the AirSense 11 might start overwriting since it hasn't been available all that long.

3) Looks like it needs to be formatted as Fat32 - I'm on a mac which appears to do that - will this work?

Actually the machine will take care of doing any formatting if it is needed when you insert the SD card into the cpap machine. It's unlikely that you will have do actually do any formatting yourself.

2) Certain brand better than others?

No....I tell people to go to WalMart and get the cheapest generic SD card that they can find.
32 GB is MORE than sufficient but it is getting harder to find the smaller capacity cards.
I am currently using a 16 GB SD card made by Sandisk. Works fine. I had been using an 8 GB Sandisk card but some how or other I misplaced it and had to go get another and 8 GB was no longer available. 16 GB was the smallest they had.
In truth...most likely 2 GB is all that is needed but they just cost so much more now than the larger cards it's stupid to pay more for smaller when smaller isn't any better anyway.

4) When I plug in the SD card, does it just start writing? or do I need to do anything

When you plug the SD card into your machine it will write whatever information it has stored in its internal memory to the SD card.
Please note that you will only have the summary numbers stored in the internal memory.
The detailed data files which give us the detailed data and graphs have to go directly to the SD card and when they aren't...they are lost forever. No way to retrieve the files.

So the machine MUST be in the machine during the night to get those detailed data files.

All you will get with your first download is going to be summary usage only....some AHI, pressure, leak numbers only.
No detailed graphs will be available on your past nights of use.

5) Will the data I have for the past week be there?

See above....you will only have summary numbers only for the past week or past whatever.
SD card MUST be in the machine to get the detailed data.
So you will have some data but it is going to be very limited data for any nights prior to when you insert the SD card.

[CaptPat]

Unless the AS11 is different from previous RESMED offerings the machine won't tell you when it starts overwriting older data (i.e., the card is full). It doesn't take much of a guess to figure out how I know this. A good practice is to periodically download the card to OSCAR to prevent a loss of detailed data. I normally download my card monthly when I do my periodic maintenance on my setup.

[southerndoc]

I have a Samsung 32GB that's working just fine.

Can't comment on the deleting data >1 year. Maybe there is a new algorithm in the AS11 that does this, but my AS10 had data >3 years on it. The only reason it didn't have more than 3 years was because I had deleted it.

[Pugsy]

Can't comment on the deleting data >1 year. Maybe there is a new algorithm in the AS11 that does this, but my AS10 had data >3 years on it.

Prior to the AirSense 10 models the past models did automatically overwrite the older than 1 year data and in fact some of it got overwritten after 30 days. I know this to be a fact because every S9 model I owned would do that.
Some of the detailed data was overwritten after even a week. It was well known to expect some missing detailed data if you didn't download to your software on your computer at least once a week.

Then came the AirSense 10 models which seemed to totally abandon any overwriting of anything no matter how long as long as the SD card wasn't full.

I have no reason to expect that the AirSense 11 will do anything any differently than the AirSense 10 models BUT you never know and only time will tell us if ResMed kept the AirSense 10 way of managing data on the SD card or if they reverted back to how they did things with the S9 and older models.

[Dog Slobber]

Worth documenting:

The 32GB limitation is an AirSense 10 (or previous) limitation. Air 11s are capable of using 64GB SD Cards.

I'm not suggesting that one gets an SD Card larger than 32GB, but if you have an Air 11, there's no longer a need to avoid one.

[LSAT]

The SD card I am using came with my machine years ago...I think it's 2GB

[Pugsy]

The SD card I am using came with my machine years ago...I think it's 2GB

It probably is a 2 GB. That's what came with the AirSense 10 years ago. That's what I had as well.
I suspect that size would work well on the other AirSense 10 models now as well as the AirSense 11 models but

1....The smaller cards are extremely rare and priced way too high compared to larger capacity cards so might as well save some money. Doesn't hurt to have more capacity than is needed. Just don't go wild and crazy with buying the biggest capacity available....it's a waste of money and AirSense 10 machines can't handle more than 32 GB anyway.
AirSense 11 models don't seem to have a problem with over 32 GB but more simply isn't needed anyway.

2....We don't yet know how long the AirSense 11 models will write to SD card before (if ever) they start overwriting so using that small of a card might end up being a problem if nothing ever gets overwritten and someone just has to have the data files from years ago on the SD card. Even a 32 GB card on a machine that never overwrites anything is going to be more than is needed. Most likely the machine will die before capacity is reached with a 32 GB card.

[sleepye]

You mentioned in the original post sending data to SleepHQ. I looked it up and it seems to be someone who will advise you on the types of things that are covered in this forum. I assume you have to pay for SleepHQ services. Before you do that, you might want to post some OSCAR data here and use the experience folks here have, both with tweaking settings and dealing with other problems you may encounter. There is much knowledge and experience available here for free. I know the saying you get what you pay for, but I believe this forum is the exception to that rule. If you do wind up using SleepHQ it would be interesting to compare the help you get there with what you get here.

[Dog Slobber]

You mentioned in the original post sending data to SleepHQ. I looked it up and it seems to be someone who will advise you on the types of things that are covered in this forum. I assume you have to pay for SleepHQ services. Before you do that, you might want to post some OSCAR data here and use the experience folks here have, both with tweaking settings and dealing with other problems you may encounter. There is much knowledge and experience available here for free. I know the saying you get what you pay for, but I believe this forum is the exception to that rule. If you do wind up using SleepHQ it would be interesting to compare the help you get there with what you get here.

No, the role of SleepHQ is not a CPAP help service.

https://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic.php?t=183985

[sleepye]

Sorry for the confusion. My Googling led me here https://www.sleep-hq.com. Glad to see your pointer.

[KobeT]

SleepHQ website is sleephq.com its a web based version of OSCAR and in the future there will be a community like this forum.

[chunkyfrog]

I picked the Resmed label off the sd card that came with my first S9.
Underneath was a MEMOREX label!
So, brand name is BS, or more accurately, B$.

[KobeT]

Worth documenting:

The 32GB limitation is an AirSense 10 (or previous) limitation. Air 11s are capable of using 64GB SD Cards.

I'm not suggesting that one gets an SD Card larger than 32GB, but if you have an Air 11, there's no longer a need to avoid one.

The 128GB SD cards also work on the AirSense 11.