Cheetah User Manual

Welcome to Cheetah

Cheetah is an smart and simple tool that makes your life as a diabetic easier and more fun. Cheetah allows you to keep track of your glucose levels, nutrition, insulin doses, and health. When you use Cheetah intensively, Cheetah will start giving suggestions for food and insulin doses. When you allow Cheetah to share your data with friends and peers, these suggestions become even more accurate, leading to an increasing stable and healthy glucose level.

If you’ve received an e-mail form a friend inviting you to join Cheetah, simply click on the link in the email and follow the instructions for downloading and installing the software. After installation, Cheetah will guide you to personalize your configuration.

If Cheetah doesn't sound like it's for you, feel free to delete your version. If you change your mind in the future, don't worry! Cheetah will still be there, waiting for you to rejoin. It is our mission to help you create a better way to work with diabetes, even make it fun

Cheetah as your personal assistant

Cheetah can help you manage your diabetes to a very fine level. As you enter your information on blood glucose levels, health status, food intake, and insuline injections, Cheetah learns about your typical diabetes profile. Frequent and detailed information helps Cheetah discover patterns. These patterns in turn allow Cheetah to give you custom personal advise on your next food intake or insuline dose.

Results from the past are used to estimate short-term future blood glucose levels. Every time you enter a blood glucose level, you give Cheetah feedback on its past suggestions, thereby nudging Cheetah to an even better suggestion for next time. Cheetah learns from its mistakes and successes.

Since Cheetah continuously learns from the ever changing inputs, it grows and evolves just like you do, and adapts to changes like health status, age, different insuline types and such.

You can tell Cheetah if you want Cheetah to adapt the insulin dose to the food intake or vice versa. Often you will want to tell Cheetah about your wishes on what to eat or drink next, and have Cheetah suggest the appropriate insulin dose based on past experiences in similar circumstances. When your health, weight, activities, insulin type and food types (but not amounts) match previously recorded entries in your logbook, Cheetah considers them similar.

Cheetah comes preloaded with nutrition facts and insulin types. When networked, Cheetah will eagerly collect experiences from other instances of Cheetah to learn from others and speed up its suggesting capabilities. Experience from other Cheetah users are never as personal as your own, of course. But they do help Cheetah to learn significantly faster compared to stand-alone, off-line use with only you personal logbook entries handy.

The factory set nutrition values and insulin types also evolve automaticly over time, as you, your peers, and manufacturers add, change and remove data. You can always reset Cheetah to official information published by formal health centers, hospitals and manufacturers.

Based on your personal insulin injection frequency, Cheetah gives suggestions and advise only about the next event it expects, be it either food intake or an insulin injection. Cheetah does not look beyond the next event for the simple reason that so many things may have changed in the mean time, that forecasting becomes extremely unconfident. Cheetah limits the horizon for advise and suggestions to 24 hours for the same reason.

Cheetah suggests the time and type of the next event it expects: food intake, blood glucose test or insulin injection. You can ask Cheetah to alert you when it expects this event to happen. This way, you can use Cheetah to remind you about eating or drinking something, or taking a blood glucose test, or injecting insulin.

Linda loves Cheetah

Take Linda for example. Three more months, and she expects to be the proud mother of a son. Two months ago, during her monthly medical check, she found out that she suffered from diabetes.

The other week Linda woke up at 3 a.m. shaking, shivering and feeling dizzy. Wondering what was wrong, Linda tested her blood glucose level only to discover that it was alarmingly low. She quickly drank a glass of heavily sugared yoghurt and started to feel better soon after. The next morning, she still suffered from a low blood sugar level, but was able to get it up to level during the morning.

Consulting the Cheetah logbook, she found out that she had chicken with rice and some gravy for dinner the evening before and went to sleep with a blood glucose level of just 4.8 mmol/l. She remembered Cheetah suggesting to eat or drink something before going to sleep and to set a reminder to test her blood glucose level again at 2 a.m., but she simply ignored it.

Now, whenever Linda goes to sleep at night, she measures her blood glucose level and when Cheetah suggests to take another probe during the night, she happily accepts Cheetah's help to remind her by turning on the alarm. It hasn't happened since.

Smooth & snappy

Cheetah is optimized for smooth and snappy performance and scalability. For an overview, see Cheetah Quality Requirements.

Installing Cheetah

System requirements

Cheetah works on the following platforms:

• Windows 2000 SP3
• Windows 98 (Second Edition)
• Windows XP SP2
• Mac OS X 10.4

Minimum performance, memory and disk space requirements:

• Intel Pentium PC or macintosh PowerPC 500 MHz or better
• 128 MB RAM
• 20 MB of free disk space for the application

To install Cheetah:

1. To install Cheetah, download the installion program from http://cheetah.aardrock.com/download/.
2. Next, double-click in the installation icon named ‘AardRock-Cheetah-version’ and follow the instructions of the installation program.

Technical support

The current version of Cheetah is unsupported since it is still in full development. However, we welcome any and all feedback at feedback@cheetah.aardrock.com.

Registration and login

Registration

When you start Cheetah, the main window opens and you can search and browse any publicly available information. You cannot make any modifications however.

Before you can create, update or delete information in Cheetah you need to login with your user account and password. If you don’t have an account, you will need to create one. User accounts and passwords are encrypted before they are send over the network to keep your personal information safe at all times.

How can you both be absolutely sure your data is anonymous and be able to restore your own data? This is a challenge for the development team. Perhaps needing a separate discussion.

To register a new account:

The steps below are just a placeholder for the actual way registration will work. Still needs to be worked out.

1. Choose Cheetah > Create New Account. Cheetah will show the Account dialog.
2. Enter your name, e-mail address, user name and password. Enter your password again for verification.
3. Click the Information icon and read and accept the Cheetah End User License Agreement.
4. Select the checkbox labeled ‘I accept the End User License Agreement’.
5. Click ‘Create Account’. The registration process is started and you will receive a confirmation e-mail within a few seconds.
6. Click on the link in the body of the e-mail message to activate your registration. You can now login.

The e-mail contains your account name that you can use to login. Keep a copy at a safe place for later use. For security considerations, your password is not included in the e-mail message.

Login

To login:

1. Choose Cheetah > Login. Cheetah will show the login dialog.
2. Enter your user name and password and click ‘Login’.

Cheetah ’s main window appears. Your identity is displayed in the status bar. Cheetah supports multiple identities. For example, you can set up an identity for personal use and one for professional use. To switch to another identity, simply login again, using the desired identity.

To sign off:

• To log out, choose Cheetah > Sign Off.

Getting started

The Cheetah window

When you start Cheetah, the Cheetah splash screen will show almost immediately (within one second):

• in parallel to loading and launching the Cheetah main window itself
• the splash screen shows while Cheetah is loading and for at least 3 seconds (time is stored in Cheetah configuration file)
• to display the splash screen (in a window), choose Cheetah > About Cheetah
• the splash screen shows:
  • company logo
  • product name
  • release (e.g. Cheetah Summer 2006)
  • version and build number in smaller font (e.g. 2006.1.0 (215))
  • copyright notice (e.g. © 2006 AardRock B.V., The Netherlands)
  • clickable URL to website using default web browser (e.g. Find out more about Cheetah on cheetah.aardrock.com)
  • single line of text showing what’s going on; last line is “Cheetah is ready.”
  • all text and graphics left aligned, using a 24 pixel grid; no centered text and graphics)

The Cheetah main windows shows:

• status bar in footer of window, showing if you’re signed on or not as well as other status info (to be determined)
• when you are signed on, the main window shows your diabetes data, if any, the same way as when you last closed the application

Your personal profile

You can personalize your Cheetah version, make it yours, and make sure that it will adapt itself to your current situation and personal physical development.

To set your general personal information:

1. Choose Cheetah > Preferences and click My Profile.
2. Enter or change your personal information like:
   • first name
   • surname prefix (e.g. "van", "von der", "de la")
   • surname
   • birth date
   • street
   • house number
   • zip code
   • city
   • state
   • country

To set personal information for your diabetes care:

1. Choose Cheetah > Preferences and click My Diabetes.
2. Enter or change your personal diabetes information like:
   • glucose unit (mmol/l or mg/dl)
   • named time slots (default set to:
     • morning (06:00-11:00)
     • midday (11:00-14:00)
     • afternoon (14:00-18:00)
     • evening (18:00-22:00)
     • night (22:00-06:00)
   • carbohydrates per time slot (specify your target carbohydrate intake per time slot; valid until the next change for this time slot)
   • low glucose watermark (lower glucose values will be highlighted)
   • high glucose watermark (higher glucose values will be highlighted)
   • highlight color (color used to highlight out of bounds values)
   • glucose meter manufacturer (name of manufacturer)
   • glucose meter serial number

Insulin types

When you first start Cheetah, there is a good chance that many insulin types are already provided by both peers and insulin manufacturers. However, if you don’t find your typical type of insulin, you can add it and share it with your peers. You can specify the following insulin type information:

• manufacturer (e.g. Novo Nordisk)
• type (e.g. Actrapid Penfill)
• units (e.g. 100 IE/ml)
• volume (e.g. 3 ml)
• total volume (e.g. 300 IE)
• cartridges per box (e.g. 5)
• basal percentage (e.g. 30%)
• bolus percentage (e.g. 70%)
• comment (any comments you may want to add)

To consult or change insulin information:

1. Choose Cheetah > Preferences and click Insulin.
2. Change any existing information by simply typing over it.

To add a new insulin entry:

1. Choose Cheetah > Preferences and click Insulin.
2. Click the ‘+’-sign in the lower left corner of the window. A new insulin entry is created for you to fill in.

To remove an insulin entry:

1. Choose Cheetah > Preferences and click Insulin.
2. Select the entry you want to remove and click the ‘-’-sign or press Delete.

Your logbook

You can use Cheetah as a logbook to keep track of the following time-stamped information:

• glucose level
• insulin dose
• food intake
• health status (are you in good health or do you suffer from an illness (e.g. flu))
• stress level (low, medium, high)
• activities (e.g. sport or at rest)
• weight (a couple of times per year, you will adjust your weight value. your weight will be used to calculate your body-mass index (BMI), helping you to tune into your ideal weight, depending on your age and height.
• comment (any comments you may want to add; many use this to enter diary remarks)

Use the logbook to:

• easily view a results and an average of results over a given period;
• view results in chronological order along with the time and date;
• view the average value, the standard deviation and the number of results for the complete period selected and for all the time periods separately.;
• view highlighted results that fall above or below the low or high watermarks;
• switch between expanded or compact form; when set to expanded the logbook will display multiple results on the same day in the same period; when set to compact, the logbook will display only the latest result of the time period.

Time-stamped entries

As soon as you enter new information or make changes, a time stamp is automatically added to your information. This allows you to later create comprehensive graphs and analyze your diabetes history.

Future versions of Cheetah will allow you to discard any old data in order to save space.

We need some guestimates on how much data is collected over the life time of an individual (say 100 years). Next, check if this is a prohibitively large amount of data and a way to reduce the amount if necessary.

Navigating, sorting and editing cells in your logbook

To rearrange the order of the displayed columns:

• Drag the column headers to the left or right.

To adjust the width of columns:

• Drag the separator lines between the column headers.

Most of the columns can be sorted in ascending or descending order.

To sort the entries in a column:

• Click the sort arrow in the right hand side of the column head.

The arrow in the right hand side of the column head will show the current sorting order (up for ascending and down for descending).

To switch between ascending and descending order:

• Click the sort arrow in the column head again.

You can show or hide various columns. A check mark to the left of the column name indicates if the column currently is shown or hidden.

To show or hide columns:

• Choose View > Columns, and choose a column.

When you have been using Cheetah for a while, you will have collected quite some data and the data pane will show many entries. To limit the number of entries in the data pane, you can use autofiltering.

Filtering is a quick and easy way to find and work with a subset of entries in a list. A filtered list displays only the rows in a column that meet the criteria you specify. Unlike sorting, filtering does not rearrange a list, but instead temporarily hides the rows you do not want displayed.

When you use the AutoFilter command, AutoFilter arrows appear to the left of the column labels in the filtered list.

A check mark to the left of the AutoFilter command indicates if autofiltering is turned on or off.

To toggle autofiltering:

• Choose View > AutoFilter.

To limit the number of visible entries in a column:

• Click the AutoFilter (left hand) arrow in the column head and select the item on which to filter.

Clicking an AutoFilter arrow displays a list of all unique, visible items in the column, including both blanks (no entry in a cell, or an entry that is all spaces) and nonblanks. By selecting an item from the list for a specific column, you can instantly hide all rows that don't contain the selected value in that column. The AutoFilter arrows turn orange in each column that contains the selected value.

Navigating your logbook

You can navigate through the cells in your logbook using the arrow, Return and Tab keys on your keyboard. The arrow keys move the selection left, right, up, and down. The Return key moves the selection down one cell, and the Tab key moves the selection up one cell. Pressing and holding the Shift key in combination with Return or Tab key reverses the direction.

Making changes

Cheetah supports in place editing. For example, to change any value, select the cell and press F2 on Windows or Control-U on the Mac. You can also double-click a cell in order to make changes. This sets the insertion point and you can start typing.

To add a logbook entry

1. Click the ‘+’ in the lower left of the main window to move to a new empty row at the end of your data. Note that a time stamp is automatically added to the new entry. You can always change the time stamp later.
2. Enter values in the relevant columns and press Enter.

To remove a logbook entry:

• Select the row and press Delete.

To replace a cell’s contents:

1. Click the cell that contains the data you want to replace. The cell becomes selected.
2. Start typing the new contents. This will replace the existing contents.
3. To enter your changes, press Return or Tab.

You can also use the arrow keys to navigate up, down, left, and right across cells.

To Edit a cell’s contents:

1. Double-click the cell that contains the data you want to edit to set the insertion point.
2. Make any changes to the cell contents.
3. To enter your changes, press Return or Tab.

To cancel your changes, press Escape.

When you double-click a cell to edit it, the arrow keys work only within that cell. To use the arrow keys to move to another cell, first press Return or Tab to complete your editing changes to the active cell.

Excellent offline behavior

With Cheetah, any change you make can be seen by online peers within a few minutes, provided you both share the same view. For example, if John and Mary are both online and view the root community, and John creates a new community named “Orange” within the root community, Mary will see the “Orange” community appear as well within a few seconds.

Cheetah uses the Wizard Rabbit Treasurer—a reputation-based system—to keep information synchronized across the network.

Zero maintenance

The end result is that all the information you manage is kept persistent on multiple distributed peers. This removes the need for specialized backup and persistency servers and improves reliability, availability, and scalability at an extremely low cost.

Feed and grow your community, wake up the Big Friendly Giant

To bootstrap small communities with just a few peers while assuring reliable availability of information, consider dedicating one or two machines as caching peers. These machines often have somewhat more computing power, bandwidth and disk space available and are connected to the internet around the clock. You can run a standard instance of Cheetah with the ‘caching peer’ option turned on. We tend to call a configuration like this a Big Friendly Giant or BFG for short.