M1flex installation with Apex needle

Yes, this is my sentiment as well.
I bought a flexM1 gen1 and personally would never implant a gen2 knowing sectors can brick (either my mistake, hardware mistake or whatever).

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@franskav thanks for that really informative write up.

I do like the convenience of being able to write with my phone. I will still be getting a gen2, it’s worth the risk for me. If I brick it, I have done so knowing the risks, Thanks to your great write up :+1: and Amals posts.

IF that happens, I’ll then look at going to a gen1a…maybe :man_shrugging:

Do YOU think I have used enough BOLD in this post?

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No I would have added some more if I were you.
I do like the convenience of being able to write with my phone. I will still be getting a gen2, it’s worth the risk for me . If I brick it, I have done so knowing the risks, Thanks to your great write up :+1: and Amals posts.

IF that happens, I’ll then look at going to a gen1a…maybe :man_shrugging:

Do YOU think I have used enough BOLD in this post?
There that looks better LOL.

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Correct… a “tear” is a break in the writing process that causes corruption… this can happen with any media… for example, when a hard drive loses power during a write that leaves a particular sector corrupted or a file table out of sync with drive contents, or in the case of a chip implant if power is lost or more likely insufficient to perform safe writes. Passive chips are difficult to assess because reading a tag requires far less power than writing, so you might read a tag just find and think “I have a good coupling” and then attempt to write and suddenly your power transmission is insufficient to complete the write and it tears.

I consider a noisy connection, be it wired or contactless, to be a different kind of problem… not a tear, but data corruption in transit. Usually transport mechanisms have checksums and other methods to detect and handle data corruption in transit, but unless the memory blocks being written have anti-tearing built in (some chips do for certain critical memory blocks), a tear is basically a 100% certainty if you have power supply issues.

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I once worked on a shot counter product that was self-powered by the recoil of the firearm. There was a strong magnet inside a coil, that would shuttle back and forth when the gun was discharged. It would power the device briefly (up to 14 ms if I recall): in that time the processor would power up, read the current counter in FeRAM, increment it, then write back only if the voltage was above some value. We only have some dozens of CPU cycles to work with - minus the FeRAM’s read and write cycles - so the code was very tight.

It would miss shots if the shooter held the weapon too tightly (not enough recoil) but it would never corrupt the counter. We made damn sure of that.

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A friend and I traded flexM1 needle installs today using off the shelf 4G piercing needles and I have to say the needle method works fantastically well. The 7mm implants fit seems to be damn near perfect to the size of the pocket the needle makes. The needle is definitely uncomfortable, but I think I found the xLED needles to be less comfortable than the 4G one from today, but that might be more placement than anything else. With standard 4G needles you’re definitely a bit tight on length since the needles are 48mm and the implant itself is roughly 38mm, but pulling out the needle with a pair of forceps wasn’t the worst and allowed for pushing it in almost completely.

Also, for any other untrained fools like me doing this at home, you probably shouldn’t, but if you do definitely have someone with you and have a glucose plan. Syncope is a real possibility here even on bigger guys. Also be prepared for this to take a while. Getting good homeostasis took a hot minute for both myself and my friend. But I think in retrospect our butterfly bandages aren’t the best ones for the job, though the did get it done eventually.

Overall though, I’m really pleased with the procedure and the implant itself. The read range on this thing even while still swollen is remarkable and will only get better as it heals. Looking forward to playing with it more when I’m feeling more confident in being able to get solid writes.

Also @amal any chance of selling some gen 2s in their normal card form factor? I’d love to have a couple to practice writes on to guarantee I’m not going to pull a dumb and brick my implant.

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image

I’m stoked for you, and a little bit envious. :green_circle:
Some video or pictures would be cool if you had some to share.
What location did you install it.

We took a video of mine going in, I might upload it once my buddy sends me the footage depending on how dumb we come off XD

Went with middle of the top side of my right wrist, since that seemed about the most forgiving place to try to put it.

Edit: Also for reference, it’s a big ass hole

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Your sentence is missing a hyphen that would prevent it from being misconstrued. Fortunately, the photo clarifies what you’re talking about exactly: I would have hated to see a picture of the hyphen at the wrong place :slight_smile:

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Good idea… I’ll get some cards in bulk and make a little card pack.

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That would be amazing a little pack of here don’t f up your implants test it first.

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I’d also love for a spark card. I know it lowers the barrier to entry a lot, but it would be great to help adoption, and could be used as the same stylejof backup chip

We do have a demo card for development but it basically expires after a period of time and resets itself and the profile associated… but I’ll think about it!

You can skip to about 8 to 10 minutes in, we realized that I should probably shave my hairy arms and wander off for a bit at the start.

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Nice video.

So, just a bandaid then? No stitches?

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Sweet, that’s a great vid I really want to do multiple flex chips but the needle gives me the creeps (not scared of needles but a needle that size should make you shudder).

The shit too far made me chuckle (did you use a DT needle or another source?

Anyway it looked basically painless (no worse than a normal install)?

Can’t wait to get my flexEM installed, but may get a couple in one hit I don’t know.

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@anon3825968 Yup just a butterfly closure and tegaderm to close it up, no stitches. You do have to yank on the butterfly closure pretty hard though. You could maybe do a stitch or two if you felt so inclined but it seems kind of overkill to me.

@Devilclarke these were off the shelf sterilized piercing needles, so the shit too far part is actually basically required to go deep enough. The DT needle is of appropriate length to not need the pliers shenanigans to do the job, but it does require an autoclave to sterilize so wasn’t an option for us.

And yeah not too bad on pain. I think less painful than putting an x series at R1 was.

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Great share, thanks very much!

Overall it was a good install, but really there should have been constant pressure on the wound for at least 5 minutes before attempting the butterfly bandage… you could see that it was bleeding as the tegaderm was laid overtop. I suspect that tegaderm didn’t last long… did it bleed out?

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Oh it absolutely did bleed through, like 5 to 10 minutes after the video stopped, I took it off and did the ol’ pressure and arm over my head like a blood donation to get the bleeding completely stopped.

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