Sleepyhead and ResMed

[sonicboom]

Hi Larry, The designer Mark Watkins of SleepyHead in Australia is so far as I knew too ill to work on SleepyHead at this moment. I have this information of a collegue of me by the Dutch apnea assocation. This collegue is one of the testmebers of sleepyHead in the Netherlands.

We are all indebted to Mark W for the work he has done with SH.  Given the above statement and the desire of some folks to continue to advance the SH software maybe it would be a good time to contact Mark and see if he would be willing to let other folks help him out and work on SH.  There are a lot of smart and capable programmers on here who I'm sure would be happy to get involved. Get well soon Mark!

[Sleeprider]

I'm in regular touch with Mark. I have been trying since November to have him help with a module for the Philips Dreamstation Auto SV. Another member has written complete code for the Somnobalance machines. At this point he has been unable to engage in any focused progress, and even he does not know the reason. Mark is a moderator for the Sleepyhead testing forum, and I have told him we have capable programmers that can, and will take direction to advance the progress of SH. He seems to have developed some irrational dislike for forums, and so messaging and Facebook is all we get right now.

The software is essentially in the public domain, so the only thing stopping someone else from picking it up is motivation and the fact that it is written on a backbone of Qt programming that has been vulnerable to change. I suspect that when a new generation of machines is introduced, either Mark will revive his efforts, or some enterprising programmer is free to pick up the pieces and create a new program. The big question with that is whether the manufacturers will even provide an end-user accessible data record. They have all moved to wireless data transfers to doctors and DMEs, with limited data to end users. SD cards are no longer routinely provided. If they omit the SD card module, it will be very difficult to get anything useful.

[Walla Walla]

I think at that point they would have to provide the data to you under the medical records law. I'm sure some lawyer out there would love to take on that as a class action suit.

[A KLERK]

The problem Mark has is two fold indeed.
A. The Qt programming. Compiling would now entirely ruin the program and Mark told me he actually should start all over. Which is virtually impossible in his condition:

B. He suffers from enormous headaches and cannot concentrate anymore. 

It's a dead end, I'm afraid. Sorry for Mark... and for us. But cannot these programmers that SleepRider refers to, contact Mark through Messenger? If you and I can, why not they?

@Walla Walla: I do not see why the raw data should be provided as medical records. You will never get the raw data from an MRI either
 But fortunately most machines still have SD-cards.

[A KLERK]

Just been chatting with Mark. This is what he said:
me: Have you had contact with the ones who wrote this?
Mark: not yet.. I'm still recharging, and at the moment I have an aversion to forums.. it turns out it's pretty hard to recover from burnout.Facebook messenger has been pretty much all I can handle now.. it's just others don't like using it :-}
me: May I tell them this?
Mark: sure, they'll probably judge me for it, lol.. :-}
but thats totally cool.
I just want to crawl out from under this 10 tons of burnout, and get coding again.
stupid Qt needs to die. along with whoever hacked my server.. I still haven't had the energy to replace the stuff I need on it. ?
the server hack was my own fault for running old TikiWiki and taking too long to migrate.
My blood pressures up lately, docs got me logging it twice a day... I need to write software for my blood pressure monitor now, lol.

SO, please get in thouch!! He wants you so... He's building a new workplace:

[A KLERK]

Further:
I need to build a nice fast workstation, but also need to find a way to switch a bank of low end windows/linux/mac machines (or NUC's/VMs) to test running code on comparable to what low end/average users have. Up till now I've been relying on others to do the bulk of the testing, which is a ridiculous development model.
?
1
(I mean performance testing)
Most of SleepyHead was written on an 800mhz clock locked Dell notebook... it used to take 25 minutes to compile, and I'm complaining about 27 second builds, lol.
For now SleepyHead is working without any major flaws. I'm still proud that I made you call it version 1.0.0 Now people believe in it, even so that the ApneuVereniging call it "the most usefull solution".
I took a lot out of me getting it there.. I'm super glad other devs have stepped up with the new stuff.

[Sleeprider]

I have had similar conversations. I think we should resume this discussion in the Sleepyhead Testing Forum, and see if we an collect some ideas on how to best move forward, and perhaps what programming platform might be the best alternative to Qt.

[sonicboom]

Good idea Sleeprider and please pass on to Mark that he is not being judged but rather we wish him well in his return to health. We are all empowered and healthier OSA survivors because of the work he did.

[A KLERK]

Nice said, SonicBoom!

[A KLERK]

So I opened a new Thread on the SleepyHead Testing Forum. For those interested: Please follow up!