Asked my wife to hold the phone while I rotated my hand pressing on different spots, got no read (hope that this is a good thing as it would show a failing connection).
About the rotation, it rotated a bit during the first 2 weeks and no more rotation since then
Well, it would most likely have shown if one of those two connections had failed:
if one or both connections to the chip itself have failed (aluminum pads around the black dot on the left) I doubt pressing on em would do anything.
I asked whether you had kept track of the orientation because if you had, you would know exactly where those two spots are. Otherwise you have to hunt at random, like you did.
Sorry it didn’t yield any results. But it was worth trying.
Fyi, my install location is in the wrist like yours, not in the hand.
Oh! Sorry yes, I was thinking of someone else for some reason.
Damn, then if there is a failure rate problem with the flexNExT, it might be more general than something related to the implant location.
Mh, stop making me nervous… mine is just nice and quiet by now. I mean, it reads and all, but it’s not bitchy any more. Currently. (funny enough, one of the LED is still red instead of blue, but there might just be a vein above it…)
But I’m very surprised that by now, we already have two cases of problems or maybe even failure - I saw how Amal tortured that poor little chip in the video he made, and I was pretty sure that nothing like that would ever happen to my hand (and if it ever does, the chip will be my least concern).
But fatigue failure? I mean, Ottomagne’s is sitting on his wrist, so there is so little movement to the chip itself, that I just can’t imagine that happening… And even mine on top of my hand gets moved very little, and bends almost never (unless stupid me catches on it). How could fatigue failure happen that way?
And what other things might cause such problems?
Do you know what caused that? I get that sometimes when I work hard with my hands, did you do anything exhausting some days before?
But still, like Rosco said, fluid buildup has no effect on reading quality. Had it several times, and it always read fine.
Things can break without a real reason.
I don’t think we can really see a trend here.
I’m kinda stoked for a replacement thread where amal drops his analysis of a failure.
Nah, far too few implants to ever get a good statistic. I’m just a tad worried 
Don’t tell me those implantable thingies from a company named “Dangerous Things” aren’t perfectly safe! 
I’m not trying to make you nervous, but I’m not exactly reassured neither. Mine is good now - dry as a bone, quiet, no pinching, no biting, functional. I’d hate to lose it too.
I’m not surprised at all. I studied fatigue failure for years in one of my previous jobs: very roughly speaking, it’s a function of deformation amplitude vs deformation cycles. Given enough cycles, you can break anything with very little deformation.
Amal showed that the chip resists one huge deformation once. It says zilch about its ability to withstand a million very small deformations. And aluminum in particular - which is what the bullseye’s antenna is made of, and what the chip is connected to - is known to have a finite fatigue life.
What worries me most is, those tags were never designed to be bent over and over constantly. Yes they’ll resist a fair amount of bending, but I doubt anybody wondered how many cycle they would resist.
Hence my not being surprised. I’m being careful with mine, but to be honest, I won’t be surprised if it fails. Maybe it’ll fail later because I saw that one coming even before implanting it, but if it’s a trend, mine will too.
About that… I’m quite surprised by the number of flexNExT wearers who still have an edema long after implanting it. In retrospect, I’m beginning to think I’m one of the lucky few with a perfectly dry implant after all 
Yeah, that!
We all knew what we got ourselves into. DT will never get a complaint from me at least.
You had enough other trouble with yours 
I just think it has a freaking long overall healing time - not until it “feels” healed, but until it actually is…
I kinda know that… but still, I thought the deformations on the spots we implanted it (the wrist being even more stable than the hand) wouldn’t lead to fatigue failure that fast. It is very little movement or bending, and a failure after 2 or 3 months is still a bit surprising for me. Hope mine will last…
Same here! The only reason I’m poking on those problems quite a lot is because I think it might help with the development of solutions - better placement ideas, different aftercare or handling, maybe better chip types or whatever might be possible. I just love the idea of the flexNExt, and I’d like to see a permanently lasting one of those
The wrist is more dimensionally stable than the hand (and that’s why I implanted mine there) but it still deforms the implant: the tendons underneath push it up and down, and the potato-chip shape twists ever-so-slightly when you rotate your wrist. Less deformation than in a hand, but deformation nonetheless. That’s why I insisted that my installer position the chip and the free end of the crossover bridge on mine entirely over my radius, so they experience the least deformation possible.
You’d be surprised how “bendy” the human body is, even in places where it looks like an immutable solid shape.
If mine fails, I plan on sending Amal a tag on a semi-rigid plastic backing bent to the shape of my wrist for conversion and replacement.
If it should happen, I’m just hoping it’ll happen in spring, so I can go visit my installer in Helsinki with the semi-rigid replacement in the summer and make it a nice summer holiday. And with any luck, the coronavirus thing will have died down enough that I could go visit my transport authority to have a flexDF bus pass programmed and implanted at the same time.
Mine is a bit larger than my radius so twisting my arm makes it poke out on one side or the other. Makes me have to approach one of my doors in an awkward way to get it flat against the reader (lately I’ve just started pressing on the side of it to force it flat cause it’s faster and it doesnt squeak me out as much) but now im worried that that movement several times a week is going to cause issues long term. In other news my puppy play bit me and managed to get his teeth right under the implant… it was a whole new level of cringe, but also it survived.
Do you really have to do that? Even my most difficult NFC device easily reads it from across the street. Well, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration But you get the idea.
Anyway, if I were you, I’d abstain from doing that.
Well it’s either tapping on it a bit or twisting my arm in an awkward way. This is the ID Lock from Norway, it works really well its just my damn radius makes the implant face away from the door. I need a bigger arm bone… or wider one
You mean the ID lock 150? It looks like an easy-going lock.
I gather you have your flexNExT on your wrist too. Here’s how I approach mine to my - somewhat finicky(er) - NFC door handle:
I really don’t have to twist my arm or anything.
FlexMT for me and higher than the wrist cause I needed my wrist for other activities.
Yeah I can relate. Presenting my flexM1 or my IAR M1k to my - really quite finicky - Yale Doorman V2N is a bit of a twisting game. Even more than you:
Still, no ramming the implant in required.
Im not ramming it though, i just press on the muscle next to it to counter the effect of the edge of the bone and spare me the arm twisting the same amount of pressure as if i was taking my pulse but thats enough to flatten it. But I wont risk it if it could cause issues long term. It would be so much easier if my damn door protruded from the frame cause then id go in sideways.
How do you like the Yale doorman? I looked into it but decided on the ID Lock instead, but now I need a lock for my shed and I’m considering sparing the extra 100 bucks and going for the doorman
I’d have gone with the ID Lock 150 if I could’ve. But I couldn’t modify the door (rented house) and the Yale Doorman V2N has a compatible lock case, so that was pretty much the only option.
The Yale Doorman is kind of terrible with implants. It works okay, but it’s just not very convenient. The reader is difficult enough to trigger with implants that it makes me curse at it each time I’m in my cycling clothes, shivering and trying to find the sweet spot in -10C temperatures and it won’t fucking open. Even with the flexM1.
Also, it has a pretty good way of turning a Mifare Classic into a somewhat secure tag. While it’s great for security, the downside is that you’ll have to dedicate your implant to that lock. Also, you’ll need to clone a genuine Yale Doorman tag (15 euros, what a ripoff) and then the original tag is useless.
On the plus side, it has a remote control fob option. Not cheap, but great.
Sorry Mattsudo we’re going off track a bit here
Oh screw it then, im sticking to the ID Lock, try to catch some promo or something. It fit perfectly in my Swedish doors with just one hole needed with the drill. My garage door and shed door are some other kind of standard (no bolt) so ti requires carving up the door frame to fit the left part. Luckily I own the house so I can destroy my doors if I want to.
@mattsudo all this was to say, when I had had a fluid bubble the LEDs were not visible so it could be that…maybe? I dont know, I hope its not fully dead in any case.