NB this is not teaching you what pumping is and expects you to be familiar with some of the terms.  It is a breakdown of the operational and design features of some of the insulin pumps on the market with an in depth view on the Accu-chek DTron, Early Medtronic Paradigm and Animas Vibe pumps.

After my operation in February, my DTron insulin pump reached the end of its life. While I was recovering (and not working) I returned to multiple daily injections.

I did this for a number of reasons, not least because it was the first time in 12 years I had not used the pump (!!!). In those twelve years, I used the DTron for the first four years then changed to a DTron plus. I did try a Medtronic Paradigm with a combined continuous glucose meter system (CGMS) during that time.

The DTron and its successors were beautifully designed, from the ease of swapping out the cartridge to getting the status of any of the actions I had completed.  It was simple with

• a four button control interface (and the alarm codes on the back) that you can use with your eyes closed (or if you had retinopathy)
• a battery which lasted 8-10 weeks
• it was reasonably water-proof, I certainly used it in the pool for days at a time
• from realising I wanted to change to the cartridge to gathering all the items and plugging in the new cannula set took less than five minutes – no further prep necessary
• the 3ml glass pen compatible cartridge provided all three millilitres to me: I once swapped out a cartridge early for a trip, but used the remaining 10 units as back up in my Humalog pen
• a great size, smaller than my hand and beautifully curved.

I am gutted that Roche have stopped making it.

Hey, what about the Medtronic Paradigm?

Plenty of people love the Paradigm combined pump from Medtronic: I am not one of them.  I used it for eight weeks.

Compared to the DTron, the Medtronic had a 1.5ml “syringe” cartridge.  This meant you have to fill up a syringe and then load it in to the pump before priming (filling with insulin) the tubing and the cannula (the tube that sits under your skin).

I injected with both pens and syringes from 1977 to 2002 and nothing is as fiddly as the syringes used by insulin pumps.  Where-as a syringe used for insulin has a mechanism for gripping and holding the syringe while you draw up the insulin (and inject), a pump cartridge syringe has no such help (that may be a little mean, they do provide a detachable extender, but they always fall off, especially if you are trying to shake out air bubbles).  If I get a small air bubble in for an injection, it is no big deal and easy to resolve.  A small air bubble in a pump cartridge can mean not having any insulin for a couple of hours which leads to extremely high blood sugars.  But in December 2007, that was what I was trying.

Now though, this process is being performed twice as often.  Joy (or not).  The worst thing about this system is that you end up losing a lot of usable insulin so that you are not performing this hideous process at an inopportune moment (Dtron, change cartridge over at 3am, not an issue, trying to get the fiddly cartridge in at 10pm, nightmare).

But it would be worth it for the CGMS.  Or not.

The other big difference between the two pumps was how frequently the basal was delivered.  I use a very small amount of insulin mid-afternoon.  In the DTron, every 3 minutes the pump gave me 0.005 units of insulin.  The Paradigm didn’t, it gave me a 0.17 unit dose 10 minutes apart.  I felt grotty, which wasn’t something I was used to having got the pump set up back in 2002.

But it would be worth it for the CGMS.  Or not.

The CGMS was OK: when you learn to use the pump, you are taught the values it provides are a guideline only, available for three days.  For me, I have a little trouble spotting a fast drop in insulin (typically experienced with an infection say).  I am aware I am in the hypo, but because of the speed of the change in blood sugar, one minute every thing’s fine the next I have a hypo which needs treating quickly.

This was the reason I wanted CGMS, to provide that cut off in the change of blood sugar levels where I could spot the hypo and where I couldn’t.  It would also give me an idea of the changes going on over night to prove the over night basal rates.

Which it did, for £450, I had three days worth of graphs.  It was interesting.  But not enough to get over the inconvenience of using the DTron: I visited MIT during that time and the short life of the cartridges was a complete nightmare, jet lagged, tons of paraphernalia and in a hotel suite, it was just annoying when the DTron would have provided all the insulin in a single cartridge.

The deal breaker came after my third sensor.  Remember, one of the reasons I had the sensor was to spot a fast drop.  I spotted the drop one beautiful sunny Sunday morning while the sensor said there were no changes (none, nada, not one) in my blood sugar levels (it maintained that my blood sugar varied a little between 6.4mmol/l and 6.7mmol/l over an hour.  When I tested I was 2.7mmol/l which is a massive drop from the 10.3mmol/l I had been an hour earlier).  I was back on the DTron within the hour.

So, it’s a really bad thing they stopped making the DTron

I feel that.  But injections are such hard work.  In the end, with alarms reminding me to inject, I ended up on six injections a day with highs indicating that that may not have been enough.  After 6 weeks I was ready to accept any pump.

When I got the DTron in 20002, I was choosing between two pumps (really).  Now I had a choice of four: the Roche Spirit pump, Medtronics latest Paradigm, Animas’ Vibe and the Omnipod.

Wireless is the new latest fad which must be great if you have a really young diabetic you are reasonable for as you can  bolus and check the screen while the youngster is off playing 10 feet from you.  As an adult, rushing around much of my time I do not want to be hunting for the user interface of my pump in my bag or round the house.

Cartridge size was the other important consideration, which meant the Animas Vibe was the only choice.  The Vibe has a 2ml cartridge and a similar basal rate delivery as the DTron, so even if the CGMS was not good, it would behave as a better pump for me than the Paradigm had.  (It was also seriously water-proof, up to 3.6m).

The CGMS would be provided for 7 days and had a really good reputation.  So, with the choice between that and injections, I chose the Vibe.

Learning how the vibe works

Basals and setup

The Medtronic was a nightmare from the training on.  I wasn’t told that I needed a vial of insulin to draw up the cartridge – obvious I know, but I didn’t consider it.

So this time, I was really sorted out.  Animas have a really useful orientation course too.  I was promised it would take 90 minutes by the hospital but it was much longer than that, nearer 3 hours.

Chris Sargent, from Animas, helped me set the basal rates and although there wasn’t a straight copy through from the DTron to the Vibe, it was reasonably close (remember that’s the back ground insulin the body needs to function).  The vibe has 12 slots for a day’s basal rates compared to 24 in the DTron but it is programmable in 15 minute segments.  It’s close to perfect by the end of the week.

Bolusing

It is reasonably difficult to place the pump under my clothes and perform a bolus.   There are buttons are all round the pump, so no convenient carriers/bags are available to do this anyway, but even if there were, I have not been able to successfully perform a “fast bolus”, which should be available by pressing a single button.  The idea is obviously to prevent accidental pressing but it is not something I can do easily and requires more presses than using the “normal” bolus menu.

I compensate by a double click of the OK button to get to the simple bolus screen.  This I all miss from the DTron: switching from a simple (a single dose) to a combi (a set of small boluses to cover slowly released carbohydrate) was really simple.  This is a completely separate menu screen, however some thought has gone in to the flexibility of this extended bolus.

One of the nicest features on the Vibe is insulin on board value available from one click of the button on top of the pump.  The CGMS has all its history available from the CGMS sub-menu – this would be great from the bolus screen, it’s not, which is really annoying.  To go from any sub-menu to another takes four button presses!  Though a tip to the wise is to use the fast bolus button: a quick hold on here and a press on the OK menu gets back to the home screen really simply.

There is a lot of data accessible by the pump everything from complete total insulin delivered in a calendar day to total bolused, when the last bolus was to basals and temporary basal rates.

Even now, some of it still doesn’t feel very logical.  It would be great if the insulin on board (that’s how much of the last bolus is still active in my system) was available from the bolus screen not the CGMS screen.  If I don’t think about it that means 6 button presses if I land on the bolus screen and think, I’d better check.

Battery and use

The battery is pretty good and I can swap in a standard AA battery as an emergency measure, which is good.  Unfortunately, to see the screen, I have to press a button, which makes hanging the pump off my belt reasonably pointless, not least because the holder means that I am reading the pump upside down.  I gave up after day one.

What about the CGMS?

It’s really good: the sensor lasts for 7 days minimum and it seems relatively accurate.  I have used four and the data has been really interesting.  It has led me to change some of my behaviour as well as my doses.

I have tried in various locations and have ended up with a site that is both accurate and doesn’t get in the way.  Unfortunately, it means the CGMS is on display, but that’s OK.  People assume it’s feeding in drugs and seem quite disappointed when you say it’s just the transmiter for the sensor and show them the readout.

The colour screen is so easy to use and get that fast reading on what’s happening: whether the readings are static or moving up or down, slowly or quickly.

It seems much more sensitive that the Medtronic had been and responds faster to a recalibration result (I feed it 4 a day: breakfast, lunch, go home/tea and bed).

Ironically, the screen layout makes it much easier to use the CGMS but also to not use it.  There is no wasted space on the home screen if you are not using the CGMS.  It is easily accessed and scrolls between the past hour, 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours and 24 hours and a single reading with the insulin on board screen.

The transmitter lasts for around 6 months.  The sensors seem really robust: they don’t need to be chilled while in storage.  The insert devices for the sensor and transmitter are really well designed and can be done single handed with very little hassle.

The alarms can all be configured.  This is really good, giving a welcome break if there’s nothing important going on, but you get that loud warning that things need checking when you’re outside or in the car.

I have had a little trouble with the cloud upload.  There is no way to get the data off the pump with the standard tools without it going to the web site.  That’s appalling.  I appreciate the thought is out there that all mindless morons but actually, there are plenty of us who can work out the numbers if we have the data.

And let’s face it, this is my data.

On the other hand, the sensors do seem to just work.

I still want MY DATA without HAVING to be connected to the internet.  Diasend will not work on a ship without access to the world wide web.

So not only do I have to pay for the sensors but network access if I want to access the data.  This is not cool.

It also is another set of tools that do not work with Linux.

It does seem to be accurate, lasts the distance and is reasonably comfortable and relatively easy to insert.

When in a jam

All of which means when I travel to Africa later this year, I will be taking my DTron and its adapter for my computer.  The night time carrier, the belt carrier, under-clothes holster and a spare injector pen.  Though the fact every one of the new infusion sets will work with my DTron and has its own inserter.

All the data from my testing kits and DTron can be analysed anywhere in the world.  I don’t even need a power supply to do that.  If I really want to use the other pump as a CGMS, I can do that.

In April, I got a phone call from Glyn Hopkin, Ipswich.  They asked me how we were getting on with the Leaf?

Great, I said.

Would I like them to bring some of their electric vehicles to my work place and show my colleagues what it was all about?  NIssan were doing a road show and as I worked at Adastral Park…

Yesterday, Nissan, Renault, Vauxhall, BMW and Tesla brought 18 electric vehicles to the combined value of approx. £540,000 to Adastral Park in Martlesham Heath.  Every taste was catered for, from the practical Renault Kangoo Z.E to the zany Renault Twizy, to the ultimate commuter in the BMW C-evolution, to the beautiful Tesla Model S and BMW i8.  All were greeted with interest by the people working in Adastral Park yesterday.

Test drives were made available on 6 of the cars, including a pair of Tesla’s.

A big thank you to all the manufactures who took part: the day would have been meaningless without the vehicles!

Adastral Park came to ask the questions they had about the latest technologies as well as try the cars on test drive.

The day proved that electric vehicles have come a long way in the past 6 years, there is a great deal of interest and these are now an option for the second car in a family in many cases, maybe even a first for some.  Companies like BT’s Adastral Park have helped that evolution by providing charges for their visitors.

One of my earliest memories was a “Watch” TV programme about the future of automation, in the late 1970s.  It discussed coal and gas powered generation of electricity for national consumption, petrol and diesel generation for automation and nuclear power.  It recognised acid rain and particulate pollution from vehicles and stated that we needed cleaner alternatives as population density rose.  I saw a hydrogen powered car and its “exhaust” of “clean water”.

At this time, of course, the West (Europe, Russia and America) were the obvious polluters: these were the rich countries and while car ownership was not yet cheap, it was affordable for most people with a job.

Times have changed: India and China are now recognised as producing more pollution than the West.  Smog in China is so chronically bad that cyclists often wear masks to protect themselves from the dust produced from car and motorcycle exhausts.  On internationally broadcast events from Beijing, the smog level is discussed much as the rain forecast is for a cricket match held in Lords.

Western car manufactures are being bought by Chinese and Indian firms and stretch versions of Mercedes and Jaguar models are aspiring models of lust.  It is unlikely though that China or India will be the first to bring in a ban on particulate emitting forms of transport.  That is much more likely to come from the West.

In 2003, London’s “congestion charge” was launched, quickly identified as creating a “Low Emission Zone”.  The intended outcome of the fee to ensure road users thought twice about bringing polluting vehicles into London, especially as motorcycles and “low emission vehicles” such as electric and hybrids are exempt.  The aim was to stop habitual users where at all possible.

Other towns and cities, especially in the South of England, have watched the adoption of the zone and its outcomes with interest.  In particular, East Anglia, with its sparse population, poor road design and the difficulties of providing meaningful public transport (cost benefit analysis will never come in).  Most of the intercity railway was electrified in the 1980’s which really does allow us to see that car, HGVs, buses and motorcycles are the polluters.

Cambridge has been notable in using excessive parking charges to discourage car users coming in to the city, but of course, this only works short term and drivers just add the parking or congestion charge to the cost of running their vehicles.  If you’re not careful, the outcome will be damage to high street businesses rather than benefits to the cities inhabitants.

Of course there’s more to the story than switching vehicles just to reduce your carbon footprint.  Other things need to be in place to win the heart and mind.

Heart and mind?

When I told a friend that I had bought a motorcycle, she wasn’t at all interested.  “Noisy, dirty things,” was her only comment.

Over the past four weeks, I have used my motorcycle twice and my diesel once to do the commute.  To be honest, that was the comment that came to mind with my beautiful diesel: noisy and dirty.

You very quickly get used to the lack of combustion noise with the Leaf.  Indeed, I find driving the diesel quite nauseating.  It’s not so bad with the motorbike and after the first 20 miles of a journey, I get used to the vibration again, but that effect wasn’t something I’d expected.

However, I got a bit of a shock from my 13 year old son.

Formula E had it’s first race yesterday in Beijing.  There have been big concerns that “petrol heads” would not be interested in a “quiet motor sport.”

Being part of the motorcycling community, there are many who would not want a silent bike.  I am not one of these bikers.  Not only do I wear my lid, but I have a pair of moulded ear plugs which are designed to protect my hearing from not just the bike but wind noise when travelling above 35mph.

We got tickets to see the MotoGP in 2010.  You arrive at Silverstone and signs every where point you to free ear plugs as the noise coming from the 20 bikes on the circuit is deafening.

With the first race from Formual E, it was lovely to watch a motor sport which didn’t have to stop the noise from the track in order to hear the pundits talk about the race.

All the drama was there, even up to the end – it was such a relief to watch Heidfeld climb out from the cockpit.

My 13 year old did not agree.  He didn’t like the “whine of the engines” and “it [was] a waste of time to watch something that slow.”  It wasn’t slow: far from it.  The road circuit supported speeds up to 115mph and the cars are capable of 150mph.

I loved the drama, many of the drivers have been top runners in GP and Formula 3/Ford (although both Katherine Legge and Michela Cerruti are less familiar to those following just F1).  During the race, you could actually “hear” the gear changes.  The only smoke was from the brakes and the conversation between Prost and Heidfeld.

To get engagement, social media has been used to allow the most popular drivers to use a “fanboost” – if enabled in their car it allows the driver to access an extra bit of power which should be available to the engines: going “from 150kw (202.5bhp) to 180kw (243bhp).”  Three drivers on the circuit get this facility; those most popular with the audience.

So, you like it?

I wish I could have been there in person, I am really looking forward to the next one: 22/11/2014 in Putrajaya, Malaysia.  Though, as it is so quiet and pollutant free, I would not mind this happening outside my house.

Not sure I would ever say that about F1.

Of course, the BBC must have had a slow news day yesterday as they finally broadcast the summary from the report studying the latest state of the ozone layer.

As I hit my teens, research had shown that not only was the ozone layer thinning but it was most likely caused by the use of CFCs. Now as I enter my forties, the ban on CFC use is allowing the ozone to recover (albeit slowly).

So?

Whether or not you believe in climate change and its causes, particulate and gas pollution from the modern motor is only going to be reduced if people make different choices.

Those are

• cycle or walk short journeys.
• use public transport (which in the case of a double decker bus does pollute more than a car but can mean 63 cars are not on the road).
• use a petrol motorbike rather than a diesel car if you are travelling on your own.
• use an electric vehicle.

The vast majority of journeys in the UK are < 25miles in length.  If each of those were done differently, the UK would be a better place to live.

We do all these.  Your choice.  Do you want to make a difference? 🙂

It’s been a busy few weeks and this is the first chance I have had to sit still at the computer and write something which is, hopefully, interesting.  This is one of two blogs looking at things you can do to improve your house.

I am a huge fan of Grand Designs.  There are some amazing tools for your house that allow you to be comfortable yet save energy.  Under floor heating, solar PV cells, rain collectors, glass which cleans itself and light pipes.  Clever control systems that allow you to control the lighting and heat levels in any room of the house.

Retro-fitting these can be a complete nightmare, but some of these ideas are instantly available for any house.  In 2006, I discovered a source for one of these: a thermostat which not only set the heat for a room or zone but allowed you to programme different temperatures at different times.

Why on Earth would anyone want that?

To be honest, before Grand Designs and having a baby, I didn’t think you would.  One of the things you quickly discover with a small baby is that they will wake up in the middle of the night when the ambient temperature gets below 15°C.  In a traditional boiler, timer and single thermostat , that works out at around 2:30am every morning in October/November.

We moved house in 2000 with a very young baby to a house where we were recommended to keep the heating on all the time but use the thermostat to set the level for the house.  At night we set it to 16°C so the baby didn’t over heat and from the second night, we had much better nights.  The baby woke around 4am instead for a night time feed.

Yes, we slept better too.  It was never boiling but not freezing in the middle of the night meant we had a great night’s sleep.  We were both dreading the first gas bill.  That too was a surprise: the house never got cold, so the bill was more than reasonable.

That’s when I knew I wanted a thermostat I could set the levels to – warmer in the evening, cooler for breakfast and much cooler for the night time.  Heat miser had just the thing and I ordered one, hoping that it would be really obvious how to replace the mechanical thermostat had been fitted to our house built in 2000.  I followed the instructions and three hours (it took a bit of figuring out), it was fitted and running.
It was lovely.

So why are you talking about this now?

We moved house last year, to a self-build (not by us). It had five zones of heating, all controlled by Honeywell thermostats.
Having done the job once, I could do it again and actually why not go for a centrally controlled one.  As we all have tablets, wouldn’t a wi-fi controlled one be great?  After all, we are living in 2014.

We liked the quality of the Heat miser one, so that was my first port of call last August only to find these were “premium items” and carried a price to match 🙁

So I bought one: we could live with it and decide it that really was the way we wanted to go.  I replaced the upstairs one and compared to last time, the job was a bit quicker.

Although at this stage, you could see the difference between the mass produced estate house to the individually built one.  Every Honeywell had had the inside of the back box filled :~  No worries, I have chisel and I am willing to use it.

The Heat miser’s protrude into the room a few millimetres: but the back box is packed with the digital control unit as well as the power and control wires.

The photo montage below shows why this is not a trivial effort.

However, once installed, the wi-fi units are a joy.  Secured with a password, we can control them from the internet allowing us to make a last minute decision to stay out longer and not bother switching the heating on as soon as normal.

We did keep two off the internet but come the winter not only will we have the right temperature in the house, but it looks bang up to date too :).

There are many small jobs there are to do on a vehicle, nothing separates cars and motorbikes like replacing the “tax disc”.

Actually, the circular piece of paper that demonstrates that you have paid your vehicle excise duty not the vehicle tax, although, confusingly, the portal for paying the duty is called the tax disc site.

Anyway, whether a car or bike, the process to buy the piece of paper is equivalent.

Physically replacing the taxdisc on a car is a three second job once you have the car key 😉

This is not the case on the bike: first I get the right hex key (2.5mm) then the right socket or spanner (4mm) and take the first three bolts out from the weather proof cover holding and displaying the tax disc on the bike.

Then the holder is manipulated so I can get a further 3 bolts out and loosen a further two.  Now, fish out the old bit of paper and replace with the new one.  Now every bolt needs to be replaced and tightened and all the others tightened.  If I am lucky, I haven’t moved or lost the bit of paper displaying the legal status of my bike.  It is a legal requirement to display the tax disc on the vehicle but on the bike this is an £80 bit of paper that can be lost or stolen.

Unlike a car, checking the bit of paper on the bike is a bit hit or miss, depending on the weather.  So the police check everything via their radios.

Err…

Thanks to the increasing number of £0 rated vehicles and a final vote of confidence, the law has changed and from the 1st October 2014, this is no longer a legal requirement to display the payment on your bike, car or anything 🙂

In January, when we bought the Leaf, more money was spent on sending out our tax disc than was collected.  The abolishment of the need to display the tax disc is to save the government money.

For every biker in the country, it is going to save them valuable time.

Originally the tax disc came in to prove a vehicle was insured and had passed its MOT.

Surely, if the technology exists to automatically prove a vehicle can be taxed, further money can be saved by just performing the joint check on the fly rather than once a year with a monetary payment?

The Leaf has come into its own this summer, not least because of the heat.  Many people think high summer is the perfect time to be on a motorcycle but for short journeys through urban areas it’s a recipe in self roasting.  There are some leathers that provide armour with excellent air conditioning, of course, but they don’t offer much protection if it does rain.

Cars of course have air conditioning and the Leaf has a low powered version running off the main batteries.  In practice, this means the days I charge the car, I have the cooler on: on the days I don’t charge, I don’t.  I have found that the fan can be operated for next to no drain on the battery which means I have almost got my charging down to twice a week.

Unfortunately, though, this has coincided with a couple of Friday’s where charging at work has been unavailable and I have had to run errands on the way home from work.  Both times, I have taken extra steps to make it home.

Going the long way round

To be honest, there were alternatives but I had offered to take my son to his friends for a sleep over and was keen to do it in the Leaf.  The plan was to drive to work in the morning, charge the car and get my son before taking a trip down the other side of the A12 to get to his friend’s party.  Then head back in to town to meet up with my husband.

Charging at work didn’t happen, thankfully I had a good charge in the car, but I hadn’t been that careful getting in to work that morning and there was no time to charge it at home.  I looked at the sat’ nav’ and thought, no problem.  Any way, I could charge it at the new high speed charger in Colchester football club’s car park.

Getting to the postcode position was easy but I did manage to go past the building three times before calling for help.  I had missed it.  Parked up, dropped off the kid and headed for the A12.  To get to the charging point, I’d be heading away from my home town but I’d be coming back with a Leaf at 80% charge.  Happy days 🙂

Of course, mostly I charge the car off Source East/pod point chargers.  I have paid £10 to get a card which unlocks the charging ports and enjoy what has been power for nothing extra.  I have an ecotrocity card for use on the electric highway (these cards are currently free and there seems to be no charging for the electricity either) which is the largest network of high speed DC chargers for electric vehicles.

So of course, I didn’t think to check what the Colchester’s football ground charger took.  It wasn’t a source East nor ecotricity but a Charge your car unit.  It should be added that at this point, I had just enough charge to get home if I didn’t use the A12.  But it would be cutting it fine.  I also had very little phone charge.

One of the things that really needs to be worked out is using one schemes RFID cards with different charging points: I did try all my cards before realising I was going to need to ask for help.  The receptionist was very helpful and found someone who had a card.

The thing to realise is that Charge your car is a variable charging scheme – the owners of the units have the facility to recoup their infrastructure costs and make a profit if they wish or they may be free.  Nowhere on this charge unit are any prices listed.  CFC have decided to charge for this unit: £5 for a 30minute charge.

Remember, we did the sums last week: that equates to £5 for 14 units of electricity or more than twice what I would pay if I got the electricity from home.

So, back in the car I got with a lean 17 miles on the clock and the knowledge that going the slow way home would be 19 miles.  I headed for the Nissan garage.

Nissan have installed free rapid chargers for its customers and I was hoping to get to the garage in time to get 10% or so before Glyn Hopkin closed.  No such luck and while I could physically get to the charger it, asked me for a code to unlock it (again, none of my cards provided access).

Heading further in to Colchester had taken another 2% off the battery (for 5miles driven) so I popped into the local Waitrose which did accept my source East card.  30minutes, time for a quick shop, a phone call, a coffee and a full 25% on the clock meant I should be able to get home easily.

I was careful, I had everything off that I could think of and some.  The display being off save around 2% of use for a 10 mile journey for example.  The air con was off, though I had to use the fan to keep the windscreen demisted.  I drove gently and used braking harvesting where possible.

I did the 20miles with less than 12% of the battery (that’s 2.4kW/hs or 38p) or the magic 8.3mile/kW.  I got home in less than 35minutes.

This all means I could have got home straight from the  football ground.  Mmmm.  It also means I got nearly 90miles off an 80% charged battery for the week.

A week later

Once again the plan was to charge at work.  We’d used the car the night before and it had been a while since the last charge (Tuesday).  But it was Friday and I was early enough to park up and enjoy the walk to my office and my desk.

The charge point wouldn’t unlock.  This seems to happen on the odd occasion, so I dropped an SMS to the charge point owner on site.

There were other issues on site, unbeknownst to me, so there was a major pause before I had an apologetic reply.  I had an estimated 20 mile range, so I assured him that there was no issue.  Of course it put the kibosh on the plans I had for the evening but I could get home and get it charging.  In fact I got home with 18miles left on the range and didn’t need to charge before heading out.

Lessons learnt?

Well, with some consideration and careful driving, I can do much better than my usual 4.4mile/kW and it really isn’t much of a hassle to do that.

When I was a student, I often had to make a tankful of petrol go as far as possible.  The Leaf uses many of the same principals.  And Waitrose is always a backstop if you need it.

I have also worked out how to turn off the daylight running lights.  That saves an extra 0.25kW, if I ever need it.

Oh, and I should charge on Thursdays.

 

Of course: how much are you saving?
Not how is it to drive, what’s it like on a long journey or how comfortable is it in traffic.

Actually, that’s not quite true, there is one other question that pops up from time to time.  The whole quietness of the experience is a major concern for a few.  I have to say I keep to the old adage taught from Road Craft and my advanced motorcycle observers: what is happening, what can happen, what can possibly happen?  You have to pay attention, but then in any modern motor car, that is the case and there is a horn if we need it and the sharpest brakes we have ever experienced.

So back to the major one: and how can we judge unless we compare the running costs.

This has not been a usual year, I spent some time not commuting due to the sinusitis, the operation and my recovery.  So our miles have been down, Jon did spend some time not travelling as much as usual.

Hot off the press, we have done 2,384 miles with 565.7 kW/h of electricity.  Given that 1 kW/h costs approx. 16p, that gives a total of just under £91 for six months worth of driving.  As I said it’s been a light year so far.

Each mile costs approx 4p or each pound buys 26-27 miles of driving.  However, 50% of the charging has been done on public charging points, so as an estimate, we’ve spent £45 on charging the car at home.  In total, that’s £7.50 a month for electricity at home and “£7.50” for charging elsewhere (although currently that’s all been for free).

This is not being particularly careful either.  We keep up with the traffic, even on dual carriage ways (27-30mph in 30mph limits, 37-40mph in 40mph and 57-50mph in 50mph limits.  Typically for the journeys we do, we keep up with the traffic and over take the lorries etc. on dual carriage ways varying between 57-70mph where the limit allows).

We run the air conditioning in the summer and during the commute, it’s odds on to favourite that the radio is on.  If it rains, dipped headlamps and front (and rear) windscreen wipers are going.

But each 1mph has an effect on the battery, so it’s really rewarding not doing the full 70mph, especially up hill :o.  Going down hill, being light on the throttle means more charging.

Now for some bistro maths…

To get what we’re saving, we are going to take the average consumption the BMW 650i reported (as this was the car we lost for the Leaf).  This is not really fair on the BMW, as the majority of the journeys we do the Leaf were not the journeys the BMW was built to do.  But we have done a couple of long journeys with the Leaf which is equivalent.  Also the BMW is not your average car, but it’s what we had, so these are our figures.

The BMW did 22mpg according to its trip computer.  So that means the journeys we’ve covered in the Leaf would have consumed approx 108 gallons in the Beamer.  To get litres we multiply that by 4.5 (to one decimal point), giving us a total of 486 litres.

Let’s be generous (as petrol prices were not that good back in January) and say a litre costs £1.30.  This gives us a total of £587 saved on petrol.  So per month:

Car	Cost per month for mileage	Cost per month for insurance	Cost per month for tax	Total costs for the 6 months
Leaf	£15	£17	£0	£192
BMW	£98	£35	£21	£924

(Please note that this is not the whole picture: we chose to rent the battery, which adds £420 for the six months- if we’d bought out right then that charge wouldn’t impact us.  It also ignores the “free electricity”.)

How are we doing compared to other Leaf drivers?

Nissan rates your driving economy in your region and we are not doing that well (though we’re certainly not the worst). The car with the best results is getting a whopping 12miles per kW/h in the UK. By my estimate that means they are managing around 190 miles per charge per 16kW/h worth of battery. Which impressive.  We get around 80 miles for 16kW/h.

We are not aiming for that.

We have a car that does have the same pull at a set of traffic lights as my husband’s 5 litre, 6 year old BMW had.  It doesn’t have the top speed of that car and lacks a couple of the creature comforts.

We’re running the Leaf for 20% of the costs of that petrol car and there are not that many petrol cars that could have done that given the performance we’re enjoying.  Not including servicing but we think we save a third on that too.

It’s good to own a Leaf.

So the DTron is no more 🙁
I’ve been coping OKish on multiple daily injections of insulin and have (touch wood) finally got a combination which almost works…

Time	Actions
0640-0700	Test then potentially bolus now for breakfast at 0800 (or later depending on how high or low I am).
0800-0830	Long acting dose, insulatard, small dose to cover the gaps in the bolus during the day and breakfast, see above.
1100-1200	So, if I’m lucky, the long acting is now in place and stopping me being too high from the morning bolus running out, otherwise it’s a covering jab.
1200-1400	Lunch and may be a bolus, but a small one as the long acting will be peaking.
1600-1730	Test to ensure lunch time bolus is still working, if not, bolus.
1800-1900	Tea time bolus.
1900-2000	Night time long acting injection.

Which is why I am looking forward to getting back on a pump. My funding has been cleared (which is a relief) and it should be turning up on the 1st July 😀

I have finally got a Raspberry Pi.  There are many reasons for the delay, not least because we’re not exactly short of computing resource in this house 😉

In fact, since it turned up on Saturday, I’ve been playing with it in my office.  I am reasonably lucky this weekend: my house mates (son and husband) are focused on some game that’s coming out tomorrow and my husband is clearing the gaming decks for it and the kid also has revision.  I am left to my own devices.

Starting out with a Pi

I ordered a Type B Pi (with 512MB RAM and a second USB port) and a 16GB SD card for the OS, in fact it came with the OS images pre-installed.  The Raspberry Pi was created to allow an easy route in to programming, much like the programmers of my generation had when we started, that ’80s vibe.  Hence, the Pi is a cheap computer that doesn’t need a dedicated monitor, it will plug in to the HDMI slot on TV’s or use the composite input from old CRT TV’s (much like a DVD player).

It is powered from a microUsb port, like almost all smart phones these days.  It doesn’t come with the power supply or a keyboard or mouse, but these can be bought from supermarkets these days, so that’s not too difficult.  It has an Ethernet port for network connectivity.  Again, no cable, but in the UK, your internet provider has probably supplied a few cables with the hub for your broadband.

So by 1040, I was up and running.  Well, when I say running…

I was not expecting to have to install the operating system on the specially bought SD card. yet here I was with a choice of 7 operating systems.  For my purposes (I am using the Pi to help some 11-14 year old students learning how to programme) I chose Raspbian, a Pi port of Debian which is a type of linux.  They are using Raspbian on some Pi’s they were given by Google.

This took 35 minutes to build and install and two reboots: in the meantime, I went and bought the Pi a case.  Maplin sell a couple of a £6 and I could pick it up from the local store 30 minutes after paying for it by payPal.  If I’d been prepared to wait, you can pick up a case from Amazon for £4.

I got home, dressed the Pi and booted it for the first time to the Raspbian X windows screen.

The reason for the Pi is to teach, so there are a few sites out there with interesting and accessible projects.

I now have scripts enabling the background library and programme installs to make those projects fly.

Thoughts

I have used Fedora linux for a number of years which has denied me some of the cooler programmes accessible to Debian users and the Pi opens that all up to  me.  From that point of view, I have already had a lot of fun.

And for straight programming it comes with a suite of languages, including Java and Python.

Some of the cooler projects require preparation.  I have now scripted these, including one to build a lamp environment (linux, apache, mysql and php) so I can teach web design and programming.  I have scripted this as otherwise each student would need to enter in 10 lines to install the right programmes and install them.  Given the 30 minute slot once a week, with 8 Pi’s to prep: that would be time consuming and is it what I want to be doing with the high school students.  My thoughts are, for a computer scientist, that is a great introduction, for a high school students it may be difficult and potentially put them off.

But everything seems to run and just work.  For a £40 outlay for the case, the motherboard and the OS, that’s pretty impressive.  You can buy a USB for £7 and a mouse for the same.  That’s cheap and capable computing and if you have problems, there are enough forums to get you over any difficulties: eventually.  Which was really hard to do in the 1980s.

On the subject of the ’80s, of course you can buy a combined case and keyboard making the Pi look a bit like Commodore C64…