ResMed Autosense 10 questions

I had a very nice night with my new AutoSense 10 autoset last night, but I have a few questions:

1. The clinic set ramp to "auto" which is why I thought the airflow was so soft (and a little bit suffocating) when I tried it in their office--because it wasn't my full on 9 cm/H20 of pressure--duh! Even so, the algorithm is pretty "soft"--I don't feel like I have to work to keep up with breathing at the pace it sets like on the PRS1). But is this supposed to sense when I am asleep and go up to my minimum pressure automatically then??? How does it work for people, or does everyone just turn the ramp off altogether? I haven't used ramp since my first miserable week of CPAP long ago--I turned it off last night, but is there any advantage to using it?

2. When I take off my mask, there's a blue snowflake or asterisk that appears on the screen next to the modem signal strength display (Yes, I'll put it in airplane mode in a few days) and flashes. What is that???

3. Do I remember correctly that Sleepyhead won't show breathing waveforms for ResMed machines?

Overall I really like this machine. It was very quiet, very responsive (I used a plastic bag over the end of the hose to pull on my hose cover, and that started the autostart!), and the breathing pattern was very smooth. I got 8 hours of sleep which is unusual for me--I did wake up at my usual time (about 4:30 a.m.) but it was not from any perceived discomfort from the machine.

Oh, and after all these years, no &^%$#@ beep when you turn it on, which always, always disturbed my husband!!!

#1 User choice. Many turn ramp off
#2 humidifier is cooling

Janknitz wrote:I had a very nice night with my new AutoSense 10 autoset last night, but I have a few questions:

1. The clinic set ramp to "auto" which is why I thought the airflow was so soft (and a little bit suffocating) when I tried it in their office--because it wasn't my full on 9 cm/H20 of pressure--duh! Even so, the algorithm is pretty "soft"--I don't feel like I have to work to keep up with breathing at the pace it sets like on the PRS1). But is this supposed to sense when I am asleep and go up to my minimum pressure automatically then??? How does it work for people, or does everyone just turn the ramp off altogether? I haven't used ramp since my first miserable week of CPAP long ago--I turned it off last night, but is there any advantage to using it?

from what I've heard, autoramp works pretty well, but as has been mentioned before, ramp is usually like training wheels for most people, once they get used to breathing with the cpap, they don't feel they need it anymore.

Janknitz wrote:2. When I take off my mask, there's a blue snowflake or asterisk that appears on the screen next to the modem signal strength display (Yes, I'll put it in airplane mode in a few days) and flashes. What is that???

humidifier cooling off. there's also a wavy line with other wavy lines above it, which is the humidifier warming up.

Janknitz wrote:3. Do I remember correctly that Sleepyhead won't show breathing waveforms for ResMed machines?

nope, full support. Sleepyhead has always shown waveforms for all resmed machines. (well, all that it supports, S9 and later) if the data's there, Jedimark is going to display it (he's manic about that sometimes )

Janknitz wrote:Overall I really like this machine. It was very quiet, very responsive (I used a plastic bag over the end of the hose to pull on my hose cover, and that started the autostart!), and the breathing pattern was very smooth. !

resmed's smartstart (on and off) has always, in my experience, been much more sensitive than resprironics auto start/stop. just a breath or two and resmeds are going, whereas I'd feel like I was trying to suck start the lawn mower with a respironics, both my old M machine, and the 560 I had for a while. and while the respir would sit there blowing for a minute or something before it'd go off, the resmed shuts down within a few seconds. the only time that it didn't was when I switched to a pillow mask and forgot to change the mask type setting.

Janknitz wrote: 3. Do I remember correctly that Sleepyhead won't show breathing waveforms for ResMed machines?

The old Resmed S9's only stored 7 days worth of waveforms on the SD card. So you had to remember to download the data at least once a week if you wanted to see all the waveflows in SleepyHead.

I don't know if Resmed changed the frequency that the waveflow data is overwritten on the SD card with the new AirSense A10 machines or not. Perhaps palerider can comment on that.

Smart start is very sensitive.
Mine has activated when I removed the water tank too quickly.
Not a deal-breaker.

robysue wrote:

Janknitz wrote: 3. Do I remember correctly that Sleepyhead won't show breathing waveforms for ResMed machines?

The old Resmed S9's only stored 7 days worth of waveforms on the SD card. So you had to remember to download the data at least once a week if you wanted to see all the waveflows in SleepyHead.

I don't know if Resmed changed the frequency that the waveflow data is overwritten on the SD card with the new AirSense A10 machines or not. Perhaps palerider can comment on that.

I can!

according to the manual, the detailed data, and high rate flow and pressure data storage is limited by the size of the SD card, no more artificial limits on how much the card will hold.

chunkyfrog wrote:Smart start is very sensitive.
Mine has activated when I removed the water tank too quickly.
Not a deal-breaker.

I greatly prefer it to be a little trigger happy over that "oh, what? what is that? you want me to WHAT??? but I'm NAPPING... oh, FINE, I'll start up" from the respironics that nearly had my hyperventilating.... and I can't reach my machine from the bed without contortions... not terribly conducive to relaxing

In order to get the Smart Start (I'm sure it was called something else) on the PRS1 to work with my ff mask, I had to cover the anti-asphyxiation valve with my finger and take a really deep breath. That was still easier than fumbling around in the dark trying to find the button, but it was annoyingly difficult to trigger. The ResMed feels very touchy in comparison.

One other nice little feature of the ResMed is whatever "feet" are on the bottom of machine hold really well. I wanted to turn the screen toward me in bed and could not budge the unit easily (no remarks about being a weakling!).

There's a lot of "small stuff" that's nicely thought out for the user. The RT told me that Kaiser is getting a better deal on the ResMeds than they were on the PR's too. I was really surprised.

Meanwhile, Crapria is up to it's usual tricks. Kaiser gave me a sample mask, Crapria wanted to charge me for it, but they are supposed to ship me a mask if they are going to bill for it. I think we got that one straightened out, but we'll see when I get the bill in hand.