03-13-2024, 08:24 PM
Air11 now does daylight savings time!
Many times in the past I have commented upon ResMed design being "idiot savant" in that there is brilliant engineering in some things, and pure bone-headed stupid in others.
The cpap clock has been near the top of the list as far as stupid.
Time is central to sleep apnea, in that events are counted per hour. So cpap machines have always had clock chips since day one. And those internal clock chips had no way to keep themselves synchronized, so they would drift over time.
Then ResMed came up with the innovation of having the machines "phone home" once per day over built-in cell modems. When I first realized that the clock on my A10 was drifting, I was ranting to my son about how stupid it was that the cpap was chatting everyday with the Mothership, but the engineers hadn't programmed it so that it would ask the server "hey mom what time do you have?" My son tells me that it's even MORE stupid than that! In order for a cell modem to work properly it MUST sync it's time with the network. Which means that the A10 and now the Air11 machines must have TWO clocks, and when it comes to timestamping the data on the card they use the time on the clock that's wrong and ignore the clock that's right!
Now, just when you thought it couldn't get any stupider, ResMed engineers exceeded expectations.
They engineered the Air11 without a settable clock, and you can only reset the time ZONE. Which is kind of clever (the savant part) but they had to be stupid, too, in that you can't reset the time zone without wiping all of the data off of the machine. Now ResMed is a company which was founded in Australia and is now based in the US, so you would think that they would have some people working there who could imagine traveling many time zones (like between US and Australia) for some temporary stay and then returning to your original time zone.
Now apparently stupidity is some sort of infectious thing. I live in western Illinois, and when Apria shipped me my Air11 in March 2022 it came from Kansas City. Illinois, Missouri, Kansas -- ALL of them are in the SAME time zone. But my Air11 came and the clock was two hours behind central daylight time. AND it was still drifting, as I watched it gradually lose a couple of minutes over the next two years. Which means that this new machine with two clocks is obviously STILL using the unreliable clock to timestamp data!
Originally I thought it was Pacific time, but then in the fall when the clocks changed it went to only 1 hour difference so I realized that it was actually Arizona time.
Over time I realized that I kinda like my cpap machine to be in the other time zone. I've always had a problem with staying up too late, and my machine makes it look like I'm an early-to-bed-early-to-rise virtuous person rather than the night owl that I really am. The main complication is that I use a recording pulse oxymeter, which was designed by engineers who also have their stupid features, but they are smart enough to synch the pulseox to the computer clock when downloading data. I download my pulseox data using a windows virtual machine on my mac, and store all of my data in my dropbox. After awhile I realized that my process works well if I reset the time zone on my windows machine before I download the data, and so I keep the pulseox in the same time zone as the Air11.
In 2023, I kept my windows clock in Arizona time and life was good. Well still somewhat stupid, because the Air11 times still drifted because clearly the Air11 was synching to the wrong clock chip.
Until this week, when the time changed, and my cpap sprung forward and now it's still one hour behind the local time.
Evidentally, one of those software updates between last fall and now they fixed the software so it now does daylight savings time. Thus I'm in Mountain Time not Arizona time.
They still aren't getting the local time from the cellular network, but hey, it's still smarter than it was!
The cpap clock has been near the top of the list as far as stupid.
Time is central to sleep apnea, in that events are counted per hour. So cpap machines have always had clock chips since day one. And those internal clock chips had no way to keep themselves synchronized, so they would drift over time.
Then ResMed came up with the innovation of having the machines "phone home" once per day over built-in cell modems. When I first realized that the clock on my A10 was drifting, I was ranting to my son about how stupid it was that the cpap was chatting everyday with the Mothership, but the engineers hadn't programmed it so that it would ask the server "hey mom what time do you have?" My son tells me that it's even MORE stupid than that! In order for a cell modem to work properly it MUST sync it's time with the network. Which means that the A10 and now the Air11 machines must have TWO clocks, and when it comes to timestamping the data on the card they use the time on the clock that's wrong and ignore the clock that's right!
Now, just when you thought it couldn't get any stupider, ResMed engineers exceeded expectations.
They engineered the Air11 without a settable clock, and you can only reset the time ZONE. Which is kind of clever (the savant part) but they had to be stupid, too, in that you can't reset the time zone without wiping all of the data off of the machine. Now ResMed is a company which was founded in Australia and is now based in the US, so you would think that they would have some people working there who could imagine traveling many time zones (like between US and Australia) for some temporary stay and then returning to your original time zone.
Now apparently stupidity is some sort of infectious thing. I live in western Illinois, and when Apria shipped me my Air11 in March 2022 it came from Kansas City. Illinois, Missouri, Kansas -- ALL of them are in the SAME time zone. But my Air11 came and the clock was two hours behind central daylight time.
AND it was still drifting, as I watched it gradually lose a couple of minutes over the next two years. Which means that this new machine with two clocks is obviously STILL using the unreliable clock to timestamp data!Originally I thought it was Pacific time, but then in the fall when the clocks changed it went to only 1 hour difference so I realized that it was actually Arizona time.
Over time I realized that I kinda like my cpap machine to be in the other time zone. I've always had a problem with staying up too late, and my machine makes it look like I'm an early-to-bed-early-to-rise virtuous person rather than the night owl that I really am. The main complication is that I use a recording pulse oxymeter, which was designed by engineers who also have their stupid features, but they are smart enough to synch the pulseox to the computer clock when downloading data. I download my pulseox data using a windows virtual machine on my mac, and store all of my data in my dropbox. After awhile I realized that my process works well if I reset the time zone on my windows machine before I download the data, and so I keep the pulseox in the same time zone as the Air11.
In 2023, I kept my windows clock in Arizona time and life was good. Well still somewhat stupid, because the Air11 times still drifted because clearly the Air11 was synching to the wrong clock chip.
Until this week, when the time changed, and my cpap sprung forward and now it's still one hour behind the local time.
Evidentally, one of those software updates between last fall and now they fixed the software so it now does daylight savings time. Thus I'm in Mountain Time not Arizona time.
They still aren't getting the local time from the cellular network, but hey, it's still smarter than it was!
