Please set me straight -- CPAP Smart Card or SD Card ?

Here is some background, from early postings on the subject, on the data/format that is stored on the SmartCard. It may or may not apply to how the data is stored on the SD card found in the PR-1:

James Skinner is the author of the EncorePro Analyzer (EPA). Phil is the author of the MyCPAP card utility and the owner of the MyCPAP.org website. Both are EXTREMELY knowledgeable!

Postby jskinner on Fri Aug 03, 2007 2:50 pm

Bert_Mathews wrote:Haven't spent much time looking at the recovered data file "YET" but do you know of any programs that can IMPORT the file??? James hope you can run with this!!!

Well the data is just a big binary blob so there is not much to look at There is no program that can currently import from this format (besides Encore Pro)

I believe that Phil it working on decoding it as he found some information on its format in some Resperonics patents (US #7,225,809 for those interested).

If I was felling better I certainly be trying to work on it too. It could be a big job depending on how well its documented (or how much documentation that can be located) Its also possible that there have been different version of the data format on the cards which could complicate things but lets hope not. Worse case a lot of it will have to be reverse engineered, not impossible just not fun.

The following is an exchange between James Skinner and Snoredog (may he RIP) about the Smartcard 32KB "Blob"

Snoredog wrote:What you should see in the memory addresses on that card is all the data dumped to the SQL database.

Yep, same data but in very different format. The data on the card is a binary blob packed into 32k, it has to be decoded to meaningful data when stored in the DB tables.

Snoredog wrote:Part of that data from the card identifies the type of machine it is which selects which template from the MSQL templates to use.

Yes based in the model number EP would know how to decode that binary blob. I don`t see any templates in the DB though for this... My guess is that its just code in EP that does the decoding and then dumps the data into the tables (in a messy way

I suspect that Respironics is continuing their proprietary format for the SD card. They want to discourage anyone, especially accomplished hackers, from figuring out the data & format so that users could design and write their own charting programs. A user-written program, especially for free or at a low price, could displace their EncorePro and EncoreViewer software reporting packages.

There are only a couple text files on the card. One simply contains only the serial number of the machine.

Here is the second text file:
(first line is the serial number again - purposely cut off)



None of the other files can be read by a Mac or a PC. I can see the same file sizes on either a Mac or a PC... and I have observed the file sizes change... as well as the number of files grow.

There are two types of files that make up the data... some are Unix Executable Files and Split Achieve Segment files.

That's all I know. Someone will surely figure it out.

socalmonkey wrote

That's all I know. Someone will surely figure it out.

The someones that you reference more than likely don't have a PR-1. If you are willing, you might consider offering to upload an SD image to a website or, probably more useful, make a copy of the SD (most SD card readers also allow writes) and send them the backup SD. I imagine that a small capacity, even 64MB, SD card would have sufficient capacity to hold your sleep data for a week - realize that all prior Respironics machines were getting by with only 32KB (32,768 bytes) of SmartCard memory. An interested someone would most likely want one SD that contained only one sleep session (blower on to blower off) and a 2nd SD containing data from multiple sleep sessions.

Be aware that SnoreDog, in the early days (2007) of the Smartcard "hacking", hooked up his scope to look at the address/signal lines transmitting SmartCard data to/from the machine. This was the low level detective work that the early someones did. Reading some of the early posts on the investigation tools and methods was like reading a good detective novel.

This has been an enlightening thread. I have a M Series BiPAP, it recently replaced my ResMed VPAP II that has 26,000 hours on it. With this new machine I was looking forward to getting the software to read the SmartCard. I am bidding on a card reader in the cpap auction site, and now that I know I can find the card reader for much less than the $140 that Respironics wants for it.

I have been hanging around here for a long time reading the threads, I remember when Encore Pro was available to consumers. I am disappointed that the 2.0 and above are not available to individual xPAP users. I have a friend that has one of the PR System 1 CPAP machines, I would have liked to been able to read his card for him (avoiding a visit to the Dr. or DME) He is just starting with his CPAP and is still trying to get used to it. He could still go down to an M Series machine if he wants with his DME, although he might argue that he needs that Pro 2.1 software and hassle them forever. He did get a 3rd mask because the first 2 just didn't work right. The DME got tired of arguing with him.

I did find a copy of Encore Pro 1.8 on Ebay. Still thinking about buying that. Has anyone ever seen Encore Pro 2.0 for sale on Ebay?