DiaTrack

A self-hosted web app for tracking diabetes hardware, sensors and catheters, so you never forget when something needs changing.

Why I built this

Living with diabetes means constantly swapping sensors and catheters. It's easy to lose track of when you put one on, where it went, and when it expires. DiaTrack shows how much time is left on each device, emails reminders before they expire, and keeps a full history so patterns become visible (which locations fail early, which batches are unreliable).

What it does

• Countdown timers for active sensors and catheters with body-location tracking
• Email reminders before a device expires (configurable, e.g. 24h and 6h before)
• Failure logging (clogged, fell off, sensor error, skin reaction)
• Statistics and charts: failure rates, average lifetimes, breakdowns by location and reason
• Full searchable, sortable history
• Per-user settings for default lifetimes and reminder intervals
• Mobile-friendly, dark mode, German UI

Tech stack

One TypeScript app: TanStack Start (Router, Query, Form) on Vite, oRPC for the type-safe API, better-auth for sessions, Drizzle ORM on PostgreSQL, Valibot for validation, Tailwind CSS v4 with shadcn/ui, Biome and Vitest. Runtime is Bun.

Local development

You need Bun and a PostgreSQL database.

git clone https://github.com/paul1404/diatrack.git
cd diatrack
bun install
cp .env.example .env

Edit .env: set DATABASE_URL to your Postgres instance and BETTER_AUTH_SECRET to a strong random string (openssl rand -base64 32). To create the first account through the UI, set ALLOW_REGISTRATION=true.

Apply the schema and start the dev server:

bun run db:migrate     # apply migrations (drizzle-kit)
bun run dev            # http://localhost:3000

Register an account, then promote it to admin (needed for SMTP settings and email logs):

ADMIN_EMAIL=you@example.com bun run db:seed

After creating your account you can set ALLOW_REGISTRATION=false.

Useful scripts

Script	What it does
bun run dev	Start the dev server
bun run build	Production build to dist/
bun run start	Run the production server (server.js)
bun run db:generate	Generate a migration from schema changes
bun run db:migrate	Apply migrations (dev)
bun run db:migrate:prod	Apply migrations at runtime (no drizzle-kit)
bun run db:seed	Promote ADMIN_EMAIL to admin
bun run lint / bun run format	Biome
bun run test	Vitest
bun run generate:icons	Regenerate the favicon set from public/favicon.svg

Deployment (Railway)

Railway builds the Dockerfile automatically. Configuration lives in railway.toml: the healthcheck hits /api/health, and migrations run on every deploy via the preDeployCommand (bun run db:migrate:prod).

Required environment variables (see .env.example):

• DATABASE_URL — provided automatically when a Postgres service is attached (${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}})

Both the app and PostgreSQL services may use Railway Serverless independently. Dynamic requests wait through PostgreSQL cold starts with bounded retries; if the database is still unavailable, the app returns 503 with Retry-After: 2 instead of exposing a connection error. Railway itself may return a one-time 502 while waking the app, so external monitors and API clients should retry 502 and 503 responses.

• BETTER_AUTH_SECRET — strong random string
• BETTER_AUTH_URL — the public URL of the deployment
• ALLOW_REGISTRATION — true only while creating accounts

The app listens on PORT (injected by Railway).