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True Metrix Linux Hacking

I'm a newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetic. My health insurance provider approved a True Metrix blood glucose monitor for measuring my blood sugar levels. However, it did not come with any cables/docking stations to connect to a computer, and even if it did, there are (apparently) no Linux drivers for the monitor and/or docking station. So I'm going to try putting my EE hat back on and hacking some drivers together for this device. I want to be able to periodically upload my data to my computer. I figure this is a good learning opportunity, so I intend to write the drivers in multiple languages: C, Rust, and Python. This peertube instance will, in theory, have videos documenting my process of hacking these drivers together. I know there's TidePool (which apparently supports the True Metrix with docking station), but it doesn't support linux and requires account sign-up. I'm going to do my best to not look at TidePool's source code, since this is supposed to be a learning experience.

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Episodes

  1. #010:2022-05-21 Analyzing the USB Data 5: Potential Breakthrough

    I think I've finally made a meaningful breakthrough on how the data on the device is getting encoded and sent over usb to be read by a host computer 😃 Watch all about it here. Read all about it on GitHub I guess: https://github.com/aggroskater...

  2. #009:2022-05-12 Analyzing the USB Data 4: The First 10 Bytes

    I'm finally in enough of a groove at $dayJob that I feel like I have some extra energy to devote to this effort again! But I'm certainly off to a rough start. I was thinking a single hexadecimal number gave you a whole byte and not half a byte. Re...

  3. #008:2021-12-27 Analyzing the USB Data Packets part 3

    I say early on in the video that there "are no Windows drivers". I meant there are no "Linux" drivers 😃 This project is me trying to write Linux drivers for the True Metrix blood glucose monitor, based off of USB traffic I intercepted when readin...

  4. #007:2021-12-09 Analyzing the USB Data Packets Part 2

    I've got an initial python script up and running that confirms my original observation inside of Wireshark about most of the bytes being similar and only the first handful being unique. Subsequent investigation will dig deeper into the early bytes...

  5. #006:2021-12-08 Analyzing the USB data packets part 1

    Here, I take an initial stab at interpreting the raw binary data that's going across the wire. I can't really find much to start with, though there are a few patterns to take note of before employing python to more thoroughly analyze the data.

  6. #005:2021-12-08 Getting a USB Dump with Wireshark

    I muddle my way through some Wireshark hiccups and some confusion on how to isolate the specific USB traffic I'm interested in. At the end, I've got a dump of USB traffic from syncing the data in the official software in the Windows VM that I'll a...

  7. #004:2021-12-04 The Tale of the VirtualBox USB Stack

    At this point, I went backwards, having trouble getting lsusb to even recognize the device. Eventually, I discovered it was a power problem and got it recognized again. Then, I troubleshot VirtualBox USB until I got it working. Finally, I was ab...

  8. #003:2021-12-04 The Actual USB Docking Station

    The docking station arrived in the mail today. This entry shows an overview of the dock and some initial attempts to get it recognized by Linux at all. After recognizing it in lsusb, I moved on to (trying) to get it seen by a Windows 11 Guest VM...

  9. #002:2021-12-01 The TRUEmanager Diabetes Management Software

    In this entry, I give a brief overview of my not-a-lawyer take on the legality of reverse engineering USB traffic for my particular purposes, and then install the Windows drivers/software on a Windows virtual machine and poke around in it.

  10. #001:2021-11-30 The True Metrix Blood Glucose Monitor

    An initial thought process overview on where to start with trying to write drivers on Linux for the True Metrix blood glucose monitor.

  11. Meta Info on Setting up OBS to record everything

    I haven't used OBS before. But... it's pretty intuitive, all things considered. Had a couple things I needed to tweak around PulseAudio, but I believe this set up should serve me well for documenting this little adventure of mine.

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ABOUT THIS SHOW

I'm a newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetic. My health insurance provider approved a True Metrix blood glucose monitor for measuring my blood sugar levels. However, it did not come with any cables/docking stations to connect to a computer, and even if it did, there are (apparently) no Linux drivers for the monitor and/or docking station. So I'm going to try putting my EE hat back on and hacking some drivers together for this device. I want to be able to periodically upload my data to my computer. I figure this is a good learning opportunity, so I intend to write the drivers in multiple languages: C, Rust, and Python. This peertube instance will, in theory, have videos documenting my process of hacking these drivers together. I know there's TidePool (which apparently supports the True Metrix with docking station), but it doesn't support linux and requires account sign-up. I'm going to do my best to not look at TidePool's source code, since this is supposed to be a learning experience.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does True Metrix Linux Hacking have?

True Metrix Linux Hacking currently has 11 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.

What is True Metrix Linux Hacking about?

I'm a newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetic. My health insurance provider approved a True Metrix blood glucose monitor for measuring my blood sugar levels. However, it did not come with any cables/docking stations to connect to a computer, and even if it did, there are (apparently) no Linux drivers for...

How often does True Metrix Linux Hacking release new episodes?

True Metrix Linux Hacking has 11 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.

Where can I listen to True Metrix Linux Hacking?

You can listen to True Metrix Linux Hacking on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
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