Strange beeping & icon on REMstar Auto

This morning when I turned off my REMstar Auto, it made an extended beeping sound. Tonight as I was getting ready to put on my mask, I noticed that the card icon in the Info box had an "X" through it. That icon/warning is not given anywhere in the user's manual. Does anyone know what it means?

I removed the data card, unplugged the machine and then turned it back on. The "X" is no longer there.

Was the card full? Did I erase all the data by removing the card? The data screen says the card now has 97% free, but it was last downloaded in May. I was told the cards hold up to a year of data. Is that true?

The machine has 13,455 hours of therapy.

Thank you for your help

Nancy

The memory card is designed to be removed so it can be read by a sleep analyzing program.

Not seeing it your profile, but I am guessing you have an M-Series with that many hours so it would be a SmartCard rather than an SDcard.

When it is put in, it shouldn't delete anything. Most machines including your machine overwrite data when there is no more room on the card with new info that needs to be put on the card. Detailed data is only stored on the card for a short period of time, but compliance data is stored typically for up to a year (or more).

The beeping and X issue, could be that the card just got loose, was jarred or something.

If you reinserted the card and it is working, no problem. It is also possible the card is wearing out and might eventually need to be replaced.

Hi Nancy,

Your data card will hold more than a year's data so that is not an issue.
The user guide indicates the error is the card being inserted improperly.
Try again, if the error continues, contact your DME to check for a hardware error.

If you have a spare SD card, you might try that in case the problem is a damaged card.

Welcome to the board.

It's hard to tell unless you have a card reader to try it out yourself. I wouldn't expect the data to be damaged by removing the card. However, you could have a card going bad or some sort of error on the machine.

I suspect you have one of the "legacy" REMstar CPAP machines that uses a credit card sized data card. You'd need a special card reader and program to read the data yourself.

BTW, you might look into getting a newer CPAP machine if you insurance will pay for it. The newer machines record a lot more data, and it's a lot easier to read the data yourself. If your machine is from 2003 and has 13,000 hours of usage, it's time to start worrying about it dying on you. Some insurance will pay for a new machine at 5 years, but that's getting less and less common.

A newer machine will record every breath you take all night long and will also collect a lot more info. If you decide to look into it, read the links in my signature line at the bottom of this post for info on what machine to get.

WYknitter wrote:This morning when I turned off my REMstar Auto, it made an extended beeping sound. Tonight as I was getting ready to put on my mask, I noticed that the card icon in the Info box had an "X" through it. That icon/warning is not given anywhere in the user's manual. Does anyone know what it means?

I removed the data card, unplugged the machine and then turned it back on. The "X" is no longer there.

Was the card full? Did I erase all the data by removing the card? The data screen says the card now has 97% free, but it was last downloaded in May. I was told the cards hold up to a year of data. Is that true?

The machine has 13,455 hours of therapy.

Thank you for your help

Nancy

Hi Nancy.

Which machine do you have and is there any flashing error code (like "C1") in the LCD screen when the beeping occurs?

The card can't be "full". When it reaches capacity, it writes over the oldest (summary) data. I suspect it became corrupted.
If you have a data-capable machine, do you check your nightly data (in the LCD if it's an M Series or downloading the data to an Encore program)?
If you're not checking your data, you could simply remove the card if the problem keeps occurring or buy a new card if you are downloading and checking.


Den

.

That sounds like what happened to mine. I posted about it and got help here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=103411&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

It also caused me to start looking around for a newer machine since mine had 19,000 hours on it. I was very lucky to find the machine in my sig with only 95 hours on it for $100 on my local craigslist, so I upgraded. All the additional info recorded by the newer machines is very helpful to see how you are doing.

Thank you all for your replies. The machine seems to be fine now - no more alarms or strange icons. There was no error message on the screen after the alarm other than the "X" through the card icon on the Info box in the lower left of the home screen.

JDS74 wrote: The user guide indicates the error is the card being inserted improperly.
Try again, if the error continues, contact your DME to check for a hardware error

I'm curious where you saw the error in the user guide. I scoured every page. Can you share that source with me? Thanks

My machine was new in 2010 (PR System One) and uses an SD CARD. I do not have a reader/software to download the card myself.

I am relieved to learn that the data is possibly still intact. I see my sleep specialist yearly, and he always checks my card information.

Thank you,

Nancy

All you need is a cheap sd card reader and the free SleepHead software and you can look at your data yourself and see how your therapy is going. Unfortunately, sometimes the medical folks only care about compliance, i.e. hours of use, to get paid by the insurance - not how effective the therapy is.

The links for SleepyHead can be found in the top section of the homepage of this forum.

The most popular sd card reader on amazon is only $6.30 here: http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Informa ... 009D79VH4/

Card readers are not needed for the machines that have SD cards unless someone doesn't have a slot in their computer for a SD card or maybe the slot is non functioning for some reason.

Now for the older model machines pre SD card that use a smart card (sort of looks like a credit card) a card reader is needed to communicate with the computer.