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.
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
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!
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.
@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.
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?
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.
