High Tech Baby Monitoring?

MrGibbage writes "I'm a long time geek and about to be a first time father. I'm setting up the baby room now, and I'm looking for a high-tech (and low cost of course) baby monitoring system. I'm already running a linux web server over DSL and I'd love to push the video to that in order to see the video on my cell phone when we are out and the babysitter is home....uhh....babysitting. How will I watch the video while in our house? What about on my iPaq? Laptop? Something else? What about audio? Any systems that integrate both? The Baby-R-Us systems are ridiculously low quality and not expandable at all and therefore not really an option. The last slashdot article about video surveillance is a few years old."

Comments

i call bullshit

[j1mmy]

story author probably wants to spy on his neighbor's teenage daughter(s).

Re:i call bullshit

[DougNYC]

No, his neighbors pre-teen daughter(s) and he'll claim their exempt because it's art.

Re:i call bullshit

[EtherAlchemist]

story author probably wants to spy on his neighbor's teenage daughter(s).

Probably, but since it seems those babysitters are always popping up on shows like "When nannys attack" on Fox, and having two kids myself, I can understand the uneasiness.

In either case though the quickest way may be to go with an X10 setup (yes, THOSE guys). For under $200 you can get 3 wireless color cameras setup (cams, receiver, transceiver, remote, batt pack, motion sensors, etc) that will record when motion activated to either your PR or VCR.

The cams and sensors are totally visible though, which can be a detterent in and of itself, but if you're looking for something you can hide, a quick Google search will bring up thousands of companies. I looked at the ones who bought the keyword ads, and some have some pretty cool stuff for around 200 bucks.

There is also third party software out there that allows you to look in on what your cam sees by sending a snap shot to your cell phone (proper Net connections required.)

Re:i call bullshit

[MrGibbage]

It's not to watch the baby sitter. We don't even have a baby sitter yet. Heck, we don't even have a baby yet. Anyway, how are the X10's in low light? Anyone actually buy one? Anyone willing to admit it? I almost think I'd be too embarassed to buy one only because of their advertising.

Re:i call bullshit

[chickygrrl]

I'll own up to having several X10s that I've bought between late 2000 and 2003.

In low light, they're awful, but in natural light, they are a bit better. The ones that were in my living room and bedroom for a while were only good during the day, but were terrible with your typical overhead lights and table lamps. In rooms with only 1 light source (kitchen, bathroom, etc), the quality goes from "terrible" to "I paid $200 for this?!?"

They can be a bit blurry; mine never had an image as crisp and clear as those you could get with some of the cheap webcams you can find on ebay for $10. I was never able get any of them to focus very well.

Uhhhhmmm Yeah, me too

[fataugie]

I'd like to see the video of your babysitter after you're gone too....

I'm sure we'll see it as a mpg on the newsgroups very soon....

Re:Uhhhhmmm Yeah, me too

[cerberusss]

I'd like to see the video of your babysitter after you're gone too....

Aaaahhh that brings back memories. When I was fourteen, I decided I'd like a glass of water and when I walked into the living room, the babysitter was going at it with her boyfriend. I didn't get my glass of water but it was pretty educational :D

Re:Uhhhhmmm Yeah, me too

[Ansonmont]

You had a babysitter at age 14? How long were your parents gone?

Re:Uhhhhmmm Yeah, me too

[cerberusss]

We lived on the countryside where noone could hear you scream...

Re:Uhhhhmmm Yeah, me too

[Anonymous Coward]

The sound of banjos duelling drowned it out?

Re:Uhhhhmmm Yeah, me too

[Greedo]

Which is exactly what the babysitter and boyfriend were relying on.

It's never to early

[antifoidulus]

to start teaching your baby about the PATRIOT Act :P

Re:It's never to early

[Anonymous Coward]

Spelling and punctuation are more important. You should try learning them someday.

Re:It's never to early

[antifoidulus]

Um, so I missed an o. I have a wireless keyboard; it misses strokes from time to time. I would care if this were say, an important document, but it's a fucking joke on /., you really need to learn to get a life Mr. AC.

Don't

[troon]

If you start watching the baby on your video-phone, you'll get unhealthily paranoid. Select a baby-sitter you trust, and relax a bit. You'll have enough stress with a new kid as it is - you'll need to learn to let go when it's sleeping.

Human infants are quite good (admittedly not perfect) at not dying when left alone when sleeping.

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you start watching the baby on your video-phone, you'll get unhealthily paranoid

And what is worse, is that you'll end up fullfilling every little need he have, and he'll get used to that.

This will make you life miserable later.

And, you are about to loose most of your friends. Having a brand-new dad bragging about his baby is already bad enough. Now, if you have the gut to piss everybody with a real time feed to its bed...

Re:Don't

[enbody]

I'll second that and add another piece of advice: pay your babysitters well (better than others do) and treat them with respect. If possible "adopt", them into your family. You'll find you get and retain the best babysitters.

We did that and they always found time to sit for our kids whereas others couldn't get them. When my daughter got older she ended up sitting for the two families which paid well, but more importantly, treated her with respect. Now in college, she corresponds with both her own babysitter and the kids she babysat for.

Re:Don't

[kiwimate]

Right. In the first few months the baby will get you up every couple of hours anyway to tell you he/she needs you. (We were extremely lucky; our daughter started sleeping through the night when she was a month old, but that's way unusual.)

Our daughter is now about to turn one year old, and I can still be standing right over the top of her and have to strain to see if she's moving when she's sound asleep. So you may find the video induces more panic than it relieves, unless you're just worried about her hopping over the side of the crib and escaping when she's three weeks old. We have a baby monitor from Babies 'R' us (audio only) and that's exactly what we needed. If we're at all worried over and above that audible reassurance, then one of us walks into the room to check on her. (This often has the reassuring effect of awaking her, at which point she makes it brutally clear she was quite all right, thank you very much, until some tactless git walked into her room and woke her up.)

The main thing you should probably be worried about is that her parents are not too casual and not too paranoid. Either one is bad. As far as the baby's concerned...go to the SIDS home page and read up, and follow up if you fit any of the high risk categories. Otherwise, enjoy -- it's a blast.

Re:Don't

[jackalope]

We've adopted the practice of entering into a contract with our sitter for 1 years worth of babysitting, 1 night a week. We pay her upfront so she has enough cash in hand to buy something decent, like a powerbook.

She's happy with the lump sum payment, and we get a for-sure babysitter for 1 year.

Re:Don't

[shaka999]

From your post I take it your not a parent?

I've found that I'm much more tolerant of new parents talking about their kids after having a couple myself. Before I had kids it drove me nuts.

Re:Don't

[Evangelion]

Regarding SIDS, there's one piece of advice that SIDS gives out which is potentially damaging to a baby -- and that is putting the baby on it's back to sleep.

Babies need to be in a position to be able to interact with thier environment in order to develop properly -- they are utterly powerless laying on thier back, and it's a very unnatural way for a child to sleep. By placing them on thier back, you make them unable to move and interact with thier environment (such as it is). Not to mention now you have to worry about the child coughing up something in thier sleep if they're on thier back.

In this case, the SIDS organization is basically taking a correlation and treating it as a causative factor, and ignoring the damaging side effects from thier solution.

Re:Don't

[b0bby]

Even better, start trading babysitting with other parents in your neighborhood. They're in the same boat as you, and it's nice for either mom or dad to go over & watch someone else's tv for an evening. Then you go out & one of them comes over. It's great because it's free, and particularly because other parents are more geared up to especcially young kids. If a baby wakes up and is inconsolable, a parent will bow to the inevitable and give you a call rather than being afraid of being a failure like a teenager might. We've worked it on a quid pro quo basis with a few people, and also expanded it a bit recently using babysitterexchange.com (it's free & run by parents, so you can't complain too much that it's IE only & sometimes is down).
On the high tech side, I'd say you don't really need much but whatever you decide to do, get it done before junior arrives because you sure won't have time afterwards... I'd get one of the Phillips rechargeable baby monitors & leave it at that.

Re:Don't

[v01d]

Strange, I've gotten less tolerant. I have a kid. Why the fuck would I want to hear about yours?

Re:Don't

[Harbinjer]

Funny you should mention hopping over the side.
My parents tell me that's exactly what I did. I'd bounce in my crib, until I could get over the side, and then land on my sleeping parents.

At least I couldn't get farther than their bed without waking them up.

Re:Don't

[v01d]

My daughter starting sleep through the night immediately (well, within a week of being home). I've found the cheap purely audio baby monitors to be perfect: at night I can just hear the babies' breathing. I can't imagine wanting a camera pointed at her all the time. Kinda creepy.

Re:Don't

[jargoone]

If you really believe what you say, you should have found a different article to link to. Here's the last paragraph:

The new data certainly should not discourage parents from abandoning the supine sleep setup, emphasizes Grossman. "Play with them, hold them, but put them on their backs to sleep."

Re:Don't

[jdreed1024]

If you start watching the baby on your video-phone, you'll get unhealthily paranoid.

Plus, the kid will find a way around it. He'll hook up a VCR to the video camera playing a tape of him sleeping in a continuous loop. By the time you get suspicious and notice this, he's long gone thanks to Keanu Reeves' daring high-speed chase under the crib.

Re:Don't

[bholzm1]

This is not a recommendation from "the SIDS organization", but from the National Institutes of Health as well as the American Association of Pediatrics. Here are the facts:

Between 1992 to 1998, the number of babies put to sleep on their stomachs went from 70% to 17%. The SIDS rate declined in that same time period by 40%.

Babies at risk for SIDS (generally 0-4 months) are already utterly powerless, no matter which position they're lying in. They're not moving very much -- or at least not in any sort of coordinated way, and can interact just fine with their environment. Finally, there is absolutely no data to support the concern that the child is at any bigger risk for choking on their back than on their stomach.

The side effects tend to be a longer developmental delay for crawling and a temporary flattening of the head. Those seem quite minor compared to SIDS.

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

> From your post I take it your not a parent?

I am the AC you are replying to. And I am a parent (two boys, 6 and 5).

The problem is that probably half of the submiter friends have no children, and he must be carefull not to piss them off. Like you and I been pissed by our friends that had children before we had...

I was very careful about that after having my childs, and managed to keep mostly intact my relations with childless people (that, btw, tends to be much more interesting than one with child, as those generally don't know what to talk about, beside their progeniture...)

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh. There are so many tech baby gear questions he could have asked. He asks about the one thing 99.99% of parents would find foolish and way overboard.

Re:Don't

[ItsIllak]

You can't enter into contracts with minors. Sounds like a great way of wasting an up front payment.

That said, I think it's a great idea to make sure you appreciate your babysitter and they appreciate you. They practically ARE a member of the family, a very important one. But lets remember, they're also usually 15-18 year old kids.

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Between 1992 to 1998, the number of babies put to sleep on their stomachs went from 70% to 17%. The SIDS rate declined in that same time period by 40%.

Correlation.

What is the SIDS rate for the control case?

Re:Don't

[KirkH]

As others have said, you're information is bad. The real data does not support your assertion that a baby is more likely to choke while on its back than suffocate (or whatever you want to term SIDS) while on its stomach.

Regarding interaction and development: I don't think a baby does much interaction at all while sleeping, so sleeping on the back should be fine in that regard. Yes, you should put the child on its stomach while you're playing or supervising it so that it can push up with it's hands, raise its head, etc, thereby strengthing its arm, chest, and neck muscles.

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

>And, you are about to loose most of your friends.

You're going to lose most of your friends anyway, except for those who also have kids.
I mean, who has the time for friends anymore?

Re:Don't

[DGregory]

There's one theory that says that SIDS is caused by fumes from the mattress, and a New Zealand company invented some sort of mattress wrap (sorry I don't have the link) that supposedly there were NO cases of SIDS with babies on mattresses wrapped in this stuff.

Therefore the theory is that if the baby is sleeping on the back, then they aren't inhaling the fumes. I don't know if there's merit to that idea, but it's an interesting thought.

SIDS is also a rather generic term that they use, "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome", if they don't know the cause of the baby's death.

Also of note is that SIDS is virtually unheard of in countries where the infants routinely sleep with their parents (and they laugh like you're insane if you suggest that the parent might roll over on or smother the baby), as well as in countries where they don't use standard mattresses, but mattresses stuffed with natural materials.

Re:Don't

[Fishead]

I agree that it is too easy to be paranoid. You just gotta lighten up and trust that they are gonna be alright during the night. We just had our second a week ago, and it is funny how much it is different from the first one. We are much more relaxed parents the second time around. I do have an insanely large amount of baby pic's burned to CDs (which I seem to have payed a copy levy when I purchased) If you have a gmail account you would like to test the capacity on, I could send you some pictures of my cute kids. Oh, congrats on becoming a new father. Only part I regret is that we waited till we were 25 to start.

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

why would she waste her money on a powerbook when she could buy a much cheaper pc laptop...?

Re:Don't

[slo_learner]

How about some off topic mods here? The gentleman asked an interesting question about applying technology to parenting problems and got a bunch of junk psychology back. If he wanted junk psychology he could subscribe to parenting rags. Let's give the man some tech advice.

Personally, I looked into building some DIY radio circuits so I could use any radio in the house as a monitor, but I quickly found that I would rather have my kid with me if I am in the house. He is not old enough to be on his own, and my wife and I have complimentary work schedules, so we haven't needed remote monitoring yet.

Good luck with your project.

Re:Don't

[friendscallmelenny]

Has anyone looked to see if SIDS rates are higher in babies that sleep in new cribs vs. older ones. The offgassing rates from the various materials should be greatest when they are new.

Re:Don't

[nimid]

Otherwise, enjoy -- it's a blast.

So you're the father, huh?

Re:Don't

[DGregory]

Unless it's from deterioration. I haven't really explored the idea much because we never used a crib with our daughter. She has a toddler bed with a new crib mattress in it but I'm not worried about SIDS in an 18 mo old.

Re:Don't

[Vellmont]

I don't think anyone is talking about some kind of enforceable contract signed, notarized, and legally binding. Turn off the lawyer/MBA part of your brain and turn on the common sense/everday people interaction. This is just an agreement between two people. The enforcing body of the agreement would be the kids parents, not the court system.

The upfront payment has other problems with it, but not being legally enforceable in a court of law isn't one of them.

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, thanks for screwing the rest of us!

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

You're welcome! Be glad I used a condom...

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

What next?
Wait until they become teenagers, bwahahaha.

RFID implants, On-Star, video and sound surveilance.

WhatMeWorry.

Re:Don't

[djdavetrouble]

I think you are on the right track with this. It is different though when you have an infant. They are very very vulnerable when young. It is better to have a good 'gut feeling' about your babysitter than feel like you need to constantly surveil them. If you have had a certain babysitter for a while and suspect something is wrong, maybe you want to tape them. We had a babysitter when our son was just 3-4 months old, on a regular basis. My daughter didn't seem all that stoked, but couldn't really verbalize at 3. I set up a isight and caputured a few sessions. I found that while she wasn't a 'bad babysitter', she was amazingly lazy and talked on her cell phone most of the time, preferring to sit my daughter in front of the TV the entire session, and paid little to no attention to either kid, meeting only their base needs (bottles, diapers, food). She didn't read a single book or play a single game during the two 4 hour sessions I capped. I got rid of her.

Now, a few horror stories from the naked city: wife's friend learned from another nanny that her nanny had lost the 2 1/2 year old daughter in central park for 2+ hours because she was busy chatting in the nanny corner (in NY, many nannies are carribean and sit together at parks, chatting and such). The nanny never told the mother or police, but did manage to find the toddler albeit 2 hours late. Another child bearing couple we know found out that the nanny was pretty much constantly preaching fire and brimstone gospel to their youngster. Maybe not a horrible thing, but wierd nonetheless. Confirmed that our babysitter wasn't that great when I saw her pushing a 2 year old down into his stroller by his head.

One more thing about surveillance, I believe that the feeling of being watched breeds resentment, so what might begin as a good parents-babysitter relationship could turn sour when the babysitter finds out you don't trust them and are watching their every move. Better to check out several references from other parents. I would never hire a babysitter without references. If you must, maybe capture a few sessions and review later to ease your mind, live surveillance 24/7 will turn you into a nutcase.

Re:Don't

[simcop2387]

you can enter into a contract with a minor, its just that the minor also has the ability to nullify the contract because they are a minor, usually you get the parents in on something like that so you have someone to be accountable that can't just drop out of the whole deal

Re:Don't

[axonal]

It's much more cost-effective to out source your baby sitting needs to India.

Re:Don't

[djallstar]

you'll get unhealthily paranoid

you'll get?!

this person is apparently already unhealthily paranoid.

j(father of 3).

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Best thing we ever did was turn the baby monitor off altogether. The reason you get a baby sitter is so you can go out and NOT worry about the baby.

Monitors and all that stuff just play into the fears of (mostly) first-time parents.

Re:Don't

[pnutjam]

Daily supervised Tummy-Time helps prevent the flat-head and learning to crawl issue. It also allows them to interact with their environment.

I have two toddlers, baby three is due in afew more months. Both of mine rolled their head to the side when they slept on their back. I have no idea how that can be comfortable, it hurts my neck just thinking about it. If I slept like that it would probably be the start of a very bad month ('til my neck felt normal again).

Re:Don't

[JaxGator75]

WAITED?!? I'm 29 and the wife is 30, and we're still not mature enough to handle it. Maybe we never will be...

I figure every extra day my child goes un-conceived, the better off that child will be when the time comes. I'm hoping that I will be changed, as opposed to the much-more-difficult "I am going to change" pledge...

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you are anal and stupid, and if you had tried to put a struggling toddler into a stroller (seems like your daughter is a problem money will solve for you) you would know that gentle force is applicable to any part of the body as long as it gets the job done. Toddlers test, it's what they do since they are exploring their world and its boundaries constantly, many of those boundaries are yours. I would hate to see your kids given your uptight attitude, they will have a hell of a time pushing your buttons but will probably end up the same way themselves.

And hopefully your babysitter will find out you secretly filmed her and sue.

"live surveillance 24/7 will turn you into a nutcase" ... make that MORE of a nutcase.

Re:Don't

[winse]

I figure every extra day my child goes un-conceived, the better off that child will be when the time comes. I'm hoping that I will be changed, as opposed to the much-more-difficult "I am going to change" pledge...

probably not. just think about being 45 when your kids are 15. The younger you are the easier teenagers are I would assume. My oldest is 3 and I'm 28. so it'll be 40 and 15 for me....sometimes I really wonder if I'll be any fun at all at 40 or if i'll be a worse version of my parents. At any rate as soon as we started having kids I noticed that I became more responsible because i had to be , and i didn't think it sucked at the time. every once in a while i miss just being able to go spend a weekend away with the wife at with no preparation whatsoever... but overall I think i am a happier person with kids. They're surprisingly challenging and engaging as they get older.

Re:Don't

[Ironica]

And what is worse, is that you'll end up fullfilling every little need he have, and he'll get used to that.

Oh, yes, how horrible it would be to respond to all the needs of your own child, who can't speak, can't even *move* without your help...

Please, PLEASE don't take this advice, new dad. There's no better way to ensure that your baby has no motivation to learn to communicate with you than to ignore it. If a baby cries, it's because they need something, period. They don't cry for no reason. If they're lonely, or scared, that's a need... and one they simply can't fulfill themselves.

Instead, take a look at "The Baby Book" by Dr. William Sears... it dispells all the myths about it being "good" for tiny helpless infants to be left alone to cry their lungs out.

(BTW, they do get used to having their needs met... the result is, they trust you to meet their needs, and then learn independence faster, because they know they can come to you if they need something. Kids who are ignored the way the AC suggests become *more* dependent and clingy. Just in case you don't have time to get the book... but I seriously recommend it anyway, just as a general instruction manual. ;-)

Re:Don't

[Ironica]

Between 1992 to 1998, the number of babies put to sleep on their stomachs went from 70% to 17%. The SIDS rate declined in that same time period by 40%.

Correlation.

What is the SIDS rate for the control case?

Correlation, true, but with implications of causation. You could dismiss a correlation like "The SIDS rate in Society A, which puts babies to sleep on their stomachs, is five times that in Society B, which puts babies to sleep on their backs." This correlation does not imply causation, because between two groups, there may be many other uncontrolled differences that lead to the different SIDS rates.

However, when the *same* population changes a particular behavior, and at the same time another statistic changes, it is reasonable to infer causality (unless another change happened at exactly the same time).

No, no one has gotten ahold of 10,000 babies and, in otherwise identical situations, put half to sleep on their backs and half on their stomachs every night, and then compared SIDS rates (since the rate in even the highest risk categories is less than 1 percent, you'd need a huge sample size for statistically significant results). This type of study isn't feasible. The best we can do is examine the results after a particular change in behavior within the same population.

Of course, many countries around the world have initiated "back to sleep" campaigns and noticed a commensurate decline in SIDS rates, so it's very unlikely that another change is responsible. But keep on fantasizing and maybe you'll come up with one.

(BTW, it's true that babies should not *always* be on their backs. But for that matter, when they're not sleeping, they shouldn't be spending a whole lot of time lying around alone anyway... they learn and develop better when they are worn by their parents and can watch the world from that point of view. They should get some tummy time, to develop the muscles they need in order to crawl, but the risks of developmental problems aren't from lying *on their backs*... they're from being left alone all the time.)

Re:Don't

[HuguesT]

Many babies cry themselves to sleep, that's how they learn to go to sleep on their own. If you try to avoid them crying at all costs you'll end up having a very dependent child who won't be able to go to sleep if you are not in the room patting them until they are soundly asleep. It can be a little inconvenient if you like to have a life.

Not all children are like that but it happened to us and it's very hard to undo.

Re:Don't

[Ironica]

Many babies cry themselves to sleep, that's how they learn to go to sleep on their own. If you try to avoid them crying at all costs you'll end up having a very dependent child who won't be able to go to sleep if you are not in the room patting them until they are soundly asleep. It can be a little inconvenient if you like to have a life.

Not all children are like that but it happened to us and it's very hard to undo.

Like I said, read "The Baby Book" by Dr. Sears. What you've just posted is a bunch of very damaging BS perpetuated by folks who made it up, rather than basing their "expert" opinions on any actual research.

I know many, many people who have responded to their children consistently, let them co-sleep until they wanted to stop on their own, etc. and have very, very independent kids who set their own boundaries at quite reasonable ages. On the other hand, the "Babywise" method (Frank Ezzo, who came up with a lot of the stuff you're paraphrasing) has led to cases of failure to thrive.

Re:Don't

[DGregory]

We co-slept, jumped out of bed whenever she cried, rocked her to sleep, nursed her whenever she wanted...

And I have a 21 mo old who, when we ask her if she wants to go to bed, she'll say "uh huh", and we'll go brush teeth, put jammies on, she climbs in bed, asks for her puppy dog and the covers pulled up, we give her a kiss, she closes her eyes and goes to sleep. (She started this pretty much the day we bought her a toddler bed, 2 or 3 mos ago).

No fighting, no nothing. She's content and knows that if she needs something, Mommy or Daddy are there for her.

I suppose if someone locked you in a cell by yourself, you'd scream and scream... and finally stop due to sheer exhaustion and no one hearing you. If no one hears you, what's the point? That's kind of a sad thing to teach a little baby.

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

you are about to loose most of your friends.

"lose".

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

(I am the AC you replied to)

> If a baby cries, it's because they need something, period

This is a great theorical assertion. Did you have babies ? And I said babies, as in several. And when the baby needs something that you cannot give him because you don't know what it is ? If he just have gastric problems to which you can't really do much ?

Do you really think that what the baby need tired helpless stressed parents ?

The first thing I learnt when I had my first child was that everything that people told me was wrong.

The first thing I learnt when I had my second one was that everything I though was wrong too.

Babies are different from each other. I have two very very different childs.

But one thing that I learnt was that babies are very very sensitive to their parents mood. And that the parent mood is very sensitive to the amount of sleep they have and the amount of worry they have for their child.

> Please, PLEASE don't take this advice, new dad. There's no better way to ensure that your baby has no motivation to learn to communicate with you than to ignore it

You answer is intellectually very dishonest. I never said that you had to ignore the baby crying. I said that you don't have to fullfill every little need. This is some sort of difference, don't you think ?

> BTW, they do get used to having their needs met... the result is, they trust you to meet their needs, and then learn independence faster, because they know they can come to you if they need something

Did you ever met some parent that had to let their babies sleep with them so he didn't cry. It is a living hell, that generally destroys the marriage.

Re:Don't

[HuguesT]

With all due respect,

Some baby/children sleep very easily and some don't. Because yours sleeps well doesn't mean you've got the magic formula. Maybe the next one will be different, or in a few years you'll have sleep problems with nightmares and all. It's part of the package.

It will not damage your child if you explain to them why you can't or don't want to sleep with them. That's perfectly fine you know. Some parents are not happy sleeping with their child, and it's 100% OK I believe.

A child insisting to sleep in the same bed as both parents can be very disruptive. If it threatens your sanity or your couple you've got to do something.

It will damage children if you do close the door and let them cry for hours, but it will not do anything bad if they cry for five minutes. You go in and out of their room always comforting them every few minutes but you don't stay with them until they sleep. It may require nerves of steel the first night because your child may not like it at all, but it gets quickly much easier.

It's called "comfort crying" and it's taught everywhere here in Australia to new parents. There are even videos, hotlines and volunteer associations that help you go through the steps if needed. You'd think that if it were child abuse it wouldn't get this sort of publicity. In 2-5 days your child learns to go to sleep by themselves and there is no fuss anymore. It's not BS, it works.

I personally know a particular family who have let their children sleep with them until they themselves asked to have their own bed. The "continuum theory" it's called, there is a book by that name. It's not for everybody. This particular couple is now divorced.

Which is best for the children?

Re:Don't

[DGregory]

We were talking about newborns... because these gadgets are made to supposedly tell the parents if the baby might be dying of SIDS, or one to rock the baby to sleep so the parent doesn't have to. A newborn is going to be disruptive to the parents' sleep no matter where the baby sleeps.

Older kids it would just depend on the family what they want to do, but newborns I believe belong with the mother, 24/7. There was a thing on the standard lite-rock radio this morning on "the Parent report" on co-sleeping, in fact, and it was positive, saying that the mother and baby sleep patterns are in sync when they sleep together so the mom is in a lighter sleep when the baby starts to be in a lighter sleep. They also say that the breathing pattern of the mother keeps the baby "remembering" to breathe too.

My daughter didn't always sleep well, she woke up once a night until 16 months. But co-sleeping didn't make her insist on sleeping with us, nor was it some long painful process getting her to sleep in her own room. That is one of the things people object to, saying they'll never get the kid out of their bed. They also say that you'll never teach the child to go to sleep on their own, and mine did just fine once she was able to understand the things you say. And if mine can, I sincerely doubt she's the grand exception to the rule.

And just because "they" say it's ok, doesn't automatically mean that it is. Parenting has changed a lot over the last 100, 50, 30, 20 years. "They" change their minds constantly over what is acceptable and what isn't. Just because it's acceptable now, doesn't mean they won't decide that it's not 20 years from now. As a parent you need to look at all sides of the fence and decide for yourself what you think is right rather than just follow the herd like a sheep.

If you think it's ok to try to manipulate a baby that doesn't understand waht's going on with sleep training then you go right ahead. But I've got a well-adjusted child that goes to sleep on her own with no fighting, and did not have to use the "well-accepted norm" that I feel goes against good parenting practices.

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Many babies cry themselves to sleep, that's how they learn to go to sleep on their own.

What a horrible thing to do to a child. He's spent the last 9 months snuggled up with Mom, and now you want to shove him away to sleep by himself? Have him sleep in your room, preferably in your bed. He'll sleep better, you'll sleep better, as you won't have to keep getting up in the night for him, he's less likely to die from SIDS, and he'll grow up feeling safe, secure and loved rather than abandoned and ignored.

Kids are only young for a short while - all too soon, it'll be "bye Mom, bye Dad, I sleep in my room"...

Re:Don't

[joper90]

just don't.. im 29 and the misses is 35.. and she wants to wait another couple of years.. (job)

I really wanted kids when i was 25 for that reason.. I don;t want them to be 15 and me like 45, i wanted to be a young dad..(not stupid young, but you get the point).. bit late now i guess.

Re:Don't

[joper90]

oh.. and on topic..

get a cam on 3-5 sec delay.. and set up a wap server on your machine. I think this is possible. Or you will have to setup some way of auto mms'ing you at a regular interval.

But please, unlike every other farther at work don't make you desktop wallpaper a picture of your child in the bath, or looking like its about to swallow somthing is shouldn't, or and extreme close up of there childs face flashgunned. :)

Re:Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the only fucked up country where sleeping with the baby in the same room is considered not advanced. Put the god damn crib next to your bed and you won't need to waste time with a stupid baby monitor at night. Put the baby in a basinet in the living room or wherever you will be in the daytime. How fucking hard is that?!? No wonder kids in the US grow up to be dumbfucks, assholes and whiners. They're treated like they're unwanted, kept in a jail away from people and only get sensory attention when they are crying, thereby teaching them to cry when they want something. No wonder there's so many spoiled brats in this country.

Re:Don't

[FurryFeet]

We were extremely lucky; our daughter started sleeping through the night when she was a month old,

I hate you.
That's it, really. Just wanted to let you know I really, really hate you,
*yawn*
Oh, how I hate you.

Re:Don't

[HuguesT]

Hi,

It's not BS, and it's not particularly damaging. What I'm talking about is sometimes called "comfort crying". You don't abandon your baby in the room, you go in and out every few minutes, comforting them all the time until they sleep. within a few days they learn to go to sleep very fast and without fuss. For older toddler you have to explain what you are doing and why , but it works just as well.

Some parents don't like their children sleeping with them because it can create a wedge between the parents and because either the parents or the children or both may not sleep very well.

If you become sufficiently sleep deprived that it damages your sanity or threatens your couple you've got to do something. The above works and is recommended by a large number of children specialists.

Cheers.

Re:Don't

[HuguesT]

Hi,

> you think it's ok to try to manipulate a baby that
> doesn't understand waht's going on

I find your reply very judgmental, if you want to go down that route co-sleeping is just as manipulative. Everybody's situation is different. You are happy with co-sleeping, fine, what can I say?

My wife didn't want to sleep with our daughter because she (my wife) was not sleeping very well and she was generally unhappy to be tied to the baby 24/7 like you said. If the mom is cranky and tired because she doesn't get enough sleep even when she should be, this is definitely not good for the family.

Yes parenting has changed a lot and will continue to change. What this means to me is that babies are much more adaptable than they are made out to be and a large number of practices are in fact acceptable.

Re:Don't

[Ironica]

It's not BS, and it's not particularly damaging. What I'm talking about is sometimes called "comfort crying". You don't abandon your baby in the room, you go in and out every few minutes, comforting them all the time until they sleep. within a few days they learn to go to sleep very fast and without fuss. For older toddler you have to explain what you are doing and why , but it works just as well.

What do you mean by "works"? They figure out that there's no use crying, no one's going to help them, so eventually they stop trying to communicate?

Babies cry because they need something. End of story. They do not cry for no reason. Sometimes parents just about go nuts trying to figure out the reason ;-) but there *always* is one, though sometimes it's just loneliness. Babies who didn't cry when they were left alone got eaten by predators, and didn't pass on their genes... it's basic natural selection.

Some parents don't like their children sleeping with them because it can create a wedge between the parents and because either the parents or the children or both may not sleep very well.

Sometimes my son thrashes around in his sleep, so he goes in the crib. The crib is in our room, however, and I don't just leave him lying there crying without finding out what's wrong and addressing it.

If you become sufficiently sleep deprived that it damages your sanity or threatens your couple you've got to do something. The above works and is recommended by a large number of children specialists.

Yes, I don't doubt that a large number of "children specialists" recommend something that makes life easier for parents (after those first few heartwrenching days of listening to your child cry their eyes out for however long it takes for their system to shut down and put them to sleep). But their recommendations are not based on any sound evidence on what is better for the children in the long run. The idea that addressing your child's needs leads to dependence *is* utter BS, but ignoring those needs can actually lead to a very clingy and dependent child.

As for becoming so sleep deprived that it threatens your sanity... I'd get a lot less sleep if I was doing this "comfort crying" thing instead of changing and nursing my boy when he wakes up. He very rarely has trouble going back to sleep afterward, and when he does, it's usually because for some reason we turned the light on and got him all fully awake (like we were getting ready for bed when he woke up, and were passing him back and forth while the other was getting ready).

If you wait until the kid is out and out crying to even come to them in the first place, that's when they need a lot more settling. Keeping them in the room with you until they're sleeping through the night avoids this problem. You can do it without actually sharing the bed with them, if you don't want to.

Re:Don't

[HuguesT]

I'll say this: we started doing exactly what you recommend: letting our daughter sleep with us (or close to us with the crib in the room), and attending to her every needs whenever she cried for the slightest reason.

It didn't go the way it went with your son. She did not settle in any way, did not become independent, required a lot of attention to fall asleep and still woke up every 2h. Think about this. Every 2h she needed anything from 5 to 15 minutes of attention to get back to sleep. I can tell you this because I've actually kept a log that I can send to you if you don't believe me.

Every 2h, sometimes more frequently. No matter what we did. For months. We went to doctors to see if anything was amiss. Nothing.

After 6 months of this both of us we were like zombies. That's when I go depression from the lack of sleep and started contemplating suicide. My wife was getting some sleep through the day but I had to go to work.

We sought professional help. They recommended "comfort crying", which sounds horrible but consists of teaching the child how to get to sleep on their own. Maybe I'm not explaining it well but it involves comforting the child but not to the point where they fall asleep, they have to take that step on their own.

We went to a sort of day clinic, there were about 6 other couples in a situation similar to our own. They showed us a video of a 4-year old child and their parents were was still going through a similar thing: demanding a long and involved ritual to fall asleep: in his case a particular piece of music being played and requiring to be in the arms of his father for about 30 minutes until he fell asleep in his arms. And still the child was waking up several times a night and had to be attended to. I honestly don't know how the parents survived.

The video went on to describe the technique and how after a week of it that 4-yo was sleeping through the night. That's what I mean by "it works".

Most babies learn to fall asleep on their own but a few simply don't and you have to teach them. This is what "control crying" is all about.

It *works* in the sense that two nights (2) after going through the technique my daughter fell asleep relatively easily (in 15 minutes or so) and did her first full night sleep ever, at about 8 months of age. She slept about 8h and so did we and boy did it make a difference.

Since she's lost her ability to fall asleep by herself a couple of times and we've had to apply the technique or a slight variation of it to account for the difference in age about as many time.

I'm absolutely 100% certain that this is not child abuse. It *works* in the sense given above. There is no endless crying. The very first night you do this can be a bit hard but that's it. After it the child learns and doesn't cry anymore.

Go to your nearest book store and look for books with titles like "teach your child to sleep", you'll find some similar technique described in there.

Since I've talked to my parents and they have told me that I have a sister who went through a very long period of poor sleeping patterns. Their solution had been to let her stay with them all through the evening until she eventually fell asleep on the couch through sheer exhaustion. My parents have told me that my sister kept doing it well into school age. My other sister and myself just fell asleep normally and slept through the night from a young age.

So it's not something the parents do, it's something having to do with the child.

Maybe your next will be a poor sleeper and you'll remember what I just described. If so good luck.

Thanks for reading.

An old standard

[MediumFormat]

Have you thought about trying good old fashioned parenting? Perhaps "being there" is the best way to monitor your child...

Re:An old standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you thought about trying good old fashioned parenting? Perhaps "being there" is the best way to monitor your child...

I agree, anyone who would even consider leaving their child alone for even a second should be at the top of CPS's hit list. Gonna cook, have the kid with you, or move the kitchen appliances into the kids room. Hafta poop, take the kid with you, or have a commode put in the kids room, or better yet, bond with the kid by wearing diapers yourself. I'm sure your employer won't mind you taking 18years of maternity/paternity leave. Wanna have some, uh, intimate time with your SO, do it right there. Junior will be two young and out of it to really grasp what's going on anyway (that and like your likely to get any anytime soon after just having a kid, yeah right). Grandparents, brothers, sisters, close friends, ALL not good enough to watch YOUR little one. Hell, leaving your kid with a grandparent is almost as bad as leaving your kid in a car in the Arizona desert with the windows rolled up and a quad processor Opteron running inside with a RAID array with 15k/rpm scsi drives.

You my friend are brilliant and your insights make it obvious that you are wise beyond your years. I was wondering what kind of car to get to replace my old beater that broke down for the last time. Having been enlightened by your wisdom, I shall now walk the 12 miles to my office. I shall also stop wasting money purchasing my food and simply hunt the small animals in my neighborhood for nourishment. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Re:An old standard

[GreyPoopon]

Have you thought about trying good old fashioned parenting? Perhaps "being there" is the best way to monitor your child...

You know what, I'm sick of this crap everytime somebody brings up this subject. Take a look at the whole question. He's talking about monitoring while a babysitter is there, not about ignoring the child while both parents are home. As a parent, I can attest to the fact that you need to get away every once in a while so that you aren't tempted to hand your child over to scientific research or something like that. The problem is that there are very few trustworthy babysitters, and those that we have been able to find are always in high demand. Personally, I share others' sentiments that it is much better to get someone you can trust than it is to monitor, but I also understand the frustration and anxiety of leaving your child with someone else.

"Old fashioned" parents also had to leave their children with babysitters, but you can bet that if the technology to monitor the baby (and babysitter) had been available, they'd have considered using it too.

Re:An old standard

[aussie_a]

Gonna cook, have the kid with you, or move the kitchen appliances into the kids room.

Better yet, cook the baby.

Hmmm. I'm a bit concerned on why that seemed like the most logical conclusion to me....

Re:An old standard

[bwalling]

Have you thought about trying good old fashioned parenting? Perhaps "being there" is the best way to monitor your child...

How the heck is this Insightful? This is the best way to end your marriage. You need to get out once a week with your spouse, and you'll need someone to watch your kid when you go out.

If you have relatives in the area, they make the best babysitters. You know them, plus they probably want to see the kid as much as they can without imposing on you.

Re:An old standard

[Trurl's Machine]

Have you thought about trying good old fashioned parenting? Perhaps "being there" is the best way to monitor your child...

I wonder if anyone who modded this up has any experience in parenthood. "Being there" for 24/7 is the best way to raise a sociopath. Your kid needs to spend some time outside of the maternal/paternal umbrella. Otherwise your kid will never learn how to interact with other human beings and when you're gone, it will turn into someone like Anthony Perkins character in "Psycho". Of course, it is your parental duty to be with your kid most of the time, but you will also hurt your kid if you never leave it with other kids and other adults.

Re:An old standard

[ColdGrits]

"You know what, I'm sick of this crap everytime somebody brings up this subject. Take a look at the whole question. He's talking about monitoring while a babysitter is there, not about ignoring the child while both parents are home."

The clue is in your own words.

He has a babysitter babysitting.

He does NOT need to be watching the baby while the babysitter is there - that's WHY he has a babysitter.

What an excellent way to show the babysitter just how much they are appreciated - "Watch my baby, but I'll be watching you...".
Besides, if he and his wife are out for the evening to get a break, then watching the babty over the cellphone is not exactly having a break, is it?

Re:An old standard

[mpieters]

Yes, I wanted to reply to this question in exactly the same way!

Technology is not the ultimate solution for everything. Your baby was carried by it's mum in her belly for 9 months. You should not abandon it once it is born. Instead, read up on Attachment Parenting and keep the baby close, 24/7. It will cry far less, you'll greatly reduce the risks for SIDS, and your baby can continue to get an early start at learning about the world around it; it will pick up far more of the world around it when kept close to you.

Just invest in a good carrying cloth, such as a Slendang (Indonesian sling), or some such. I can heartely recommend the Moby Wrap, for example, it is the best we've tried so far, my wife and I fight over who gets to carry our youngest in it. Beats the price of any baby monitor hands down.

Martijn Pieters, father of 3, tech geek.

Re:An old standard

[Builder]

yeah, but he's hardly outside the umbrella if you're just watching him on your cell phone, is he ?

Re:An old standard

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if anyone who modded this up has any experience in parenthood

I wondered that too, and then you said:

"Being there" for 24/7 is the best way to raise a sociopath

And then I wondered what qualifications you have in psychology.

There's shit being spewed on both sides of the fence here.

Re:An old standard

[DougNYC]

It's the most logical because, if all you do is watch your new bundle of joy 24/7, that's exactly what you'll do inside of a month.

Re:An old standard

[Anonymous Coward]

I work with a guy (well, that's stetching it -- he telecommutes) who absolutely refuses to have anyone watch his daughter besides his wife or himself. They have no family in the area, so what that means is they either never go out at all or only one of them is out at a time. I believe he's also planning on home-schooling her. He's also the first to jump down someone's throat if they do something other than what he's doing, saying they're being bad parents. WTF?!

I'm a soon-to-be-daddy, and the behavior of the guy I'm talking about frightens me. That just cannot be good for the kid, no matter what good intentions he has for what he's doing. Although it sounds like I better be good to him if I don't want him sending his psycho daughter after me in 20 years.

Re:An old standard

[GabeK]

Now, where are you gonna get the power to run that Opteron?

Re:An old standard

[Mordaximus]

The problem is that there are very few trustworthy babysitters, and those that we have been able to find are always in high demand.

I cannot think of a single circumstance that I would leave my children with an untrustworthy babysitter. Parent poster is right : "being there" is the best way to monitor. High tech remote observation gear changes nothing : If I can't trust the person, they don't mind my children, period. I'm not going to spoil a nice romantic evening out with the wife gathered around a cellphone waiting for webcam updates : I'll go out on a night where a trustworthy babysitter is available.

Re:An old standard

[gcaseye6677]

I don't think anyone chooses to leave their kids with a babysitter that is known to be terrible, but the problem is finding out who is trustworthy. The only way to do this is to try them out and see how they do, or to take someone else's word for it.

Re:An old standard

[AVee]

Or get someone you know to babysit, like your younger sister, grandma or a friend. Grandparents often enjoy it when one of their grandchildren drop by as well, so you won't need to pay them and you won't need your monitoring stuff.

Cheap solution, or what?

Re:An old standard

[AVee]

Oh, and you could also consider taking the kid along with you. You're taking some risk it will spoil your evening away, but most 6 weeks old kids don't give a shit about where they sleep and sleep most of the time anyway.
Some waiters may look a little suprised when you enter the restaurant, but that only adds to the fun of an evening away ;)

Re:An old standard

[gcaseye6677]

And then people like me will have to listen to your baby cry... Please, please get a sitter! It will make life easier for everyone involved, especially you!

Re:An old standard

[Bob Vila's Hammer]

Are you a pothead, Fokker?

Re:An old standard

[GreyPoopon]

I agree with everything you say, but if you take a look back at the post I was replying to, you'll see that my animosity was directed at the poster's assertion that the parents didn't want the responsibility of watching their child.

As a parent, I understand the fear of leaving a child with someone else, especially for the first time. But I also am fully aware that all the technology in the world today isn't going to allow me to get home in time to do anything should the babysitter do something to harm my child. It's just better to choose someone you trust.

Re:An old standard

[GreyPoopon]

I cannot think of a single circumstance that I would leave my children with an untrustworthy babysitter. Parent poster is right : "being there" is the best way to monitor.

No, the poster is *not* right. "Being there" when you get a babysitter defeats the whole purpose. However, like you, I advocate using only trustworthy babysitters. The poster that I replied to was just being ignorant and was implying that the parents don't want the responsibility of watching their child, when in fact they were just looking for a little extra insurance when trusting a babysitter. Not a good way to keep trustworthy babysitters, though.

Re:An old standard

[jred]

Make sure your relative isn't a closet drug addict. We trusted my sister (3 kids of her own) to babysit our toddler during the day. My wife got off work early one day & went to pick up our kid. When she got there, the front door was open, and all the kids were sitting in the living room watching cartoons (thankfully). This was a second story apartment, any one of the kids could have taken a tumble down the concrete stairs. Thirty minutes later my sister showed up. Seems she was downstairs getting high with the neighbor (stupid crackhead).

Needless to say, she was no longer our babysitter. Now that we are divorced, we act as babysitters for each other.

Re:An old standard

[Xaria]

He already stated higher up the page that this isn't necessarily to watch the babysitter. He does have to work, you know. Wouldn't it be nice for a working dad to be able to connect to a webserver for a peek at his sleeping baby during the afternoon nap?

Sheesh, don't be so fast to judge, people!

I was thrilled to see this discussion, since my husband and I want to do the same thing. Why? Because our families are at least 6 hours driving time away, some are about 2000 kms (1200 miles) away, and it would be nice for them to be able to catch glimpses of our baby from time-to-time.

Re:An old standard

[Ironica]

I agree, anyone who would even consider leaving their child alone for even a second should be at the top of CPS's hit list. Gonna cook, have the kid with you, or move the kitchen appliances into the kids room.

Wear the kid on your back, once they're old enough (can sit up on their own). Until then, set up the Kick & Play in the kitchen.

Hafta poop, take the kid with you, or have a commode put in the kids room, or better yet, bond with the kid by wearing diapers yourself.

Diapers are passé. Yes, take the kid with you, that way they can realize that mommy and daddy do it *this* way. Take them to the potty when they need it, too, as soon as you can (we started at two weeks). That way you never have the struggle of potty training... they just get better at controlling it, and letting you know they need the bathroom... until one day they can just go by themselves. (This method usually sees them "graduated" around 18-24 months... more work for a lot of that time, but beats diapering a 3-year-old.)

I'm sure your employer won't mind you taking 18years of maternity/paternity leave.

Duh, you just take them *with* you to work. Or come up with a new job and work from home.

Wanna have some, uh, intimate time with your SO, do it right there. Junior will be two young and out of it to really grasp what's going on anyway (that and like your likely to get any anytime soon after just having a kid, yeah right).

Oh, you get a little bit in. ;-) But if they're asleep in bed, you just have to get more creative with locations (office chairs are interesting). I mean, geez, having sex in the same place *all* the time gets boring! This is why young kids go to bed at 8 or 9...

You were being facetious, but there really is a school of parenting that basically keeps the baby with you all the time. And it's not totally impractical to do and still have a life... in fact, it's *easier* to have a life if you are comfortable bringing the baby with you into it. My husband and I go to movies, eat out, visit with friends, etc. and take our son with us... he's in a sling or wrap, so he's cozy and more inclined to sleep than if he's isolated in a stroller, and we pick environments/times/activities that are more "baby friendly" (i.e. restaurants with a high noise quotient, underpopulated matinee movies, etc.)

From CNN...

[segfault7375]

This isn't specifically for monitoring, but it is (somewhat) high tech and related to children. Seems like an interesting item... The device that rocks the cradle

Re:From CNN...

[DGregory]

That's a terrible device. A newborn that cries always has a reason to cry. Even being lonely is a good reason for a newborn. (and once they're out of the newborn stage, they're too big for that cradle, so we're talking newborns here).

I have news for you

[Anonymous Coward]

You are about to have much, much less time for gadgetry than you have now. Also, your baby will be fine without a video feed. Just buy one of those cheap audio things.

Honestly, your biggest problem at this point will be getting enough sleep. everything else will be likely be lovely.

Re:I have news for you

[HBI]

I found the baby monitor to be a severe problem for sleep, at first. After a while, you hardly pay attention. Babies are great for alerting you that they need help.

My oldest daughter is 10 now. If she knew all the nights I spent in the damn rocking chair putting her back to sleep - my second wasn't an insomniac luckily.

As for spying on the babysitter - that would entail spying on the ex-wife's mother, which is something i'd rather not do, thank you. And that was only once a year or so.

Re:I have news for you

[asb]

Do not get an audio baby monitor unless you have a ridiculously huge house and your bedrooms are on the opposite sides. The problem is that babies are not dead silent when they are sleep. They whine a little every now and then even when they sleep. They might even cry a little bit just to calm down right away. When they need help they really make a f*cking loud noise.

You'll be able to get more rest (which you will be needing) if you don't wake up every time your baby moves while she sleeps.

Re:I have news for you

[DGregory]

True, baby monitors make a ton of static noise when they're on. I'd always have mine up so loud I could hear the baby breathing. Then I got smart and just started cosleeping, and we slept so much better until she started crawling in her sleep. (She has her own toddler bed now and loves sleeping in it).

Unless your bedroom is on the other side of the house, just keep the baby's door open, your door open, and you'll hear the baby cry. The only time I use my baby monitor now is if my daughter's napping in her room (upstairs) and I'm in the basement, so I can hear her when she wakes up.

To effectively spy on the babysitter you'd have to have cameras all over the house. If you're that paranoid about the babysitter, then don't have a babysitter. Babies go to sleep at 8 (if you have a regular schedule), that's plenty of quiet time with the wife before you have to go to bed. Rent a movie and sit and snuggle on the couch.

Re:I have news for you

[Epistax]

Also, your baby will be fine without a video feed

Wait-- you're on to something. All you need is a stap, a video camra, and a baby able to hold a couple kilos on its head.

Re:I have news for you

[jlar]

But the audio monitor might come in handy when your child sleeps outside. Maybe it is not normal in USA to have your baby sleep in a baby carriage in the garden? It is quite common here in Denmark - and no people don't steal our children from our gardens.

Re:I have news for you

[KernelHappy]

FYI they have monitors that detect movement in the crib, or more specifically sound an alarm if there is no movement for more than xx seconds. This is probably a better idea than cosleeping if you say have a problem with tossing and turning or having nightmares. (it's amazing how people assume that if something is ok for them or good in their opinion, it obviously is the only right answer)

I also find it kind of odd that you assume they want a baby sitter just so they can go to a movie or go out. Did you stop to think that maybe they want a baby sitter as a alternative to dropping their kid off at the toddler coral with 20 other ignored rugrats?

Re:I have news for you

[KernelHappy]

Errrrr I knew that didn't sound right.

That last line should have said "I also find it kind of odd that you assume that parents only want a baby sitter just so they can go to a movie or go out. Did you stop to think that maybe parents want a baby sitter as an alternative to dropping their kids off at the toddler coral with 20 other ignored rugrats?

(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!)

Re:I have news for you

[DGregory]

Then you call it daycare and not a babysitter. My daycare is a friend who just watches her own son and my daughter (and the baby I'm due with, after he's born and I return to work that is). She also takes the kids to the zoo and stuff. You can't watch them all the time. Plus it's at her house, and I wouldn't want even a friend installing cameras at my house. A babysitter watching your kid for a couple hours in the evening, at your house, they don't generally take the baby out for activities. So it's safe to assume that they want an evening out, rather than an every day thing.

After you have a baby, your sleep patterns totally change. I realize co-sleeping isn't for everyone (it's risky for smokers, as well as if you have a waterbed, for example). I used to not be able to be woken... period... then I had a baby and if she's sleeping in the next room, the littlest whimper, and I hear it and jump out of bed. Most people have some sense while they're sleeping, otherwise they'd fall out of bed... you know where the edge of the bed is, despite your tossing and turning. Plus, they make bed sidecars, so the baby can have his/her own area, but the baby's within arm's reach.

Re:I have news for you

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right on....I have an 11 month old (he'll be one year on the 18th!). The last year is a total blur....

But it is the best thing I've ever done!

Re:I have news for you

[Anonymous Coward]

Horse feathers. From the perspective of a foster/adopt parent of a baby who was known to be high risk for SIDS and two bio-kids who aren't -- very few clinical pediatricians will recommend the use of motion sensing monitors. The ROC curve for such devices is not good. If you want sensitivity you loose all specificity and vice versa. To get the sensitivity up to a useful level, the false alarms become unmanagable. There are small soft-sided co-sleeper beds that fit comfortably in the middle of queen or larger. There are side-car co-sleepers. Co-sleeping can be done safely.

Re:I have news for you

[cfuse]

Babies go to sleep at 8 (if you have a regular schedule), that's plenty of quiet time with the wife before you have to go to bed. Rent a movie and sit and snuggle on the couch.

I hate to shit on your parade, but not all children sleep the same amount of hours or those hours contiguously. My niece slept solidly, but not for long, she still doesn't sleep more than about 6 or 7 hours and is full of energy all the time (she is now 7). I get tired just watching her.

No need

[frankthechicken]

As far as I'm concerned baby monitoring is pointless, it merely increases paranoia and stress.

Each time the baby isn't coughing/crying/breathing heavily, it induces fear there is something wrong.

Each time the baby is coughing/crying/breathing heavily, it induces fear there is something wrong.

Surprisingly, babies are fairly dependable to continue existing without constant monitoring. Rather unsurprisingly, it takes a huge amount of energy for constant monitoring by adults.

Re:No need

[GreyPoopon]

I partly agree with you, although we found the monitor to be very useful after the baby was asleep and we were in another part of the house where crying couldn't be heard. We just turned the monitor on really low (so we couldn't hear breathing and stuff) and when crying started we would wait long enough to be sure that attention was required. Responding immediately to a cry (unless it is an urgent one) is not usually a good idea because babies tend to cry a little in between sleep cycles (about every 45 minutes) until they get better at settling themselves to sleep.

We also found the monitor very useful for the second child. She has the loudest cry of any baby I've heard, even when she's just settling herself. With her door and ours open upstairs, just transitioning from one sleep cycle to the other would wake us up. With the doors closed, we couldn't hear her well enough to respond in an emergency, so instead we turned the monitor on *downstairs* and closed her door. That way, the sound we heard was at just the right level to wake us up in an emergency.

Re:No need

[The Rev]

I could not disagree more.

The baby monitor I use has a "your baby isn't breathing" alarm.

This means that I can totally relax unless the alarm is ringing.

I don't need to hear anything coming out of the monitor if the alarm is silent.

This has given me great peace of mind and helped me relax no end.

As long as SIDS is largely unexplained, these monitors will be of great value.

Re:No need

[DGregory]

That is, if you trust a gadget to work how it's supposed to. Even the electric doors on our minivan don't always open when I want them to.

Re:No need

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, SIDS is largely explained, and is mostly caused by smoking in your kid's room.

Re:No need

[cjsnell]

I'd like to add that every single one of us here survived just fine without the benefits of cellphone baby monitors and live video feeds. I was raised by two working parents and spent much of my time with baby sitters and housekeepers. We had great babysitters, okay babysitters, and horrible babysitters. I could type a bunch of horror stories but none of the babysitters were bad enough to injure us though. It takes an incredibly stupid person to intentionally injure a child and you should be able to spot that kind of person in the interview process.

Like somebody else said, find a good neighborhood girl, treat her with respect, and pay her well and relax.

Re:No need

[GigsVT]

SIDS is not unexplained, people just don't want to accept the explanation. It's just an early form of Darwinism. If you are too stupid to figure out how to roll over if you start suffocating, you are taken out of the system.

I fear a world when they "cure" SIDS, it'll be a much stupider place.

Re:No need

[jamesh]

Not exactly pointless. The wireless ones are great if you are outside in the garden or something. But yeah, you only need a monitor if you can't hear the baby when it's really calling for help.

The way my wife and I handled it was to have the bassinet in ours or the next room (or in bed on a bad night) until they were a few months old.

And peak in on your kids while they are sleeping as much as you can. There is something very special about seeing your kids asleep. No matter how much of a monster they've been whilst awake, seeing your child asleep makes it all seem okay again.

Re:No need

[tha_mink]

I'd like to add that every single one of us here survived just fine without the benefits of cellphone baby monitors and live video feeds. I was raised by two working parents and spent much of my time with baby sitters and housekeepers. We had great babysitters, okay babysitters, and horrible babysitters. I could type a bunch of horror stories but none of the babysitters were bad enough to injure us though. It takes an incredibly stupid person to intentionally injure a child and you should be able to spot that kind of person in the interview process.

Remove head from ass please.

There are lots of us that ARE NOT HERE that might have been if there were baby monitors "back then."

When you're a parent and you're sleeping, you would like to know if your child is violently choking on his/her vomit or even pillow. Baby monitors are great. Obsessively monitoring isn't the answer but for sure you need to take advantage of SOME technology. Lot's of kids survived without vaccines too but that's no reason to...aw forget it.

Re:No need

[cjsnell]

There are lots of us that ARE NOT HERE that might have been if there were baby monitors "back then."

Re-read my posting, jackass. I said "cell phone baby monitors" and "live video feeds". That's slightly different from the across-the-house audio monitors that everybody uses. I'm referring to remote (out of the house) baby monitoring.

Re:No need

[Anonymous Coward]

We had one of those monitors for a few months with our preemie. when a wire would come loose, the alarm would wake the whole house, and he was in our room. I was so happy when they took that thing away. It was worth the false alrms for the couple of times the alarams were real though.

Re:No need

[FredMannby]

We got one like that, but it unfortunately gives off a false alarm every hour so, waking up both the baby and the parents, even though the crib seems to comply with the specified norms for the product. It uses air cushions under the mattress to detect lack of motion. Apart from the unknowns of SIDS, babies will indeed make plenty of noise when they need help, so sound monitoring works fairly well. We run a soothing waves-on-the-shore noise in the background as well, so that we know the sound monitor is working.... BTW, I haven't verified this, but I think the commerical baby video monitors use infrared light. I guess this because the monitors are B&W, and the cameras have clear LEDs illuminating the scene. So, the usual webcam setup is probably not going to be very useful for monitoring the baby at night, unless you keep quite a lot of light in the room. Even my $150 iSight webcam is very poor under low light conditions. and would be useless to monitor a baby sleeping.

Re:No need

[Anonymous Coward]

We have low cost black & white cameras (with LEDs for night vision) in my toddler's & baby's rooms. The cameras are hardwired & connected to UHF modulators & connected to our video distribution network. We have 5 TVs throughout the house that we can tune in & check on the kids. The audio feeds from the rooms are also distributed throughout the house via our whole house announcement system (part of our home automation system).

Why?

The video feeds are used for our convenience as opposed to paranoia. Often one of the kids will cry in the middle of the night or when we're watching a movie. Rather than hiking all the way upstairs to see what's the matter, we tune into their video feed & see if they really need us to come up (ie. they're sitting up in bed or they're uncovered and cold, etc) Or if we're lying in bed, we can switch on the TV to assess whether or not we want to get out of bed.

The video feeds are streamed across our network. Often, when the kids are napping I'm out working on the car or in the yard while the wife is out. I bring my laptop along & open up the stream because I can't hear them otherwise if one of them is crying. Or I'll bring my PDA which can play the streamed audio feeds. It allows me to get work done when I can & not have to worry that I can't hear them. (Main purpose is to stop 1 of them if they're crying so they don't wake up the other)

The camera & audio feed was a great benefit when potty training my son. He knew that if he talked into the camera in the middle of the night & told us he had to potty that we'd come in & take him to use the potty.

And since it's all hardwired, there's none of the annoying static you would get with those broadcast to the neighborhood wireless monitors.

Re:No need

[p5linux]

Don't smoke or use crack and SIDS decreases quite rapidly..... According to SIDS.org: Parents-To-Be 1. Get medical care early in pregnancy, preferably within the first three months, followed by regular checkups at the doctor's office or health clinic. Make every effort to assure good nutrition. These measures can reduce the risk of premature birth, a major risk factor for SIDS. 2. Do not smoke, use cocaine, or use heroin. Tobacco, cocaine, or heroin use during pregnancy increases the infant's risk for SIDS. 3. Take care to prevent becoming pregnant during the teenage years. If you are a teen and already have one infant, take extreme caution not to become pregnant again. The SIDS rate decreases for babies born to older mothers. It is highest for babies born to teenage mothers. The more babies a teen mother has, the greater at risk they are. 4. Wait at least one year between the birth of a child and the next pregnancy. The shorter the interval between pregnancies, the higher the SIDS rate. Parents 1. Place infants to sleep on their backs, even though infants may sleep more soundly on their stomachs. Infants who sleep on their stomachs and sides have a higher rate of SIDS than infants who sleep on their backs. 2. Place infants to sleep in a baby bed with a firm mattress. There should be nothing in the bed but the baby - no covering, no pillows, no bumper pads and no toys. Soft mattresses and heavy covering are associated with the risk for SIDS. 3. Do not over-clothe the infant while he/she sleeps. Keep the room at a temperature that is comfortable for you. Overheating an infant may increase the risk for SIDS. 4. Avoid exposing the infant to tobacco smoke. Don't have your infant in the same house or car with someone who is smoking. The greater the exposure to tobacco smoke, the greater the risk of SIDS. 5. Breast-feed babies whenever possible. Breast milk decreases the occurrence of respiratory and gastrointestinal infections. Studies show that breast-fed babies have a lower SIDS rate than formula-fed babies do. 6. Avoid exposing the infant to people with respiratory infections. Avoid crowds. Carefully clean anything that comes in contact with the baby. Have people wash their hands before holding or playing with your baby. SIDS often occurs in association with relatively minor respiratory (mild cold) and gastrointestinal infections (vomiting and diarrhea). 7. Consider using home monitoring systems (apnea/bradycardia monitors) in an attempt to prevent sudden death in high-risk infants.The risk of SIDS in the following groups exceeds that of the general population by as much as 5 to 10 times: Infants born weighing less than 3.5 pounds. Infants whose sibling died of SIDS. Infants exposed to cocaine, heroin, or methadone during the pregnancy. The second or succeeding child born to a teenage mother. Infants who have had an apparent life-threatening event. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of home monitoring with the baby's doctor before making your choice. Many communities have specialized programs for the clinical management of babies at high risk for SIDS. For information about the availability of such programs in your area, ask your baby's doctor or contact the American SIDS Institute. (See our clinic page.)

Re:No need

[lachlan76]

CCD security cameras will show infra-red light, as will consumer video cameras in low-light mode.

However, I can get a *SMALL* security camera for $150. Which is why that option wins.

Re:No need

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry? Electric DOORS? How have we as a society become so hideously lazy that we have to make our CAR DOORS automatically open?!?!?!

Re:No need

[cpt_rhetoric]

Totally agree. I think the monitors, like many of the things we do/buy in the name of our children, are mainly for the parents! I often wonder how any of us made it out of childhood, given we didn't have all these fancy gadgets growing up.

Re:No need

[carlos_benj]

Electric DOORS? How have we as a society become so hideously lazy that we have to make our CAR DOORS automatically open?!?!?!

Exactly. I hope I never get so lazy that I can't yell at the wife or one of the kids to open the door for me..... Sheesh!

Re:No need

[Ironica]

Responding immediately to a cry (unless it is an urgent one) is not usually a good idea because babies tend to cry a little in between sleep cycles (about every 45 minutes) until they get better at settling themselves to sleep.

Maybe yours do... our son doesn't follow this pattern at all. He very occasionally wakes up a little and cries out, then goes back to sleep. He often wakes up, stretches a lot, and then starts making little sounds to let us know he's awake... he won't start crying unless we ignore him. He sometimes wakes up and is immediately crying outright, which sometimes stops as soon as he sees one of us or we put a hand on his chest, but often is due to suddenly realizing he is hungry or needs to pee... so he doesn't stop until that need is addressed.

How long is "long enough" to be sure that attention is required? Babies who are left to cry for more than 90 seconds need lots more time to calm down after mom/whoever starts to soothe them (see The Baby Book by Dr. Sears for the citation). Hope you're not just leaving her to cry herself back to sleep :-/

Re:No need

[GreyPoopon]

Just to let you know, we have *not* subscribed to everything the Dr. Sears methodology, although some parts of it are useful. How long we wait depends highly on the situation.

He often wakes up, stretches a lot, and then starts making little sounds to let us know he's awake...

Generally, when they do this that means they aren't as likely to go back to sleep. We didn't have much problem with this after the first 9 or 10 weeks with either of our children because we put them on a feed/play schedule during the day that makes sure they sleep at night. During the first couple months, however, we of course popped in to check on them as quickly as possible.

He sometimes wakes up and is immediately crying outright, which sometimes stops as soon as he sees one of us or we put a hand on his chest, but often is due to suddenly realizing he is hungry or needs to pee

We had almost none of the hunger issues with our son, and only a few times (particularly during growth spurts) with hunger in our daughter. That's mostly because of the feeding schedule we put them on during the daytime. After the first couple months, both children were easily sleeping nearly six hours during the night, which is a welcome relief for most new parents. Regarding peeing, we don't leave our children to sleep in a wet diaper. However, I do have to say that neither of our children cared much whether their diaper was wet. I think that's because today's diapers are so much better. If you use cloth diapers, you can be pretty much assured that your child will let you know when they are wet.

How long is "long enough" to be sure that attention is required? Babies who are left to cry for more than 90 seconds need lots more time to calm down after mom/whoever starts to soothe them (see The Baby Book by Dr. Sears for the citation). Hope you're not just leaving her to cry herself back to sleep :-/

"Long enough" depends on the cry. We quickly learned to tell the difference in cries from our children. Although it's true that babies crying longer than 90 seconds are more difficult to calm, it's also true that if they are just doing the "I really don't want to be sleeping right now" cry instead of the "come help me, I'm in trouble" cry, you can let them cry for about 15 minutes or so and they'll settle themselves down and go right back to sleep. And no, she didn't "cry herself to sleep." She stopped crying, settled down, and went peacefully back to sleep. In addition, I can tell you that getting to a crying child within 90 seconds from a sound sleep is not easy to do, so I'm definitely not going to run the risk of slamming into the door frame or the wall while I stumble around in a stupor trying to get to my child before that magic 90 seconds is up. I can also tell you (in case you haven't reached that point yet), that there is a time when they are toddlers that they decide they don't want to sleep anymore. You can calm them all you want, but when you leave the room, they'll stand up in their crib and start crying again. You'll most likely be forced to let them cry themselves to sleep. You can also tell by that cry that they aren't in pain or anything. They just don't want to go to sleep. During that time, if you don't let them learn to get to sleep on their own, you may end up with a five-year-old that can't fall asleep anywhere but in your bed with you. Things that usually help greatly during that time are establishing bedtime rituals like story reading / telling, listening to music, singing, etc. The child becomes used to these things, and when that process starts every night, it calms them and gets them ready for bed.

Re:No need

[Ironica]

Regarding peeing, we don't leave our children to sleep in a wet diaper. However, I do have to say that neither of our children cared much whether their diaper was wet. I think that's because today's diapers are so much better. If you use cloth diapers, you can be pretty much assured that your child will let you know when they are wet.

We do use cloth diapers, and we also potty him when he needs to pee or poop and hasn't done it in his diaper. He's getting more used to that, and prefers not to wet his diaper if he can avoid it, so he'll get pretty insistent when he needs to pee. If he wakes up and starts crying outright, often it means his bladder is very full.

In addition, I can tell you that getting to a crying child within 90 seconds from a sound sleep is not easy to do, so I'm definitely not going to run the risk of slamming into the door frame or the wall while I stumble around in a stupor trying to get to my child before that magic 90 seconds is up.

We're in a two-bedroom apartment, so I could do three laps of the whole place in 90 seconds... getting to him in that amount of time is no problem unless I'm on the john or something. ;-) We also don't have a separate bedroom for him (sorry, the computers need more space than he does right now) so in the night there's never an issue with stumbling down the hall or whatever. The most we have to do is go three feet to his cradle, but he's only there if (a) we have had a drink or two, so it's not safe to co-sleep or (b) he's sleeping restlessly, so we can't sleep if he's in the bed.

I can also tell you (in case you haven't reached that point yet), that there is a time when they are toddlers that they decide they don't want to sleep anymore. You can calm them all you want, but when you leave the room, they'll stand up in their crib and start crying again.

That's not a given. For one thing, you don't need to leave the room if they're not separated from you (who knows if we'll have a house by the time he's a toddler, but still, just because he has his own room doesn't dictate that we have to be separated by walls if that's not what the situation requires).

They just don't want to go to sleep.

Sounds more like they just don't want to be alone. Which is perfectly normal... the human race wouldn't have survived very well if we hadn't had babies and toddlers that didn't want to be left by themselves to get eaten by predators. We haven't evolved past that yet.

During that time, if you don't let them learn to get to sleep on their own, you may end up with a five-year-old that can't fall asleep anywhere but in your bed with you.

Tell that to my friends with 4-year-olds that at some point decided they wanted their own beds, and have been in them ever since. They don't actually have to be taught to sleep on their own. They grow into it on their own, at their own pace, if they're allowed to.

On the other hand, if they're forced to do it before they're ready, they may develop lasting negative associations with sleeping alone, and then for the rest of their childhood they'll have times when they just do NOT want to be left alone in the dark, even though they're old enough to rationally understand there's no monsters under the bed or whatever.

Things that usually help greatly during that time are establishing bedtime rituals like story reading / telling, listening to music, singing, etc. The child becomes used to these things, and when that process starts every night, it calms them and gets them ready for bed.

True true. That helps no matter what other sleep habits your family has.

Re:No need

[funky womble]

If you use cloth diapers, you can be pretty much assured that your child will let you know when they are wet.

Line them with a piece of fleece and they'll go much longer - since fleece is nonabsorbent it keeps the wetness away from the skin unless the cloth is utterly soaked - solids pretty much rinse right off when held under the flush.

It's called a WIFE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, sorry, I thought you said low tech, high cost...

Re:It's called a WIFE!

[Zachary Kessin]

A friend of mine reports that her dog has been doing the job quite well. When the baby needs something the dog barks then goes an gets mom to go look after the funny looking "puppy". She didn't train the dog for this, he just took on the job.

I skiped the whole thing and started with step kids who are already teens.

free webcam service

[jacquesm]

try ww.com, it will give you software and a page to watch your kid and a jpg you can poll with your cellphone...

Re:free webcam service

[Anonymous Coward]

Can other people watch his baby for a monthly fee?

Cheap + Easy

[NETHED]

What I do is have the camera takes shots every 10 sec or so, and save to a static file. VisionGS does a great job with this.

After that, just make as lightweight of a autorefreshing page as possible, and then you can just point your phone browser to it. It works very well actually, and VisionGS can archive the shots, so you can have a record or what went on.

Re:Cheap + Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Vision GS
A working screenshot

Re:Cheap + Easy

[peterpi]

Then get all the stills and feed them into an mpeg-generating program at 25fps for some comedy videos :D

Video is nice, but...

[philipsblows]

I don't have any kids, but I've been pondering how I would go about testing to make sure SIDS doesn't happen.

How about a CO2 and O2 sensor pair that checks to make sure breathing is still going on? I'm guessing it would have to be non-invasive so that the baby doesn't get tangled up, etc.

While you're at it, since I'm in AZ I've also been pondering how to get kids to not-drown in pools. That's probably something of a follow-on project once the child can walk, though.

As for cameras, I know DLink makes wireless and wired network cameras with built-in web servers that are a little pricey, or you could run a long USB or FireWire cable from the baby room to the server.

Hmmmmm, ethernet- and/or wifi-ready baby cribs. No match on ThinkGeek. Yet.

Re:Video is nice, but...

[LiquidCoooled]

Pool covers, railings and common sense help to keep your kids alive.

Re:Video is nice, but...

[kiwimate]

1. Take a wild stab and enter http://www.sids.org into your favorite browser.
2. Look at the sidebar that has a section labeled Reducing the Risk".
3. Read and digest, particularly the bit at the bottom that discusses home monitoring systems (apnea/bradycardia monitors). Consider that there are thousands of experts in the medical and electronic fields who've been working on this exact problem for years.

Seriously, when it comes to a baby, play it safe. If you can think of it and it can be done, there's likely an entire industry that's already designed the tool to do it properly.

Re:Video is nice, but...

[loic_2003]

How about a CO2 and O2 sensor pair that checks to make sure breathing is still going on?

So if your kid stops breathing you can be informed when you're 50 miles away and unable to do anything... well handy.

I'd rather just have a nanny watching the kid so they could call an ambulance/do some CPR if the above nightmare does occur.

It'd be better to have a call saying there's a problem but the ambulance is on the way instead of getting some message the kid's not breathing, then having to ring whoever's in charge to find out if it's an equipment failure, etc etc....

Re:Video is nice, but...

[LiquidCoooled]

Shite!
I posted early, focus had left this box when I pressed enter.
Anyway, back on topic,

Your idea of sensors around the crib sounds practical and perfectly logical.

Certainly better than just taking pictures.

I can see an entire sensor package fitting nicely inside a hanging mobile above the crib. wired or wireless wouldn't matter too much, but you could get everything you needed in there.
Checking air quality, pollutants, temp, light levels, noise, and other monitorable items.

I didn't come up with the idea though, I believe they had a single camera setup inside the mobile on The Truman Show.

Re:Video is nice, but...

[DGregory]

You co-sleep until they can roll over on their own (that's when risk of SIDS goes down considerably). I slept with my daughter in the crook of my arm (lying in bed of course) for about the first 6 months. Not to mention I didn't have to get up out of bed to breastfeed her. She's 21 months and transitioned great to a toddler bed a couple months ago.

Re:Video is nice, but...

[KernelHappy]

What about when you're sitting in the next room watching TV? Let me guess you think that if the parent is home they should stand over the child counting the breaths making sure the child doesn't stop breathing. Please.

No where in the parent post does it state or even hint that he wants the breathing monitor available on the internet, just that he is thinking about a device to monitor the childs breathing. These devices already exist in the form of motion monitors so obviously the parent poster isn't all that far off base that there is a need and a market for such monitors.

It's amazing how many people are posting in this thread that don't have the faintist concept of what it's like to be a parent. The majority of the posts are the "if I had a child" type. If your going to conjecture at least think it through a little bit.

Re:Video is nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Humm I would caution against the advise of the above it has been proven that of the babies which die due to SIDS the majority of them had spent the night sleeping with their parents.
You should make sure to have a separate cot.
see here for a few more details

As to the parent topic Chill Out you have far more urgent things to be worring about than your baby monitoring system, babies cry LOUD

Re:Video is nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

For SIDS - they make mointors with pads that slip under the crib mattress that can detect even the slight motion of breathing.

For the pool, fences are obvious, pool covers can help IF they are sufficiently anchors to prevent them coming loose and trapping sombody who happens to fall onto it, but they also make sensors that float on the water and detect waves - such as those made when somebody falls in.

Re:Video is nice, but...

[DGregory]

That's completely false, I don't know where you got that information. There's a reason why "cot death" is called "cot death". Try this link which is a bit more knowledgeable about the subject, and not some reporter that dismisses cosleeping based on hearsay.

http://www.drjaygordon.com/ap/cosleeping.htm

Re:Video is nice, but...

[Ironica]

Humm I would caution against the advise of the above it has been proven that of the babies which die due to SIDS the majority of them had spent the night sleeping with their parents.

From the link you posted:

There is a proven risk in bedsharing if you or your partner smoke, have recently drunk alcohol, take drugs or are extremely tired.

The evidence which linked co-sleeping to SIDS was based on data from New Zealand, which more recently was re-evaluated and found not to show a statistically signifiant link between co-sleeping and SIDS. The correlation they had previously noted disappeared when they controlled for maternal smoking.

The article is quite right that you shouldn't share your bed with your baby if you smoke, are drunk, are extremely fatigued, or (as not mentioned in the article) are very obese. But most of us aren't any of those things most of the time.

Re:Video is nice, but...

[danheretic]

Consider that there are thousands of experts in the medical and electronic fields who've been working on this exact problem for years.

Sorry, I have to take issue with this statement. Just because there is an industry-standard way of doing things or that hundreds (or thousands? really?) of "experts" have weighed in on a topic doesn't necessarily make it right.

Take for example birth by cesarean. According to the CDC, 26.1% of births in the U.S. are performed by cesarean. (In 1970 the cesarean rate was 5 percent.) At least four times as many women die of causes related to cesarean birth as those related to vaginal birth. Why do cesareans continue to be on the rise and popular despite increasing risk to the mother? Because it's cheaper for the hospitals to do it that way. "Experts" recommend cesareans in order to reduce the insurance payments hospitals make. Doctors are advised to recommend cesareans routinely, even when not at all necessary, because of the bottom line: the almighty dollar.

Net Camera

[Anonymous Coward]

Axis makes some very nice network cameras. I've got one DMZ'ed through my router so that I can view it from the Interweb.

Also, D-Link is now selling these in both wired and wireless models. The Axis ones are more sophisticated, however. (Embedded Linux OS.)

Re:Net Camera

[Belgabor]

In Germany such cameras are available from Pearl, though I don't which brand they are.

Ethernet webcam

[stackdump]

D-Link has some cameras with integrated webservers with a self loading java interface viewable from most browsers. You can even tell it to send you an email or upload shots to an ftp server. cost ~$130.

Cheap wireless camera

[loic_2003]

You can buy cheap wirelss cameras complete with receivers for very little cash these days. Some are good for night vision and have IR LEDs so you can watch the kid at night. I don't see why you would ever need to watch your kid on your phone or anything, just get a decent babysitter and she can call you in case of emergency. Sometimes you can go overboard with technology, you know!

Nokia camera...

[MosesJones]

Nokia do a camera that will MMS you the picture it is looking at on demand. Setting up a box with a motion detecting camera is very simple and your only real challenge when streaming it to a mobile is network speed and transcoding.

Best bet is to get dedicated hardware if you want to do this stuff as what you are after is taking a raw MPEG-2 stream in, performing real-time transcoding to less picture quality and then steaming that in real-time over a different protocol. You can do it on a decent server, but why bother when you can pick up decent video cards pretty cheaply these days (not GAMES cards, VIDEO cards, ones with hardware encoders). Or a shitty Web-cam quality is all you can hope for (and you'd probably still need to re-code).

Of course you then have the security challenge of making sure that anyone else can't see in as well (Mr Burglar looks "hey everyone is out"), which means having some form of VPN from your mobile, again these exist but you are getting more complex and expensive.

Beyond there you have the legislative problems of spying on your babysitter (you'd have to tell her or go to court and be rightly sued for invasion of privacy).

I'd just go for the Nokia camera, tell the baby sitter, only put it in the kids rooms (do you care if the babysitter is on the phone or if the kids are okay ?). The rest is very very sad overkill, and if you are going that far surely you'd want RF-ID tags on the kids with biometric sensors and a constant stream of data to go along with the video feed.

So option 1 means - Nokia Camera + MMS capable mobile phone and telling the baby sitter

Option 2 means - you are a sad geek liable to end up in court.

Option 3 means - you really really need help, like now.

Personally I wouldn't trust my kids with someone I felt I had to spy on.

Re:Nokia camera...

[Politburo]

Option 2 means - you are a sad geek liable to end up in court

Why? I'm recorded when I enter/leave work (not by my employer), when I go to the bank, when I go to the post office. Hell, even the deli I go to has 2 cameras. Why am I all of the sudden not allowed to record people like most businesses do?

Your rights..

[superhoe]

Excuse ME, but as an active Slashdot reader I must point out that even planning to use such a baby 'monitor' as you offensively call it is against his/her privacy.

I demand a new topic to be immediately made under 'Your rights online' section so we can discuss it through and blame Bill Gates for it.

Re:Your rights..

[aussie_a]

I know this is either a troll or a funny (I'm learning towards the latter), but on a serious note. Children don't have the same rights as adults. E.g. Children cannot vote. So by that logic, they do not have the same right to privacy adults do.

Of course this is a modern, liberal idea that I received through subliminal messages from Windows ME.

What's wrong with you?

[Chess_the_cat]

I'm already running a linux web server over DSL and I'd love to push the video to that in order to see the video on my cell phone when we are out and the babysitter is home....uhh....babysitting.

Do you get your kicks spying on people? Seriously though, do you tell your babysitters that you are secretly taping them? How'd you feel if someone was secretly taping you?

Slow but effective...

[MoeMoe]

I would recommend taking a look into using a VNC package. Basically it will let you see and control what's going on with your computer (the one controlling the baby monitor/webcam) from your iPaq, laptop, and even a Treo phone!

Basically all you would be doing is opening up a webcam viewer on the computer through VNC and just watch the screen... You won't be getting super fast resolution (depending on speed of connection and machine running the client you'll be looking at around 5 FPS I think) but you will be able to see what's going on. Good luck, and congrats...

Re:Slow but effective...

[MustardMan]

That's one of the biggest overkill "solutions" I've ever seen.

VNC allows full control of the system and requires quite a bit of bandwidth. All he wants to do is view a refreshing picture. A jpeg (or PNG for you anal-retentive types) on an auto-refreshing website is a much more elegant and appropriate solution. Plus, VNC requires an installed client, so couldn't be checked on a random kiosk computer at a cyber cafe or the like. And your solution requires a PDA phone, which all of about one in a zillion people actually own and use.

Sometimes the "cool" factor isn't the best solution

As an aside, I'm pretty disappointed this question made it as an ask slashdot. The question basically boils down to "how can I put a webcam image on a website?" Hello, 1998 called, it wants its clever idea back.

Re:Slow but effective...

[MoeMoe]

I thought about your idea too but went with VNC instead because he needed a solution for THIS case specifically... The writer said he had an iPaq and laptop which means he's probably not going to use public computers too often. VNC doesn't take up as much bandwidth as you would think considering it's only on when you want it to be and only refreshes when needed... It's also quite a bit more secure and functional than a simple "cam-site" since you get full control of everything your cam does as if you were right there in front of it. By the way, he also wanted something "high-tech" so the "cool" factor in this case will do the job better than the 6 year old classroom project :p

As for your disappointment with the editors posting this topic, the point of "Ask Slashdot" is to find more than one solution and select the one that does what you need for your specific purpose best.

Re:Slow but effective...

[funky womble]

VNC doesn't require an installed client, a Java one is served automatically. I was surprised at how well ultravnc works for webcam images, even over ISDN. There are much better solutions, but considering how simple the installation is, there is a place for it as a quick fix.

Re:Slow but effective...

[MrGibbage]

There's actually a bit more to this than "how to put a webcam image on a website". There's low light levels. Audio. Methods of viewing in house and out of house. Cost. Expandability.

I agreee, VNC would not work for security reasons (I don't want to open VNC to the outside).

Re:Slow but effective...

[Gannoc]

Basically it will let you see and control what's going on with your computer (the one controlling the baby monitor/webcam) from your iPaq, laptop, and even a Treo phone!


You know, thats pretty fucked up. "I have a script so that if my baby stops breathing, it plays an mp3!"

A remote camera that send pic to my mobile

[nayigeta]

Personally, I would like to install some kind of an observation camera in the baby's room.

The candidates I am looking at are

Nokia Observation camera that can send a MMS picture taken on request.

Another one is the Nokia remote camera, with better picture quality but not release yet.

I think there are probably other stuffs out there. But I am looking for something that I can monitor from my mobile essentially. Other ideas welcome!

Thank you!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm a long time geek and about to be a first time father."

You really gave me back the hope that even I will someday get laid. Geeks having sex, can you believe it.

Re:Thank you!

[aussie_a]

Sorry to get dash your hopes, but he was a sperm donor and has only found out which child shall be his through stalking and hacking. You should have seen the article that was rejected 8 months ago. It asked on recommendations for low cost high-tech ways to help in stalking

Re:Thank you!

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Right, never heard of cloning? "Geeks having sex", . The AC's these days...

Time pressure

[bsiggers]

Hey, most likely if you're a 'hands-on' type of daddy, you'll want to spend the miniscule amounts of spare time that you'll have on your digital baby videos, rather than worrying about baby monitoring. After a couple of months, it's a full time job.

Have fun!

Just relax

[zymurgy_cat]

If you want to monitor your baby, just go in and check on him/her while he/she is sleeping. Want to go out for a well-deserved date? Find a baby sitter you can trust and give him/her your cell phone number in case of an emergency. All this monitoring technology is a solution looking for a problem.

Sooner or later you'll realize that most likely, your child is fine. We turned the baby monitor off when my second child was about 2 months old. He was such a noisy sleeper that we kept going in to check on him and waking him up. After we turned off the monitor, we all slept better.

RFID implants

[stephanruby]

Try RFID Implants. You can get the sensors at radio shack and the implants themselves are real cheap if you go through your veterinarian.

Re:RFID implants

[Tarwn]

No really, thats my dog...er...he's just been shaved and had some odd accidents lately...really...not my kid at all...hurry up and put a chip in his neck :P

Caution with long range monitoring!!!

[ksan]

I'm father of 2 sons and I think it's helpfull: if you have a baby monitor it CANNOT be long range. It's because if he will have any problem you cannot be so fast that you can save him.
Always have him around when possibly because it's safe and make him confident; your love raises too.
Hope that it's helpfull.

My advice...

[BrK]

First off I will preface this with the disclaimer that I don't have kids, nor do my wife (of many years) and I ever intend to have kids...

I say skip the geek-tools baby raising. Everyone I know who *has* had kids and taken some obsessive-compulsive child-rearing tactic has ended up in a near nervous breakdown with no life of their own.

If you can't find a reputale local babysitter with references, then leave the kid in the care of a familiy member when you go out. I don't think that staring at 2" square grainy image of the kid in a crib is going to make your evening out all that enjoyable.

If you must have video surveilance, go to http://www.supercircuits.com for the video cameras. Then go to http://www.worthdist.com and get a ChannelPlus channel modulator. This allows you to put the video camera feed(s) on TV channels, so for example you tune any TV to channel 84 and there is the crib (at my house channel 84 is the driveway camera, but I digress.)

Re:My advice...

[Dirtside]

If you can't find a reputale local babysitter with references, then leave the kid in the care of a familiy member when you go out. I don't think that staring at 2" square grainy image of the kid in a crib is going to make your evening out all that enjoyable.

Seriously. My wife and I leave our 3-month old son with my parents and her mom all the time, and basically as soon as we're gone, it's out of sight, out of mind. Not that we want to forget him, but getting time every few days where we don't have to deal with him is really a sanity-saver. During that time, we don't want to be worrying about him.

Go to dinner, go see a movie, do whatever. If you want to know what your kid's doing at all times, then stay with him or her!

Paranoid

[tonywestonuk]

A Friend who I work with has one of these wireless video baby monitors.... And he himself has said, you end up repeatedly running to the nursery 'cause it looks as if the babies far too still when viewed on the little LCD display.

So, I guess what would be useful is a button on the monitor, that when pressed will give the baby just a little electric shock, to cause the child to move or flinch enough to be seen over the LCD ;-) (just kidding - honest!).

Re:Paranoid

[KernelHappy]

Shock therapy should only be used on children to correct bad habbits like chewing with their mouth open, asking to be hugged, asking you to buy them something, etc.

The Safety Industry

[Retief65]

A lot of people are making a lot of money off parents with exaggerated fears for their children's safety. Bike helmets are a reasonable precaution, but stab-resistant jackets? As the father of a one-year old, I would suggest you spend your limited free time checking the batteries on the fire alarms and ensuring you and your wife still have fun now and then rather than tinkering around with baby monitors. Both will serve your child better in the long run.

Re:The Safety Industry

[Ian Wolf]

A-M-E-N!

I've got two kids and if you can't trust the sitter, find someone else or don't go. Granted, I'm one of the lucky ones, both my wife and I come from large families that all live close by.

The point of getting out as a couple is to enjoy yourself. If you're going to spend the whole time checking up on the kids and none of that time talking to your significant other, your marriage WILL disintegrate.

That being said, If you suspect something is up, by all means set up the monitoring. Then again, if you suspect something is up don't knowingly put your kid in a potentially hazardous situation.

===
But feel free to monitor your wife and share the link. ;)

Ears (no, seriously - ears...)

[mccalli]

"I'm a long time geek and about to be a first time father."

Extrapolation from my fairly recent experience: "...and thus am currently dreaming up all sorts of over the top schemes to monitor the baby."

Reality from my experience: forget it. A radio baby monitor is enough, in fact after a while we stopped using even that because our own ears sufficed just as well. The only over the top thing I actually implemented was using a camcorder's nightshot capability to see if the baby was actually asleep - allowed me to do it without going in the room and waking her up. Even that stopped after about two months.

You won't be able to of course, and this advise will be impossible for you to take but, but...relax. Really. You'll have enough genuine stress from crying etc. without also rigging up monitoring systems which you'll barely use. If the baby is crying at night, check on it (sorry - don't know him/her in your case). If the baby isn't crying at night - leave it alone! If you need a monitoring system for during the day, you're slacking offf - should be giving the baby personal attention of some kind (yourself, your other half, a nursery...).

Honestly - all these things sounded like a great idea to me at the time as well, but come the actual events I just abandoned them as not worthwhile. My own experience? I'm a father of two - one daughter who will be three in January, one son who will be one in a week's time. Hectic does not begin to describe the first few months of both my daugter's life but even more so my son's (when we had the both of them to look afteR), but you do work out a pattern eventually.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Ears (no, seriously - ears...)

[ghostlibrary]

> our own ears sufficed just as well

I have to second this-- you do _not_ want electronic monitoring. You _have_ to develop "parental radar". Which really means 'hearing'.

By the time your kids are age 2, you should be able to tell where your kids are in the house or yard, regardless of your own location, instantly and subconsciously. Developing 'eyes in the back of your head' is mostly just sensory awareness of the normal kid noise level and position.

If you go with electronic monitoring (sound or video), you'll have trouble later.

You'll have trouble telling where your toddler drifted to if you go to a house not rigged up like yours, since your own hearing won't be trained.

You'll never be able to handle nightmares at age 2 if you used a baby monitor and didn't develop good child-hearing.

You'll never be able to yell to your 4-year old, "stop doing that!" two rooms away (because you heard silence, and silence=mischief) if you're used to direct feeds.

Your six year old will rule your life once he/she realizes you lack the basic totally sensory awareness parents need to develop.

You'll have a harder time finding them when lost in shopping malls, parks, et cetera, if you didn't develop your parental hearing/radar.

Seriously, my hearing is incredibly sensitive, I feel like Daredevil when my kids are involved. Sure, I might still walk into a truck I didn't hear coming like anyone-- but if my kids are driving it, I'll know!

That said, I did run a video camera out the window so I could be in my study and be sure they were okay out back. It was sometimes handy, but you know, I still relied on my own hearing and parental spider-sense to know when trouble was happening.

If you do video, for $40 you can get a camera plus battery that's smaller than a pack of cards, wireless, color, and runs into a TV. So consider setting up a TV _when they are past age 3_ for outside, but really, don't do in-house monitoring, you'll just kill the natural development of your own senses and instincts.

And don't monitor the babysitter. If you can't trust her to watch the kids sans monitoring, you shouldn't hire her at all. If you trust her, enjoy the time you're paying her for by having a child-free excusion!

Re:Ears (no, seriously - ears...)

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need a monitoring system for during the day, you're slacking off

Don't they have afternoon naps where you come from?

Re:Ears (no, seriously - ears...)

[mccalli]

Don't they have afternoon naps where you come from?

Fair point - I'll restate: If you need a monitoring system for when your baby is awake, you're slacking off.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Ears (no, seriously - ears...)

[swillden]

Reality from my experience: forget it. A radio baby monitor is enough, in fact after a while we stopped using even that because our own ears sufficed just as well. [...] If the baby is crying at night, check on it (sorry - don't know him/her in your case). If the baby isn't crying at night - leave it alone.

As a father of four, I'll repeat this and strengthen it: By the time our fourth child came along, my wife and I not only didn't use an audio monitor, we closed the door between our room and the baby's room, intentionally making it *harder* for us to hear the child crying. Why? Babies often wake up and cry, even when there's nothing at all wrong. When there's nothing wrong, they make noise for a few minutes and go back to sleep. If they actually need something (food, diaper change, or don't feel well for some reason), they'll continue crying and get louder.

Getting up to check on your baby every time it cries will not only reduce the amount of sleep you get, but it will get your child used to the idea that if it wakes up it must have some attention before it can go back to sleep. This will mean that instead of sleeping through the night when your child is six months of age, you'll still be getting up two or three times per night when your son/daughter is a year old.

So, make sure your baby has a safe environment, where it can't hurt itself, and nothing else can hurt it, then forget the monitors, close a door, and when you hear it crying in the night, make an effort to wait five minutes before going in to check on what's wrong (even if you can see by the clock that it's time for feeding). A little crying is good exercise for a baby, and the extra sleep is *definitely* good for the parents.

Not that you'll ever sleep really well again :-)

(My children woke me up six times last night: The seven year-old three times, complaining of noises outside keeping him awake; the three year-old twice, once with some undefined discomfort and once because he wanted to play; and the nine year-old once to complain that the three year-old was waking her up. This was an unusually active night, but it's a rare night that one of them doesn't wake us up. And after 11.5 years of waking up at odd intervals during the night, I seem to have lost the ability to sleep a full six uninterrupted hours myself!)

Re:Ears (no, seriously - ears...)

[ICA]

Too damn funny, and so absolutely true.

"You'll never be able to yell to your 4-year old, "stop doing that!" two rooms away (because you heard silence, and silence=mischief) if you're used to direct feeds."

Especially with multiple kids, the only time they are completely quiet is when they are getting into something.

As stated by the parent and many of the others, I think using the high-tech tools would just be a crutch, working around the real responsibility of being a watchful parent.

Re:Ears (no, seriously - ears...)

[CrayzyJ]

Let me start by saying I am a new father (3 months). We use an audio monitor for the times we are out of earshot, and a video monitor. The latter is only used to check to see if he's sleeping. My son sleeps so lightly, us walking in to check on him wakes him up. (PLEASE reserve comments about making noise while the baby sleeps so he gets used to it. He's a light sleeper, deal with it.)

We do not use the video monitor to watch him all night, as others have said, that will drive you nuts. Usually, an audio monitor does just fine.

btw, congrats.

Re:Ears (no, seriously - ears...)

[bitterbastard]

Reality from my experience: forget it. A radio baby monitor is enough, in fact after a while we stopped using even that because our own ears sufficed just as well.

Agreed, but I'd like to add two points:

• On the monitoring front, you might want to consider a monitor that also checks for movement (see http://www.sidsandkids.org/safesleep/faq.htm#monit or).
  That way (if you're neurotic like we are) you won't find yourself waking up in the middle of the night to check if the baby is still breathing. It's more about peace-of-mind than anything else, I'm unconvinced it would actually help with SIDS.
• And yes, a baby monitor is enough, but since this is Slashdot I applaud the project. Heck, I'm trying to build a PVR using MythTV on an old box using Gentoo. A TIVO-ish box, or the cable-company proprietary PVR that I can rent that handles digital cable, is a much better choice if it's about practicality. I'm a nerd, though, so practicality isn't everything. (That said, nerd projects are currently not a big part of my life now that I have kids.)
  

Re:Ears (no, seriously - ears...)

[Jester99]

And don't monitor the babysitter. If you can't trust her to watch the kids sans monitoring, you shouldn't hire her at all. If you trust her, enjoy the time you're paying her for by having a child-free excusion!

On a related note, boys are more than capable of watching kids for a few hours on a Friday night. Your babysitter doesn't have to be a girl. When I was eight or so, I loved having babysitters I could play video games with, rather than boring girls :P (And, when I was 14 or so, it was nice to earn some cash to spend at the movies by babysitting; but jobs were hard to come by for boys like me!)

Re:Ears (no, seriously - ears...)

[ghostlibrary]

> boys are more than capable of watching kids for a few hours on a Friday night.

I totally agree. Oddly enough, my own sister never let me watch her kids (my cousins) when I was 20-something because I was a single guy and therefore incompetent... but she'd let any 15-year old girl in her neighborhood that she just met watch 'em. Go figure.

There seems to be this unwritten rule that only girls can babysit, and only boys mow lawns. Annoying, but I haven't yet found exceptions. And given how hard it is to find sitters, I've tried!

Maybe it's a cultural thing. Maybe we're all just biased morons :)

Re:Ears (no, seriously - ears...)

[Anonymous Coward]

As the father of four under six I can confirm your comments. You go a bit nutty with number one and by the time number arrives you've mellowed. If you don't learn to relax around the kids you won't survive. oh yeah - you were right on the money when you that the kids will only be silent when they are getting into something. Kids are amazing little people, enjoy the ride - you live will never be the same again.

EAsy

[Fred_A]

Just install Linux on the baby and then you can monitor it with SNMP.

And if there's anything wrong, you can ssh in.

Re:EAsy

[Anonymous Coward]

"aww how cute! what os do you have?"

"of course, she runs netbsd!"

Don't do it...

[AccUser]

My wife and I decided (against the grain) not to install any kind of baby monitoring devices, hi-tech or otherwise. All our friends did. We slept, they didn't. They worried, we didn't. Maybe we are just laid back, but we never spent an entire evening checking the baby monitor for functionality, as a friend once did!

Re:Don't do it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn right you are. I've got a lot of wussie mothers in my family who are/were constantly afraid. Any hiss on the babyphone and they run/ran upstairs, waking their child in the progress. My wife and I took a much more relaxed approach.

I don't know if there is any connection, but it seems to me (sample size 9 families, 27 children) that the children of the overconcerned mothers become problem children later on (crying, aggressive behaviour, ...). YMMV.

Re:Don't do it...

[Anonymous Coward]

there is the whole point that the first several thousands of years humans did well without baby monitoring.

Sorry but if Ugh and OOk were able to raise Eeek and UhahaaAAA! without 30 webcams, sattelite data relay's and 5.1 digital dolby surround I'm pretty sure that babies today will do just fine.

Good for you to realize early on that technology is not really needed.

Re:Don't do it...

[Abreu]

Sorry but if Ugh and OOk were able to raise Eeek and UhahaaAAA! without 30 webcams, sattelite data relay's and 5.1 digital dolby surround I'm pretty sure that babies today will do just fine.

Sure Ugh and Ook were able to raise Eek and Uhahaa just fine... they just lost 5 of their brothers to disease, wild beasts, rough winters and simple neglect.

Re:Don't do it...

[LazySlacker]

It depends on the parents - I would guess that they would have worried more without the monitor.

I would say I find the monitor invaluable - it has a set of noise level lights - allowing me to listen to music on my headphones while 'listening out' for signs of distress.

Seeing as this is a geek site - the monitors are a tool that the user is free to use/abuse as he/she sees fit. They can disrupt your life or make it easier depending on how you use them (see computers passim)

Re:Don't do it...

[Anonymous Coward]

How does a baby monitor prevent SIDS? Do you sit and listen for the sound of sudden death?

IANAL, but...

[dasunt]

Before you start videotaping a third person (a babysitter), shouldn't you check what laws in your area might apply to such monitoring?

Re:IANAL, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many precedents (or maybe just the same urban myth recycled) for secret filming in ones own home (usually bathrooms) to be legal.

Re:IANAL, but...

[Politburo]

I'm confused. I'm taped every time I walk in/out of my building. The hallway cam also probably catches me when I go to the bathroom. I'm taped when I go to the bank. I'm taped when I go to the fucking deli. Why should I be worried about taping people in my own home?

In the story about Universities banning Wireless APs, the groupthink was "It's their property, they do what they want." Now the groupthink seems to be "You'll get sued!" What happened? We only stick up for the property rights of the big guy?

Re:IANAL, but...

[dasunt]

I'm confused. I'm taped every time I walk in/out of my building. The hallway cam also probably catches me when I go to the bathroom. I'm taped when I go to the bank. I'm taped when I go to the fucking deli. Why should I be worried about taping people in my own home?

Again, IANAL, so this could be wrong, but you don't have an expectation of privacy at the bank. You would have an expectation of privacy in a hotel room.

You might have an expectation of privacy at someone's house, even if you are babysitting there.

I don't know, but the little knowledge I have of this area makes me think that the laws would be state-specific. Which is why I say, check with a lawyer.

When Father was Away on Business

[otisg]

Have you seen Otac na sluzbenom putu (When Father was Away on Business)? There is a child character called Malik in this film, and he likes to walk around Sarajevo in his sleep. After his mom and his slightly older brother found out about his sleep-walking habit, they tied a rope around his big toe, and put a little bell on the other end of the rope. Looked like a good monitoring solution to me!

Go low tech

[cybrthng]

Just spend the 40-50 bucks on a baby monitor. The last thing you want is cords dangling all over your babies room or anything expensive that you would fear to get broken.

Keep it low tech, simple and easy for you and your wife to install. Don't leave anything open for other people to see either. Your baby is yours and privacy is paramount to raising a healthy child. Don't risk putting up webcams and crap of your innocent child just because your a geek.

dlink web cam works for me

[ruiner5000]

I bought one of these Dlink internet cameras at Fry's, and it works pretty darn good checking in on my little newborn girl. She is 9 days old. :)

More than just one use for this solution

[ramsesit]

While the idea of "spying" on babysitters appears to be a contentious one amoung /. readers, it seems to me that a solution to the original post has more than just this one application. I can see the benefits of having the ability to see "what's going on" in your house in the event that ,say, your home-installed alarm trips and you get an SMS that someone may have broken in. Of course, you may want to be careful about security - the last thing we need is someone abusing this solution and checking up on what you and the family are up to of an evening ;>

What ever happened to parenting?

[Handbrewer]

Please, what happened? Whats this obsession with monitoring these days? When i was a baby, there were no baby alarms or no cameras (?!?). Please do not monitor your babies with cameras feeding a stream over the internet for the love of all that is sacred. The idea alone makes me sick. It will not make you more safe, it will make you more nervous. Get a good babysitter you can trust, and go out, relax. You need it from time to time, after having a baby. Dont keep yourself at a constant level of stress monitoring your child 24/7. Whats next? Giving your baby a GPS tag? RFID chip? Its all an excuse nowadays. Just bring up your child like you was. You turned out alright i suppose?

Re:What ever happened to parenting?

[Louis Guerin]

You turned out alright i suppose? You turned out alright i suppose?

Apparently not. The OP seems to have turned out to be a control freak. No comment on what being surveilled as an infant might do instead ...

L

Quicktime Streaming server

[Mask*well.com]

How about Quicktime Streaming Server ? http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/streami ng/ It's easy to setup. There's a Red Hat Linux 9 binary.

Night Lights from hell.

[Pherry]

There are not very many video systems that handle dark rooms very well - and those that do are not cheap. I would suggest you stick to audio. Just make sure the audio system is dect or similar http://www.bt.com/babymonitor/ . Old analogue baby monitors are completely pointless.

Do you need one?

[Zog The Undeniable]

We bought a secondhand baby monitor. It never even got plugged in, because little Zogette is loud enough to wake the dead. We can hear her anywhere in the house or garden. On the other hand, her volume control does seem to go up to 11 compared to other babies.

No, what's wrong with you?

[pocopoco]

He never said it would be secret. You have a pretty black mind to assume that instantly, don't you? In fact the low cost and expandable requirements he mentioned are going to preclude super small, wireless/hidden wires by redoing the walls, concealable cameras which are more expensive and more limited. A new father wanting a way to check on his baby while he's out of the house/etc sounds pretty sensible and caring to me although, I'm not that neurotic myself to need that.

I babysat a little when young and there were always some parents who would constantly call asking if the tyke was all right. This is rather annoying as one of the perks of baby sitting is that a lot of times you get to just watch TV or do homework (the uh part of uh...babysitting, I guess ^^) while the kid is asleep or something. Having a way they could do a quick check for themselves would have been a relief rather than a burden.

Be honest

[maroberts]

You just want to video the action when the babysitter invites her boyfriend around!

What does everyone use for this? Do you use the same equipment as me?

I' m not so 'geek'

[mrotschi]

I thought I was a bit insane since I used my palm to count my girlfriend's contractions when my baby came. (
But I'm happy to see that some /.ers can be a lot more strange than me :-)

Re:I' m not so 'geek'

[mrotschi]

Girlfriend?? Who are you and why are you posting on SlashDot??

I thought every /.ers had a girlfriend like these ones ! : http://www.boingboing.net/2004/08/23/virtual_cellu lar_gir.html

...and go crazy! (Who modded as insightful?)

[Burb]

Yes, sure, plan to be with your child as much as you can. But new parents need some time off to relax and socialise. A new mother of my acquaintance who is well-meaning and dedicated to her family didn't leave her son with anyone else, ever, for nearly a year, because she had extremely high (unrealistic) standards for prospective babysitters. It did them no good in the end.

But I certainly agree with other comments that remote web monitoring is not the way to go here.

Re:...and go crazy! (Who modded as insightful?)

[Katharine]

Actual technique for baby-watching used by my brother-in-law's parents in the late 1960's when he was an infant: When they wanted to go to a cocktail party down the street, they would move the phone into the room with the crib. One parent would then go the party and call home. The other parent would pick up the phone in the baby's room and leave it off the hook. The other parent would then join the first parent at the party. No babysitter. Every 15-20 minutes or so, one or the other of them would pick up the phone at the party to listen if the baby was crying, and if so, one of them would go home to check on him.

My brother-in-law turned out okay despite this treatment, though I wouldn't recommend doing something like that today. (And DCFS would take the kid away if you tried it.)

GSpy

[isam_b]

I used this program to monitor if someone enters my room, it doesn't take video's, but picture snapshots, and it only takes it when there is motion: http://gspy.sourceforge.net/

H.U.M.A.N. monitoring

[thrill12]

It's the latest fashion, really. H.U.M.A.N. monitoring works like this:
- acquire free time
- move to the baby-room
- check upon the baby (repeat this every hour or so, depending on the sounds you hear from a simple baby intercom)

Advantages?
- It's cheap (only costs time, no batteries recquired)
- It's the safest solution (if the H.U.M.A.N. is you)
- It's flexible

Sorry to troll here, I guess that's what telling the truth is (...???), but wouldnt't spending more time with the baby yourself be much better for the baby and you ?

For telling you this, I am more than happy to give up some of my badly earned karma. But hey, you asked for it :)

Re:H.U.M.A.N. monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

You say your solution is cheap - it "only costs time." Hello, recent college graduate! When you get to the real world, you'll find that time is anything *but* cheap.

And when you have a kid of your own, you may discover a little "glitch" in their systems: just when you think he's finally asleep but you decide to peek in on him just to be sure (or you step on the squeaky part of the floor outside his room on your way to the bathroom), his little head will pop up, he'll either squeak or call out "Daddy?" (depending on his age), and he'll be instantly wide awake for the next hour.

THAT is why parents depend on monitors.

Re:H.U.M.A.N. monitoring

[thrill12]

Ouch ouch, I guess my karma is dropping to zero, but here it goes:
It's not about time, it's about the baby !

Does everything have to evolve around economics here, or does humanity not belong in your vocabulary ?

Re:H.U.M.A.N. monitoring

[botono9]

Said like a true childless twenty-something.

You are accusing this person of neglecting their child, which is a pretty serious allegation. What's really happening is that this person is expecting to, some time in the future, require some "adult time" to recharge their batteries. This is completely normal and healthy. They will be better parents if they don't forget their own needs in the process of rearing their child.

Now, this person is also a geek and wants to install a high-tech monitoring system so that they can check on their child while they are out of the house, entrusting them to a babysitter of some kind. Instead of offering any useful advice, you simple begin lecturing this person about what a bad parent they aren't yet. How incredibly thoughtful of you!

Seriiously don't

[conufsed]

You don't wanna do this, you'll just worry even more (your gonna be a parent, your are *always* going to worry about your kid(s) from now on).

When we first bought our baby home from hospital, my wife barely slept, with our son in the same room, until my mother-in-law came to stay with us (she lives about 1500km away), and told, he will sleep fine in the next room (in all reality about 5m from where we slept).

You don't want baby monitors and such, just a slight ajar door you can sneak in and out of. After they are a couple of months old, you and your wife will be used to the way your little one sleeps and from there on it gets easy.

Just remmember the most important thing dude. ENJOY IT! Its a great experience as a dad, although watching my wife in so much pain during labour was hard, and when my son was born, I was really torn for the first time in my life. To be beside my wife as she go cleaned up post-labour or beside my son. I stayed with my son, and dressed him, and kept where my wife could see.

She is pregnant again now, I can hear the two of them causing mischeif in the bath now.

Prepare yourself for the ride of your life. Spend a whole day in bed asleep before your baby is born and then grab on to the ride, enjoy the feeling of helping to create a life, and remmember nature has been growing kids for a long time, without technology.

Motion detecting camera software

[Grullie]

Maybe I can help:

I recently wrote a small MFC-based motion detecting picture+video app for my father-in-law's hotel - he set it up overlooking the front desk. I used Logitech's QuickCam SDK (I think it might have been pulled from Logitech's site in the past couple months - getting the right camera and driver for it was difficult).

What it does - Basically if a certain percentage of the picture area changes, the camera takes a bitmap snapshot, then starts recording an .avi for at least 5 seconds. Any subsequent motion resets the 5 second counter. The bitmap has a timestamp on the bottom of the image.

I'd be happy to provide the source code I wrote for the app. It probably wouldn't be too hard to write a backround script to take the output files and FTP them to your web server... Or if you have Samba configured properly, you could probably just have the app save the files directly to your Linux machine.

Re:Motion detecting camera software

[cleanroom]

Hmmm, maybe hackable to work with any camera. I'd be interested.

Sony Webcams with Wi-Fi, Two-Way Audio

[wizrd_nml]

Recently saw this Sony Wi-Fi webcam on Gizmodo. Could be what you're looking for.

Overkill but...

[Nashirak]

Zoneminder. Has all the options you want (cellphone monitoring etc), and has motion detection and auto record features.

Here's a hint.

[bigattichouse]

A baby should be loved and cuddled, held, and all that. Don't think its just a server that needs to be "monitored". How about *BEING* with your child. I imagine you also want one of those car seats that is a stroller, feeding chair, etc so you won't need to actually HOLD your child.
Want a good bond with your kid that will last thru all the stupid teenage hijinks? Hold them as an infact, talk to them, tell them stories.. you need LOW tech, not high tech.

Motion Sensor

[Chainsaw76]

Reguardless of what you do with video..

My wife and I got an audio baby monitor that had a motion sensor built in. It slips under the mattress, and alerts you after a 20 seconds of inactivity (Breathing). And it really did help with the peace of mind at night, and cut down on us stressing if our son (now 7 months) was ok. We had 2 false alarms where he had rolled to the far edge of the crib, and the sensor didn't register his breathing, but that seems like a very small price to pay.

-Jason

Re:Motion Sensor

[Anonymous Coward]

I can second that. My wife's nephew died at the age of three month 10 years ago. She was completely healthy and the diagnosis was just "crib's death". It is believed that some babies just "forget" to breath sometimes in their sleep and then just pass away from lack of oxygen. A motion detector can feel that and waking and lighly shaking the baby is usually enough to start the breathing again. Needless to say all the family has since used motion sensors for the children born since.

Re:Don't do it!

[mrbcs]

Have kids, I mean. They are expensive piss and shit factories. Once you have one, you're trapped. Getting my wife pregnant is the WORST mistake I ever made.

I pity you. Children are an incredible joy, but they aren't for the selfish. You need to give a lot of yourself to your family but the rewards are awesome!

I have 3, two boys and a girl 5, 3 and almost 1.

Integrated Solution

[RawCode]

Sounds like your looking for a solution like the one Cringely recently found in Canada

baby monitors

[Anonymous Coward]

Monitoring is essential to reducing parenting stress - if you use it right. I agree with another poster's comment - too much is a bad thing. Relax! But, in many cases, I think monitoring young (Fisher Price baby monitor (sorry for the plug but they've been around, like, forever and they rock) The lights on the monitor are great for when you are watching a movie or whatnot. Just put the monitor in plain view and you'll notice right away if your little guy/gal is making a mid-nap ruckus (usually due to full diaper!)

I've been considering adding a video camera to the playroom as well, so that we can keep an eye on the little guy from the common space downstairs. Right now he's too young (2 yrs) for us to leave him to play alone, but soon enough he'll have little friends over and so on and the cam will be relevant.

video of junior

[Anonymous Coward]

camserv and a logitech quickcam express should do the job well, posting a jpg stream to your website

Re:Don't do it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Children aren't for the selfish?

How are the other 5,999,999,999 of us supposed to procreate?

Re:Don't do it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I don't know... I had a great time getting your wife pregnant. You must not have been doing it right.

Adjust your priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop and think for a second: You are turning your child's safety into a "Me Me Me" issue. Buy a good and reliable AUDIO-only monitoring system and find another outlet for your creative juices - one that doesn't put your child at risk. Friend, being a father means being ready to put your kids first... are you ready for this painful shift?

Remember, you can't reboot a baby.

SNMP...

[Cynops]

Just throw in some shell scripts and make her send SNMP traps. Then you can integrate her smoothly in your OpenNMS or Nagios monitoring system.

You will have to define your BabyMIB, of course, for which you will want your own Enterprise OID. A true geek would want to assign e. g. 1.3.6.1.4.1.x.1.n for the n-th kid to monitor. Below this OID you could just add any Trap OID you could imagine.

"Honey, Christine just threw a MyDiapersAreDirty trap! Standard escalation procedure!"

On the other hand, you could of course just use the old-fashioned look-with-your-own-eyes method that worked perfectly for the past few thousands years...

A little research

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard of at least one person who was convicted of assaulting a baby based on evidence from a hidden camera. I wasn't sure how often that kind of things happened so I did a google search on "baby 'video camera' conviction assault". I got only about 700 hits and there were way more stories about pedophiles video taping children than there were about catching nannies beating their charges.

The bottom line is: unless you have evidence that something is going on, just hire someone you trust and relax.

ps. I am a father of two grown children and I assure you that you have a lot more to worry about than the babysitter. :-)

Similar but not to high tech

[globring]

I find myself in a very similar situation. However, I am interested in just a simple camera that my parents (who lives out of state) can access via the internet to see their grandaughter from across the miles.

I know there are several web cams that contain their own web server to allow for this, most pointedly the Linksys WVC54G. I have heard, however, that picture quality with this camera is not too hot. Anyone have any opinions on it?

Or perhaps suggest a better one that isn't going to dent my wallet to the tune of several hundred dollars?

Holy shit dude

[TheVidiot]

First, you're (going to be) a father. I highly suggest your eyeballs as excellent surveilance devices.

Second, yes, it's been awhile since you've had sex, but jerking it to video of the babysitter isn't worth the risk.

Linux + webcam + "motion" = free monitoring

[ShannaraFan]

Setup a Linux box, connect your webcam, and install a package called "motion" (http://motion.sourceforge.net/). You'll have motion-sensing webcam system that will give you your monitoring capabilities. Also works great as a DIY security system.

Walls have eyes!

[Pants75]

Better get your kid fitted for a tin foil hat early.

Laziness Scale

[Rufus88]

How to check on your child while you're at home depends on where you fall on the Laziness Scale. If your L-scale value is 100, just use your cell phone as if you were out. If your L-scale value is less than 90, get off your ass and walk to the baby's room.

Re:Laziness Scale

[aclute]

That's great until the time when you going into the room to check on them is detrimental to the baby learning to fall asleep on their own.

Having the audio, and a simple IR camera has made parenting much easier.

If she is crying but lying down, we know she can be left alone for a bit, etc. Don't discount the ability to see what is going on without being in there.

Go the simple route.

[chrysrobyn]

I'm a new parent too. I also had these dillusions of grandeur. If you're unemployed but still have $50 for each place you want to monitor, plus enough USB cables to hook them all together, it's possible, but it'll take some time to get it all set up.

All free time from here on out will be spent with your new kid. Or sleeping. Yes, sleeping is now part of "free time", and you will have to balance between getting your full 5 hours of sleep and the other things you want to do. If you're paranoid about a babysitter while you are out on a date with your wife, not even a camera will make you feel better. What's the ideal situation, you are out at a fancy restaraunt and between tender looks you glance at your webcam to find your babysitter beating your kid? You won't get home in time to fix anything, no matter what it will be too late and the damage done. Go the 20/20 route and get a video camera. Nobody in the real world thinks their video can be doctored.

Really, you won't be going out dating, you'll be too tired for that. Work extra hard (not checking the video feed) so you can get home earlier. If there's someone at home while you're at work, go on ahead and set up an honest webcam and ask the nanny or whatever to show you the kid at specific times. If you need to have evidence to punish a babysitter (get a new babysitter or don't leave the house until your situation changes!), get several video cameras and be clever with placement.

Let the kid have a life now. Realize you can't be there 100% of the time. Your main purpose is to provide guidance and help clean up when the kid screws up.

This camera looks pretty sweet.

[gosand]

This new Sanyo camera posted on gizmodo.com looks pretty nice. Although I must say, I just found out that my wife is pregnant as well, and wondered about monitoring too. I think I am not going to do it. I will be freaked out enough, this being our first kid. I don't need to be checking every 10 minutes to make sure everything is OK. You know, people have been having babies for like 1000 years, long before technology came about. I think you can do OK without it.

Be careful with wifi

[rjstephens]

I'm not too worried about wi-fi around myself but I would never run a wireless transmitter anywhere near anyone younger than about 5, and I would have serious issues with running one near anyone younger than 24 (the age when the brain is fully developed). Remember, those signals are 2.45ghz...the same frequency used to cook food in your microwave!

True, the signals are much weaker than anything you would find in a cooker, but infants do not have well formed skulls for at least a few years after they are born. And the brain is a lot smaller and is more suceptible to damage.

So keep it wired.

(I like the idea of setting up oxygen and carbon dioxide sensors around the crib - it would tell you if your kid is still alive and would be non-obtrusive. Maybe attach them to a linux SBC, and run an ethernet cable out of it. Get it to communicate with your server, and have that send you an SMS message on your phone if either the O2 or the CO2 percentages drop below predefined levels or fail to show changes over a period of a few seconds. You could also use a motion sensor of some description but by the time the baby hasn't moved for long enough for it not to be a false alarm, it's probably too late.)

Re:Be careful with wifi

[lachlan76]

A microwave only uses that frequency because WATER can absorb it well.
Note also that WiFi devices are limited to 125mW of output.

Microwaves can have 10000 this power.

Show me some conclusive evidence of your theory that WiFi can cause brain damage in normal use and I'll believe you. But not until then.

Babysitter worries...

[lythander]

You know, the cure for this is...

Stay the fsck home.

You just had a baby. Your wife needs to rest for a while, and once she's recovered from having the baby, she needs to rest from taking care of the baby all freaking day. Let her sleep and YOU change diapers and feed for several hours a day. Besides, why bring in all those germs? You have enough at home already.

You life will change irrevocably, don't expect to keep living like you did before. Expect the change and allow it to happen. Dad's who expect to keep going out like they did pre-baby make the rest of us look bad.

Oh, and forget anything but a radio audio monitor, and stop using that after the first year except for special occasions (like you're on vacation and need to make sure the kids actually went to sleep when you went into the next room). It'll keep you from getting any sleep, and it won't keep your kid any safer.

Re:Babysitter worries...

[lachlan76]

Stay the fsck home.

So what you're saying is: ok, for the new few years, you may never leave the house, except for work. Isn't that slight overkill?

Baby Monitoring

[Hallow]

Congrats!

I'm a fairly new father myself (I have a 7 month old little boy at home). We used an audio monitor for the first few weeks at home, but found due to the rather small size of the townhouse we were in that we could hear our son just fine.

We just moved into a much larger house (bought our own), and have found that we can barely hear him cry on the other side of the house (did I say much larger? I meant a crapload larger!), so we'll be setting up the monitor again as a repeater.

Once you get past the 3 month stage, unless your child has known respitory problems, the chance of SIDS falls dramatically.

I would have loved to have setup a webcam to watch him, but found that it really wasn't practical for us, in terms of time, money, etc. It's amazing when you have kids how those things are no longer yours, but theirs. ;)

Although if you have the funds (make sure you have plenty, our son was 2 months early, and let me tell ya, extra-calorie preemie formula and such ain't cheap!) or if you already have the equipment, maybe a sony digital camcorder with night-shot (for very low light conditions) connected to a pc via firewire and some steaming or webcam software and a pc might work well.

You'd not only have a good low-light capable webcam, but you'd also have a good digital video camera for all those home movies. (We chose buying our own home over getting the camera, although I wish I had one... maybe for Christmas... before he's walking.)

You probably don't need to worry about noise from a computer in the nursery. We've found the hum of an air filter, a pc, a clock, stuff like that as long as it's not too loud, provides some much needed white noise that helps keep the baby asleep through other sounds (creaking floors, closing drawers, people talking, etc.). Although it can add a very annoying hiss to the audio monitor.

remodulate to a custom TV channel

[mogrinz]

I have a night-vision camera over my daughter's crib. You're really going to want to see your kid at night when you hear some crying! I have the output from that camera re-modulated to a custom TV channel (121) so that I can tune to that channel from any TV in the house and see what's up. You might also consider capturing the camera w/ a video card, streaming it to the web (or whatever) and also having your PC's video sent to a custom channel (I do this for my PVR). That way, you get the best of both worlds: You can monitor your baby from any TV in the house, as well as over the net. You can also use the PVR to easily zip through a whole day's activity ;-)

My Advice....Secure it

[zora]

do a little googling and find thousands of webcams that probably should not be out there....

intitle:liveapplet inurl:LvAppl

inurl:indexFrame.shtml Axis

intext:"MOBOTIX M1" intext:"Open Menu"

inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="

It is a good way to pass some time, waiting for the next /. story....

Experience

[Keebler71]

Congratulations! I went through the same exercise when my wife was about to pop just over two years ago. I wanted it all, spy cameras in the nursery, wired via ethernet or x10 into my netork so I could see/spy anytime/anywhere. The reality of the last weeks of pregnancy caught up with me and I decided I would wait a few weeks and do all this shortly after the baby arrived. We settled on a nice wireless baby monitor that worked just fine. As it turns out, the baby's built-in monitor worked as advertised and unless your wife is giving birth to a mouse (or you live in a 10,000sq ft mansion) you will hear your baby just fine.

We used the baby monitor for a few months, but eventually we realized something: babies make noise. And I am not talking about crying, they make all sorts of noises. They make noise as they fall asleep, and they make noise before they wake up. Listening via a sensitive baby monitor, these perfectly natural coo's will rile up you and your wife.

At some point I broached the subject again about video, but we decided that that would just further our obsession. The baby is fine.

Now, with a two-year old about to move into a "big" bed, is the time it might be appropriate to get a camera,... if not just to be able to see what he is getting into at bedtime without disturbing him. Then again, I have heard lots of stories about weirdos driving around and watching people's surveillance feeds, if that doesn't freak you out yet, wait until you have a child and some freaky part of your brain you didn't know you had that governs "protective instinct" kicks in... no joke, I check the locks on every door in the house twice each night - I never did anything like that before.

Oh, and I hate to plug a book, but make yourself and your wife read "The Baby Whisperer". Babies don't come with instructions (not that we would read them anyway), but this is as close as it gets. There wasn't a single thing in this book that wasn't directly applicable to raising our child. Oh, and while at it, this is a great lullaby cd... I think I will use it when my kid gets too big.

Web Cam

[BRSQUIRRL]

If you have broadband, you can do what my wife and I did...get a cheapo $30 web cam, and set up a shoutcast server. All of the software needed to get it up and running is free (you'll need WinAMP or a video player that plays NSV to view the stream, but it will work anywhere with a 'net connection). I set mine to 10fps, which seems to be a good balance between video quality and bandwidth use.

wireless infrared cam and your mythtv box

[hawkwind]

we have a wireless infrared cam with the receiver hooked to a mythtv box. channel 0 is always the baby's room.

since it's infrared, we don't have to risk waking her up by going in to check on her....plus it's fun to just watch her sleep ;)

the cam came from sharper image, but I've seen other (cheaper) models elsewhere lately.

just get a babysitter you trust for when you're not home.

Cameras & modulators

[dave3138]

I'm doing the same thing. I first use a 600Mhz low-pass filter to scrape off any RF from the cable company above 600Mhz before mixing it with my modulators' outputs. 600 Mhz is around channel 86 or so, there's nothing up there that I use (I believe digital cable is up there on their system). If you don't do this, you'll get interference with your video channels, and there's a possibility that your neighbors could see your modulated channels.

I have one 3 channel modulator, and one single channel modulator. Channel 88 is the driveway, 90 is the front door, 92 is our daughter's room, and 100 is the Tivo.

Having a camera in the child's room is quite handy, and is good for some humor once in a while (young children sleep really strange at times). I am going to add infrared lighting to her camera soon, as she's transitioned to a toddler bed now and it would be nice to see if she's on the floor or not.

Re:Cameras & modulators

[BrK]

The ChannelPlus modulators take care of the "neighbor seeing your feed" problem. Not to mention that there is usually in excess of 30db of isoloation between most adjacent homes.

The low-pass filter is a good idea, but not needed on every system. Some systems broadcast something on every channel, even if it is just another copy of the guide channel, or a a blank image, others just leave the unused channels unused. My experience in working with various MSO's in the US and Canada is that most of the time the low pass filter is not needed. YMMV.

Been there. Done that.

[Canis Lupus]

I have a two-year-old and I played the part of stay-at-home dad. Just get a simple audiable baby monitor and call it good. If you do not trust your baby sitter, get someone else. A close friend, or relative is best. I would not really trust my infant with a young teen-ager.

Also, try a practice run with the baby sitter. Seriously. Rent a movie, and make dinner. Hire the baby sitter to come over to watch the kid while you both have a relaxing evening at home. This way you build confidence in the baby sitter, you get used to the idea of not running to see the baby, etc., etc. After a few times of doing this, you should feel confident enough to leave the baby with the sitter.

And my final piece of advice is to closely examine your personal life and bid it a fond fairwell, because it's gone! Most of the time you will be too tired and/or sick to do anything anyway! :-)

-Dale

Don't bother with X10 cameras

[anomaly]

Shortly after the birth of my first child, I purchased a 'night vision' camera from X10. After all, the ads make it look like the thing would be perfect, right? This was advertised as something like a 'ultra-low-light night vision camera' with audio. I thought it would be perfect. What I found was that I needed to leave a lamp ON in order to have enough light to use the camera at night.

It makes me laugh thinking about the people who buy those things to spy on their neighbors......

Parental Radar

[milo_Gwalthny]

You're right. I have two kids, old enough to play on their own in the house. I always know where they are from the noises they make, even when they are not speaking.

The thing that spooks my wife and me is when, all of a sudden, there is no noise. Look at that, all of a sudden I'm my parents ("stop with all that noise!" to "why is it so quiet up there? what are you kids doing?")

Re:Parental Radar

[junklight]

Ha ha too true. Silence is a sure sign something naughty is afoot. :-)

I gave up on the baby monitor - used it for a while on the first one but it is better to get used to the sounds.

(as an aside my son is called Milo )

Wireless infrared

[apillowofclouds]

My son is almost 1 - I wrote almost an exactly identical post on a newsgroup before he was born. I tried several alternatives, found that any camera that was reasonably priced was basically worthless, and I finally wound up buying a Summer brand wireless video baby monitor. The thing works FANTASTICALLY. The camera has built in infrared illumination - with the nursery completely dark we can see my son like he's got a spotlight on him, and the mic is so sensitive that if the A/C isn't on you can usually hear him breathing even though the camera's way up on the wall. Since I bought mine, they have now come out with a version that has a small handheld monitoring station rather than the clunky brick-powered unit that I have. The handheld monitor looks like a gameboy. I don't know if the vid is as high quality as the clunky one that I have though. Mine also has a button to turn the video on and off so if you want you can use it as a traditional audio-only baby monitor. I am a classic worrier and this is BY FAR the ABSOLUTELY BEST piece of equipment we bought. It allowed us to put the baby in his room very early on and not worry a bit, not to mention being able to not rush in every time we hear a noise - a quick glance at the monitor tells us he's fine. It also potentially saved his life - he had a reaction to some formula and threw up while going to sleep one time - if my wife hadn't seen it on the monitor we probably would have never noticed and I won't even speculate what might have happened. I also wanted an internet ready camera piped through my web server, forwarded to my cell with motion detection to email me when he moves, etc. but the Summer monitor wound up actually doing a fantastic job.

Grandpa's Advice

[Begs]

First as somebody already said, when the baby comes home sleep, more than anything, will be the most important issue for your wife and you. For the first couple of weeks your sleep and especially your wife's sleep will be interrupted. So, the most important strategy is to be able to sleep when the baby sleeps.

If your wife nurses, she will most likely be a wreck for the first month. Nursing is terribly hard on her sleep. You get a break but she takes the pain. Treat her with care.

Here's what we did and it worked out pretty well. From about the age of newborn to about two months, we had the baby in a cradle at night in OUR bedroom. That way, after the first few paranoid nights, we relaxed and slept when the baby allowed. For most babies, gaining to about ten pounds leads to sleeping longer at night and if you are a bit lucky, through the night.

Have a plush chair or another cradle setup for the baby out where you will spend the day. I just put casters on our cradle. During that early time the cradle could go where we wanted to be. The baby wants a lot of holding time. Get one of those sling thingies for the baby to be attached to you. They are great.

After the baby was about 2-3 months s/he did crib time in his/her own bedroom in a regular crib that is good until about the age of 2 years. Around then they get athletic enough and smart enough to climb out. While they are not crawling or scooting around, have a really comfortable chair or something in the babies room that you can snooze in comfortably for those times when the baby is ill and your paranoia is off the scale. DON'T BRING THE BABY IN YOUR BED TO SLEEP after it is out of the cradle. If you must provide additional comfort to the child, you go in there.

When the baby moves into his/her own room, now is the time to install audio monitors. My youngest daughter just put one video cam onto the crib for her newborn son. But both of them found that the problem was not the cam but what to do with the cam data. Sending it to their computers made them feel visually tied to their displays. The idea of sending to a handheld or a phone hasn't come up but I suspect the same outcome. The advantage of the audio is that it can run in the background and not require anything more of you than to clip the receiver on your belt or jeans or skirt, I suppose. So, the video has gotten little use but the audio is very useful.

I could write you a ton more detail but the bottom line is that if the child isn't in your immediate presence and your mental health is important to you and you need some surveillance, audio is the way to go. Remember you're not looking for a high fidelity system just something that lets you hear the baby breathing and moving around. You can get systems from Toys R Us and Babies R Us that will do this job admirably.

If this video thing has come up because you are both returning to work, the remark that somebody made about having a babysitter that you need to surveil may be a problem is right on. Your baby is defenseless and long range surveillance won't be anything but evidence if things go wrong. I just got done doing about 3 years of babysitting my older daughter's kids. These little ones can really test a person's self control. You must have someone you trust enough without the surveillance.

Good luck and best wishes to you and your wife on a wonderful adventure that lies before the two of you.

Re:Grandpa's Advice

[sceptre1067]

Just gotta second the poster's advice... (espicially the sleep advice.)

First 2 to 3 months we had our children (now 3.5 and 1.5) in our bedroom. That way mom could nurse the child, and due to our lack of sleep we were able to keep tabs.

Once the child was in thier own room... we had a comfy chair and would take shifts if necessary. Other wise we relied on a simple audio monitor. You'll get more info from listenting... worried about breathing? then make sure to install the transmitter underneath the crib...

On the SIDS issue... from some light research I've done the risk is higher with a premie (due to developmental issues) then a baby born at full term. For more info check out Cringley he has some good info (due to tragedy in his family...)

Finally... Something to discuss with your wife, if you haven't yet, is the whole "family bed" idea. Some people like it, some don't... Debates about the concept are similar to OS flame wars imo. But... upside, child is in bed with you, you'll be able to keep tabs... Downside... as child gets older (some people do this untill age 2 -4) it is harder to get them to sleep in their own room.

Otherwise, as mentioned elsewhere, once the child (or children) are older.. you'll discover that when all goes quite is when you really get nervous (cause you know they're doing something they shouldn't be... like standing on top of my computer desk and knocking my books off.... that would be the 1.5 yr old _daughter_ sigh....)

Re:Grandpa's Advice

[chl]

DON'T BRING THE BABY IN YOUR BED TO SLEEP after it is out of the cradle.

Why not? Because then it won't sleep on its own?

chl

Re:Grandpa's Advice

[DGregory]

Other than nonexistant statistics that it's not safe (it's only not safe if you smoke, drink, etc).

My daughter sleeps fine on her own, and we coslept pretty much all the time until 6 or 8 mos or so, then we'd put her to bed, and bring her in our bed when she'd wake up. Then she started sleeping through the night. Then we transitioned to a toddler bed and she now even goes to bed without a fuss. No sleep training, no cry it out, no nothing, and we did the family bed for awhile.

Fugeddaboutit!

[OhHellWithIt]

If you can't trust the babysitter to watch your kid without your having a camera on him/her, do you really want to leave your firstborn in her/his care?

Re:Don't do it!

[ExKoopaTroopa]

5,3 and 1 ... funny names for kids ;)

Been there

[Anonymous Coward]

Recently being a first time father myself I have some good solutions for you.

1. Since my babys room used to be my office, when I cleaned it out, I left two systems running in there, my Linux firewall and my 2k server. the two systems actually kept the room at a perfect temp (as its the warmest room in the house).

2. I then put a webcam on the 2k server and using VNC opened up a hole on the FW.

After doing these two things, I found that I never once used it. (Other then testing it). I noticed that someone else put in here that you shouldnt run for ever need of the baby and they are right on. (except for the first month or so) My friends who rent the botom of the house from me jump when ever the baby says so and they are paying for it. My baby drops right to sleep since we stuck to our guns when she cryed. We would ignore it for about 15 min at a clip, go in, stick the pacifier back in and leave. Now its great.

Good luck with your baby.

A webcam and a few scripts will do

[LAAA]

I use a dlink DCS-1000W in a weatherproof enclosure mounted on the outside of my house. I have a cron script that grabs the image off of it every 30 seconds and uploads it to my linux box at the house. I have a web page on my server at work that dynamically grabs that picture each time the page is loaded. I can view that web page on my blackberry at any time to see what is going on at the house. My application is more security monitoring than baby watching, but the technique is the same.

The next improvement is to use motion (available on sourceforge) to detect when something is happening, take a few pictures, and mail them to me.

Grow up!

[DougNYC]

A baby sitter is an employee. You can video tape her to your hearts content. In fact, depending you your state (like NY) you can even tape her on the crapper. No, you don't need her consent; you don't have to warn her. I work on wall street. I'm on more cameras than the prez. And yes, you can record her phone calls and internet traffic too. Company property ... etc.

Re:Don't do it!

[mrbcs]

HA HA /. everybody's a comedian!

Video Monitoring

[raphae1]

I was quite impressed with ZoneMinder, although I must admit I only played about with it a bit and did not put it service for real.
It's written in perl, I've tried it on Linux - not sure whether the guy has made a Windows (compatible) version or not.

And no, I'm NOT the author.

What might work out...

[GabeK]

I've set up a few light video monitoring systems before, and here's what I would do... Any camera with a BNC connector would work well. There are several "night vision" cameras that work well for around $100 - $150. If I remember the names, I'll post them. A linux web server is great, since you can buy the BTTV card for it, plug the camera into the card, and run motion, an open source video capture program. It just captures jpegs, but you can configure how often, and the webserver function (if I recall) pretty much allows for full motion viewing. Or, you can have it place jpegs every xx seconds to your web server, and see the images from your phone. The whole solution should come in under $250 - $300, and it's way more fun that any packaged product. Most BTTV cards come with 4 ports, so you can expand from a nannycam to whole house monitoring system fairly easily. Motion supports as many cams as you can throw at it.

Re:What might work out...

[GabeK]

This'll work - take a look at the supported hardware for the Motion package. That list of cameras is bogus - there are so many others that will work just fine. I'll post again if I can find one.

Re:What might work out...

[GabeK]

Here you go...

Oh boy, now I have to say it...

[Gudlyf]

"Just install Linux on the baby and then you can monitor it with SNMP."

Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!

*ducks*

Re:Oh boy, now I have to say it...

[jratcliffe]

I think it's called China.

Radio Baby Monitors

[FJ]

I have two kids and have had my share of issues. My advice to you is to think simple. Complex is unnecessary.

For when you are at home, get a cheap radio baby monitor. Get one which allows you to both plug-in and has a battery. I would recommend one with really good range & strength. When the baby is sleeping you'll want to be doing stuff outside & around the house.

When you are away get a good baby sitter & pay very very well. A happy baby sitter is a good baby sitter. I wouldn't try to stream video or audio or anything else. Asside from legal issues, you'll go paranoid very quickly. If you trust the baby sitter, they'll call you if there is an issue. If you don't trust the baby sitter you don't have any reason to leave your child with them.

A CD player in the baby room also was nice. We put in a classical CD and it was very soothing. It really helped calm the babies when they were fussy. They also quickly realized that when they heard the music, it was time to sleep. That really helps if you go to a different house (like your family) and expect the baby to sleep.

Another handy toy we got were radio headphones which we could connect to the TV. My first son would wake up at the slightest possible noise and always had trouble sleeping. Our house has a very open design & we couldn't watch a movie without waking him up. We got a cheap pair of headphones and we could relax with a movie after the baby went to sleep.

I would also recommend that, as your kid gets older, to not get them every technological toy. Blocks, Legos, Lincoln Logs & books are good toys. We have a ton of electronic toys designed to teach everything from the alphabet to basic math. They always play the best with low tech toys and learn much more through books. You'll also have a much more peaceful house without the buzzing & beeping.

Finally, enjoy your baby!

How I do it

[shpanky]

Look, there are three qualities that just about any technology has: Good; Fast; Cheap. You get to pick two and it will be the opposite of the third (i.e. if you want it to be good and fast, it won't be cheap). On that note, you aren't going to find anything in the 'under $100' category that is going to be good and 'fast.' If you can spend a little more money, this is what I have set up and they work really well is the Panasonic NetCam: http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/gate /cameras.asp. I have only used the all-weather flavor and so far am pretty impressed with a $600 out-door camera with as many features as this one has. The indoor camera is much cheaper. You might even be able to find a low-light variant. If you have some more money, Sony makes a camera that has just about every option and is really nice but it costs over twice as much as the Panasonic. Good luck and congrats!

Go low tech

[HomeGroove]

This is what we use: Fisher Price Sound & Sights baby monitor.

We actually turn the sound all the way down. Typically the light and the audible cries heard from the room next door (not through the monitor) are enough to wake us. Also, when the audio is turned up if my daughter cries even for a brief moment or makes a peep, my wife wants to immediately rush in. With the audio turned down we still hear the baby, but it makes my wife less anxious. You will have to let your child learn to put him/herself back to sleep. Which bring me to some advice.

There will come a time when you MUST let your child cry it out. At first, yes, your child will wake up every hour- 2 hours for feedings (Conan O'Brien once commented that breast feeding mom's were where most of his viewership was). When our child started on solid food, we let her cry it out. Yes, it is hard at first. There will be an hour plus worth of the worst crying you have ever heard. And it may take a few nights. But then, all of a sudden, your child will sleep through the night. It's as if it were magic. At first, this is unsetteling and you think, "She's not waking up! There must be something wrong!" but you get used to the sweet, sweet sleep you've been missing out on. And SIDS is all but a non-issue once they hit 6 months or are able to turn over. I know there is different schools of thought on getting your baby to sleep through the night. IMHO, I think this is the best way. It teaches them independence. Not dependent on you to help them to go to sleep.

Also, while your wife is on maternity leave, use a basinette or some sleep vessel that will fit in your room. We used ours until she outgrew it. Get one on rollers too so you can move it to different parts of the house.

Be prepared. It's pretty freaky at first. When we came home, we had no help whatsoever (plus the Hospital kicked us out early). It was flu season and my mother-in-law got the flu and all our family members were exposed. The hardest part when we got home was that first few days with all the crying. But you figure it out. It's natural. All these instincts kick in.

Oh and baby blues are real. Just support your wife as best you can. Also, get her this book: The Diaper Diaries: The Real Poop on a New Mom's First Year. It's pretty damn funny. Sure it's cheesy. But you're a dad now. You're no longer cool.

And I second some of what has been said, get out of the house. You probably won't want to the first few months, but around the 4th month, have a relative come over to take care of the kid. You'll call about a half dozen times while you're on your date.

And some of your non-procreating friends will probably stop hanging out with you.

Anyway, I've rambled on too much. Good luck.

Yeah... babysitting...

[Rogerborg]

"Help yourself to anything from the fridge, and feel free to get nekkid. And take a shower. And be sure to face that corner."

couple things from our experience

[BigGerman]

worked for us = YMMV
We got a tall quality office chair instead of a rocking one. You can still rock but it also rotates and it is a godsend when you try to manipulate bottles with crying baby in your hands.
Cheap baby monitor with more than one receiver. We finally used flashing mode only no audio. If you put receivers in the strategic points around the house you get into the habbit of glancing at them no matter what you do automatically.
Babysitter recommended thru someone in the family and paid MORE than others would.
We kept baby in our bedroom just kinda separated a corner with furniture, etc. We had a rule that I would get up and take care of the baby if it was in between the feeding hours and the wife would otherwise. This gave us solid hours of sleep even during the worst times.
Good luck. this is the best time in your life.

Free + Easy

[Tmack]

Go look on sourceforge, get Dorgem. Its similar to visionGS, but free as in beer.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dorgem/

Has the built-in web server, or will upload to FTP, and can save frames to a .avi archive for review later. Works with any video for windows compatible source (basically any cam that works with windows, including my GeForce video card's video in jack), and the author is continually updating it.

Tm

Get a sling and a bigger bed

[Corvus]

Keep it simple. Lug your kid around with you at all times (or use a sling) and let him or her sleep with you in your bed. That's how human beings have been doing these things since the beginning and it still just works.

Take care.

Re:Get a sling and a bigger bed

[Quill_28]

>One way to work around a slow response from a particular subagent it to use caching.

They did it because they had to, sticking the kid in bed with you
is one of the worst ideas people like Sears ever came up with.

Re:Get a sling and a bigger bed

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and ignore the subagent caching stuff.
stupid X cut-n-paste.

Re:Get a sling and a bigger bed

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand all the hostility towards co-sleeping. People all over the world still do it today, not ALL of them because they have to. Plenty of people do it because they enjoy it, and because they don't buy into the B.S. pressure to start making BABIES be more independent the second they get home from the hospital (or even, the second the midwife leaves after your lovely homebirth!)

Re:i call -------

[willy134]

If you are going to have outsiders work in your home, get fvcking COMFORTABLE with watching them.
Security does not mean paranoia, but monitoring is perfectly legitimate.

Except when it is your boss monitoring you at work. I understand that a baby is different than a computer or a 3 million dollar digimahookey that you work on.
But really where can anybody draw the line between "security" and "privacy".

If you are going to monitor your baby make sure the babysitter knows. They may be offended and not watch the baby, but I think it is their right to decide whether they want to be watched also.

Indigovision

[thdalton]

Did a search and found this...
http://www.indigovision.com/
If it is good enough for the Olympic security, I'm sure it will be good enough for your baby... not sure about low cost though :)

Skip the gadgetry... be a dad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Start now to schedule your kids into your life.

Re:Don't do it!

[LetterJ]

I am childless by choice and have always puzzled at statements that having a child is a selfless act (not to pick on you directly, but you did mention selfishness in your post). The reason is this. A few years ago, I started challenging those who insisted that I should have children (and they do. at great length.) to give me the reasons THEY had children. However, in those reasons, they need to avoid using the first person. No "I", "me", "us", etc. MANY parents have a really hard time coming up with any.

While taking care of the child once it arrives may be selfless, the reasons for choosing to have them in the first place are almost always centered around the parent rather than the child.

Advice from a father of two...

[EvWatson6]

When your wife says "We need to check on the kids before we go to bed..." she actually means "You need to go check on the kids...". Don't get it wrong like I did, you will never hear the end if, especially if she breast feed the babies.

Skip the gadgets, you won't use them. A good quality audio monitor is all you will need and that will be overkill most of the time.

A low quality audio monitor may provide with entertainment from neighbor hood. Ours picked up the guy next doors phone conversation with his lover. Nice guy but more info than I ever wanted to know about him and his friend.

Dr. Laura method: be a present parent

[peter303]

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, among other baby advisors, would generally condemn high tech shortcuts to directly being the the infant at all times. For better or worse. nature evolved humans for intensive child caring.

Re:Ethernet webcam

[cjsnell]

Actually, the wireless D-Link webcam that we bought has (unfortunately) a web interface that relies on an ActiveX component to do the video streaming. So, no *nix support, no Mac support, no Firefox/win32 support. :( :(

That said, the camera makes available on-demand JPEG still images and I've used software that makes pseudo live video by quickly refreshing these images but its nowhere near as good as a streaming video file format.

On a side note, I tried like hell to get VLC to work with their (H326+ or something) implementation but could never make it happen.

Motorcycles and Ashtrays

[ajs318]

I'm curious as to why anybody would want to do anything like this. The usual reason why guys set up daft high-tech-toy crap like this is because they are labouring under the misapprehension that chicks find it interesting. But you say you're about to become a father, so you've obviously already got a long way past that point.

As I understand it, you want to use electronics to spy on your babysitter. That basically means you don't trust the babysitter. So while you are out, away from the baby and supposed to be enjoying yourself, you are going to be spending the whole time thinking about whether the baby is OK with the babysitter. This really isn't going to do you any good in the long run -- nor the babysitter, nor even the baby. Probably not even your wife / girlfriend. If the baby is doing something, you will worry about how well the babysitter will deal with it. If the baby isn't doing anything, you will worry about whether it's OK.

Just because you can beam images wirelessly from a webcam to a phone or PDA doesn't mean you should. I mean, you could swallow a tiny wireless camera and use it to check on your digestive system from inside ..... it wouldn't do you any good, though. You'd be more likely to give yourself digestive trouble because you were wondering whether you had digestive trouble!

The bottom line is you have to let go sometimes. Human beings, particularly young ones, are remarkably efficient at staying alive -- if we weren't, then we would have been wiped out a long, long, long time ago. Babies grow up whether or not you are watching over them 24/7/52. And you need time when you don't have to worry about your kids. Don't let anyone kid you into thinking this is selfish -- it's not selfish when the alternative is that you will harm your own sanity.

If you can't trust your babysitter, then that is a social problem, not a technological one; and the solutions to social problems do not lie in the technological domain. You need to learn to trust people -- trust your baby to grow up, and your sitter to take care of your baby. Otherwise you will become a nervous wreck, worrying about more things than your brain can reasonably be expected to handle. And though you might try a technological fix for that, it almost certainly won't work in the long run.

Co-sleeping means higher risk, not lower

[Anonymous Coward]

DGregory,

If you are worried about SIDS you should check the statistics. The chance that your baby will be a victim of SIDS is MUCH MUCH higher if he/she sleeps in your bed. Who in the world can miss a vital statistic like this???????? You might think you are doing your child a favour but you are not. Go to any website that has the proper statistics and I bet you will not co-sleep with your next child.

H

Father of a 7 months old boy who only sleeps in our bed in emergency because his mother was worried about SIDS and CHECKED THE STATISTICS!!!!!

Re:Co-sleeping means higher risk, not lower

[DGregory]

I did, statistics are not higher. In fact, there are very very few cases of a baby dying in the parental bed as long as the parents are following the safe co-sleeping rules which include not smoking or drinking.

In other countries where it's the norm to co-sleep, SIDS is pretty much unheard of.

We actually quit co-sleeping because she was crawling in her sleep, climbing on us, bonking her head on the wall at the head of the bed, and keeping us awake.

Before that though, I got more sleep because I could nurse her in my sleep and not have to get up several times a night, sit in a chair and nurse until she falls asleep, then put her down. That would've been a huge pain. She slept with her head on my shoulder and my arm around her, and I didn't move (had some muscle soreness) most of the night. I knew she was OK and breathing and fine, I slept better when she woke up to nurse, I always followed the safe co-sleeping rules.

I think you need to re-check the statistics, I don't know what statistics you're looking at, but the ones I've seen show nothing to do with co-sleeping if you co-sleep safely.

Video monitoring can be useful

[Groove Holmes]

There are some good comments in this thread about not being too paranoid about the baby breathing, etc. However, a video camera pointed at the baby's crib can be very useful. For example: you'd like to take a shower, but you can hear the baby stirring - you can check the camera to see if he's just moving around in his sleep or if he's wide awake and enjoying those wonderful seconds of relaxation and play before screaming as loud as he can. (Nothing is worse than having the baby start to cry halfway through a shower). It is also great to be able to leave the camera view up when the baby is sick. From my experience it is impossible to open the door and peek in on a baby without causing a smiling face to pop up and look back at you, regardless of the time of day or how badly a nap may be needed.

We have a small color camera with IR LEDs that switch on when it gets dark. The output is modulated on to a TV channel we're not using. I haven't set up any sort of web access because we almost never leave the house these days. This setup gives an excellent image we can check from any TV in the house.

Re:Don't do it!

[freedom_india]

I agree with parent post. Children are an incredible bundle of fun, joy and ecstasy. instead of watching the stupid cable, having fun with a child is more productive and much more fun. After seeing my sister having fun with her first-born, me & my wife too decided to have a kid.

Iam expecting my child in November and am eagerly awaiting the bundle of joy.

Do it!

[John Whorfin]

Not to check on the babysitter... but to check on the baby.

Seriously. Put a webcam on (above) the crib, preferrably one with low light capabilities.

I thought about doing this with my kid because there's so many times you want to go in and check on them and you wind up waking the little bugger up.

Also, it's good to know they're crying because they're just pissed you're not comming versus crying because their blankie is all twisted up around their neck or something.

Lame! Wrong Focus

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of wasting your time on high tech toys to spy on whomever (babysitter?), spend that time getting a babysitter you can trust. Take the time to interview, check references, etc. If you end up hiring someone you feel you have to "monitor" then you've hired the wrong person to begin with!

Also, short of hiring the "wrong person", accidents do happen, however, as a parent, I've found that kids have a much longer MTBF than any of my techno-toys! They fall (sometimes get dropped), get up and keep going, much to our surprise.

So put your focus in the right place!

Re:Don't do it!

[mrbcs]

"the reasons for choosing to have them in the first place are almost always centered around the parent rather than the child."

Agreed.

It is totally YOUR business to have kids or not. I was replying to the parent who sounded very disturbed at the thought of raising kids. I feel for him and his spouse. (That's where the selfishness came in.) If he "got her pregnant", IMHO, be a man and step up. Be the best husband you can be and support your wife. Once he see's his child his views may very well change. It's one of those things that's impossible to decribe without actually doing it. To hear a baby call you daddy or come over and give you a hug can be pretty special.

It is a big committment to raise kids and not all people want to or are up to it. I repect that and people shouldn't be giving you a hard time. God knows there are enough unwanted kids out there as it is.

It's often sad to see how many people "think they know best" and try and meddle in other peoples lives. You have your life, I have mine, and we are free to do whatever we want with it. It's really nobody else's business.. (though I do understand an eager grand-parent to be) ;-)

A parent a well

[pesky25]

I suggest using a the standard baby monitor with the two receivers and one base unit. If yu want to go more than that, an infared web camera servered over you home network via apache whould be the way to go. The audio monitor is addicting enough, the video can get maddening so I've heard.

The advantage of a web server is you can view it from work and/or the house next store.

The audio monitors are enough, stick with them is my advice.

Re:Don't do it!

[Ansonmont]

Congratulations, I think the MOST selfless thing is to recognize that you don't want children and then not have them. Having a child "just because there was nothing else to do" is incredibly selfish. However, if by accident, you do become a parent, you HAVE to give as much as possible to your child, or risk life-long problems for them (and for you, too).

Father of 5 - My Advice for You

[bigdaddycoffey]

I qualify as an experienced father and as a geek: Father of 5 happy, successful, well adjusted kids ages 7 to 19. 20 years of marriage to the same wonderful sexy lady. As to my geek qualifications: I was an expert on Gopher, created the newsgroup sci.polymers (and wrote the FAQ), installed Mosaic on the company internet computer (without root priv's) and was surfing the web via an x-terminal in 1992 even though our IT department didn't know how to do it themselves. I was also a Vax System Manager (it doesn't get much geekier than that). 1. Hire a baby sitter you trust and pay them well as others have suggested. Best place to get them is by being a volunteer in your local church youth group - help them set up a cool web page or something - volunteer your house for a lan HALO party - you'll be so much cooler than their parents that they'll baby sit for free. 2. Audio monitors are great - especially to let you sit outside and visit with the neighbors while the rugrat is sleeping. Video is overkill. 3. Video monitoring for the house might be cool for other reasons - but not for baby. 4. Schedule a date night with your spouse at least once a month. Spend some quality adult time at least once a week. 5. Put the kid in a stroller and walk into the sun. It forces them to close their eyes and they go to sleep. Meanwhile you get exercies and talk time with your spouse and/or friends. 6. When they get older put them in a bicycle kid seat and go for a ride. This gives your spouse a much needed rest, exercise for you, and the kids love it. 7. Your life will change - this is normal - just enjoy the ride - don't fight it. 8. The first 6 months of the baby's life are extremely stressful - it gets better, trust me. 9. You and your spouse should take the time to write down the basic principles that will guide your life and discipline your child. Instead of rules (don't run in the house) teach principles (respect the rights and property of others) so that they can apply the principles in new situations. Otherwise you'll get a cocky 12 year old saying, "you didn't tell me I couldn't run in the funeral home." Good sources for principles include the 10 commandments, the boy scout code, etc. Here are the ones I use. Our entire family lives by these. My kids are empowered to correct me if they notice that I'm not following a principle (but they need to correct with respect). 1. Honor God, Honor your parents 2. People are more important than things. (this is handy when they accidentally trash your stuff). 2b. Assume people are acting with good intentions - be slow to anger, quick to forgive. 3. Actions have consequences (and I'll let you suffer as long as it doesn't do permanent damage) 4. Respect everyone, and respect their stuff too. 5. Some people are bad - thus - you can respect strangers without trusting them or doing what they say. And if you do a good job raising them you can safely tell them around age 10 or so 6. Trust your gut - if it feels wrong it probably is.... "run away, run away" 7. Never criticize people for things that they can't change. Your kids will mimic your words and your actions. You know you've done a good job when you hear them use your principles when they talk to their friends.

Our solution

[skinfitz]

...is quite common - it's called simply a "Helpdesk".

We use it to deal with questions from mental ages up until, oh, around three yeas old.

Axis camera server

[moggie_xev]

I like practically all of axis's equipment and they are not hideously priced on ebay

There is too much stupid joking lately.

[Futurepower(R)]

There is too much stupid joking lately. Look at the beginning of most stories. Maybe 5 or 10 people are making adolescent jokes. Not only do they join every story to act like adolescents, they act like socially-challenged adolescents.

High-tech security is a valuable subject, no matter what is being monitored. Someone asks an interesting question, and a few immature people attack the author of the question!

I came here hoping that someone else had already done the engineering, and I could learn from that, and a few people waste my time.

--
Bush: Borrowing money to give to the rich.

Re:There is too much stupid joking lately.

[kisielk]

There is too much stupid complaining lately... why not just set the "Funny" mod to be -5 or something if you don't want to read humorous posts?

Re:There is too much stupid joking lately.

[Anonymous Coward]

and a few people waste my time.

Be sure to ask for your money back.

Re:There is too much stupid joking lately.

[Anonymous Coward]

"they act like socially-challenged adolescents."

And, like, you are acting like some kind of poopy head, y'know?

Re:There is too much stupid joking lately.

[stupid_is]

I came here hoping that someone else had already done the engineering, and I could learn from that

Someone has, although it's in a nursery, not at home

Maybe we should just tell him he can't ..

[baggins2002]

Maybe we should just tell him he can't do that with a linux system.
It seems like everybody wants to tell him how to raise the kid instead of how to solve the technical problem
I was really interested in some answers to this.

Re:Don't do it!

[Octagon Most]

Interesting perspective. Of course if we didn't have babies there would be no human race. That's not to say that any one individual's decision will really make a difference. Just like an election will happen whether or not you vote. But there must be something ingrained in us that makes us not just have babies (that could be explained away in physical terms) but raise them. There are obviously many reasons that we desire babies and go through incredible effort and sacrifice to raise them, even if it is not easy to articulate. You could also look at your question as a challenge to any altruistic activity at all. After all, why hold the door open for a stranger? There's no benefit to you. I'm sure that you don't act selfishly and without regard for the feelings of others in all aspects of your life, but you might not have a compelling explanation for why you would be motivated to do anything for anyone else if it has no benefit to you. Whatever is in us that drives that sense of altruistic behavior might be similar to what motivates us to raise children. Regardless, people ought to stop bothering you about having children. That's obnoxious.

Dogs and Babies

[SeanDuggan]

Just... be careful about keeping dogs and babies in the same house when they're not being observed. For whatever reason, a lot of dogs have a tendency to gnaw on heads. I personally don't understand it, although I've had dog owners tell me it's everything from a way of showing affection to a domination ritual. For the dog owner, it's not that much of a problem because the heads are big enough that the dog can't exert much jaw power, not to mention that the average dog owner is able to dissuade the dog if the head gnawing is painful. (I know some who continue the practice even as their dog gets larger, protecting their heads with heavy blankets and the like.) Anyhow, the average young baby still has a small, relatively soft skull and has limitted mobility. Head gnawing is bad at that age. *sigh* I remember reading an article talking about it, but I'm having trouble finding a cite right now. Eh, anyhow...

As for baby monitoring, my family never had a baby monitor while I was growing up, but then again, my mother was a housemom. While in the house, she could hear us crying, and if she was going to be out of earshot (in the basement doing laundry or outside), she'd take us with her.

The Full Feature Set

[Beautyon]

And if there's anything wrong, you can ssh in.

And much much later, you can sssssshhhhhhhhhhh them up when they bawl.

You can ping them when they are naughty.

If you are feeling gentle, you use tsh.

When you need REAL discipline, you use bash.

Re:The Full Feature Set

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude,
I was about to quit this thread until you reminded
me why /. is so cool. Thanks! MM

Mini-review Mobi video monitor system

[swb]

Like you, I was looking for a monitoring system better than the usual 49 Mhz analog domestic-problem broadcast units out there (a 2.4Ghz DSS phone is $50, a 49Mhz analog baby monitor is $50 -- what's wrong with this picture?).

I looked and looked for DSS monitors in *any* band and couldn't find them. They're all analog (easy eavesdropping) for some reason, but you can get them in all the mobile phone bands.

I ended up buying a Mobi video monitor from SmartHome.com. It's 2.4Ghz analog, but has audio + color video.

The camera has an IR LED array and can be set to "night" mode and does a very good job of illuminating a crib or bassinette in even total darkness. The camera lens swivels up and down and is a fixed-focus lens that provides a surprisingly good image. The unit includes a mounting system with 2 brackets.

The receiver uses a tiny LCD video display (2.5" diagnoal) that's visible in most lighting situations; a 4-5 step contrast adjustment is available. The receiver has an AV out cable (via 4-conductor mini-headphone jack) that breaks out into L/R and composite video (external video looks really good on my 42" TV). The receiver also has a "level" setting that disables the LCD display until a sound from the camera goes above the approximate setting of "LEVEL". Audio is maintained during this no-video-display monitoring. Reception is decent in my 2000 sq ft, 2 level house (I have no Wifi).

Both units can run on 4 AAs or through brick-type wall adapters which are included for both units. I had a spare Radio Shaft universal adapter I use with the camera, and the plug was a tight fit in the space provided. The units can be switched between 3 different channels.

Now the downsides:

The camera's lens swivels up and down, but not side to side. Means it must be mounted "dead on" with the crib. I ended up mounting a post to the crib to give the camera sufficient height to show the baby's face, as well as to keep the camera dead-on straight with the crib. I attached the other mounting bracket to a small peice of plywood and bolted that to a small sping clamp for mounting to the basinette. Ugly, but functional.

The switch for the camera is a tiny DIP switch on the bottom (OFF/ON/NIGHT) -- ideally it would be a front-panel ON/OFF with night mode automatically enabled via adjustable photo sensor. An audio sensor that turns on the transmitter might have been a good low-power solution as well -- don't transmit anything unless there's noise.

Reception isn't perfect, and the farther you go the more likely you are to experience jumps in the picture and noise -- it is analog, afterall. Overall it's pretty good.

Battery power on the receiver is limited if you keep the LCD display on. (I found video monitoring easier than audio monitoring -- no room noise, and a better cue as to whether baby is actually awake or not). If you planned on using both units without their PSUs, consider investing in 16 NiMH cells and enough chargers to keep a set constantly under charge.

I have some small concerns about the AC adapter cord. I have mine tie-wrapped to mounts on the back of my crub mount, and high enough that it shouldn't be reachable until the child is maybe 18 months. Any lower and I'd worry about an AC adapter getting put in a mouth.

Right now (baby is 4 weeks on 10/6) it's really of limited value. We have the basinette in our bedroom, so any noise the baby makes we can hear right away. I will flick on the monitor if the baby makes unusual noises just to see, but about 19 times out of 20, we're picking him up for food/change/comfort in about 2 minutes anyway.

I think it will be of more value when the baby is older and sleeps in its crib in another room regularly. I plan to connect the monitor to our bedroom TV (larger picture, etc) and the camera will be fixed in the crib.

Remote lights

[YoungHack]

I don't do any monitoring, and haven't except when I needed to do work in the garage where I wouldn't hear a cry.

I have found remote control lighting to be of great value however. You won't need it for an infant, but you may value it with a toddler.

My daughter is 3 years now. She is somewhat afraid of the dark (as I was at that age). So I use the remote light, which can be dimmed and I close her door. After a while, when she is asleep, I can silently turn off the light without entering her room and waking her.

She also has a tendancy to wake around 5am quite afraid of the dark. I don't even have to get out of bed--I keep a remote next to my pillow. I just turn on her light and dim it some, and she calms down quickly.

My wife is disabled, and uses the lights to get my attention when we are on opposite ends of the house. I know a lot of people use bells, but we've found the lights work quite nicely. They were also very helpful before she had enough arm strength to reach a light switch.

And yes, I did buy my lights from the most evil of Internet companies, x10.com. I recently discovered that Radio Shack sells rebranded components that are compatible, which is handy when you need another lamp module.

Re:Remote lights

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the above.
Add to this the fact that most baby monitoring devices emit fairly strong radiation - might not affect adults, but I'm not sure I want my baby exposed to all those radio waves - if they can mess with other electronics, I don't want to know what they can do to a young ( and poorly protected - a baby's head is essentially still "open" ) brain...

Back to the issue at hand...

[bonaman_24]

It seems the whole reason for the posting was either the author doesn't trust the babysitter or is worried about the baby. If you watch enough abusive babysitters on tv or with personal experience, you would be anxious too. Additionally...don't come down on parents that want to get out once in a while. It is necessary for the health of the relationship to let your spouse know that you are more than parents to each other. Sitting on the couch gets old...

Go with intuition instead

[Halmos]

The baby monitor and all the high tech crap will come between the mother and the baby's natural connection. My wife always heard the baby before any audio was discernable on the monitor. We ditched it, and all was well.

An actual serious answer

[Anonymous Coward]

As (realatively) new parents, my husband and I have tried a few things, depending on the intent. First, a simple webcam pointing at the crib and/or typical play area can help keep us in touch while we're at work - NOT, as others have implied, to keep an eye on the babysitter (who is my mother, and therefore I trust her completely), but simply to see what's going on. It helps us stay involved ("I saw you helping Grandma cook. What did you make? Were the cookies good?")

But our second child had a stop-breathing incident in the hospital right after he was born (turned out to be nothing major, thank goodness) but we were very concerned about SIDS there for a while. We found a baby monitor that had a motion-alarm that was sensitive enough to detect breathing - 20 seconds of no motion detected & the alarm sounded. An average of about 2-3 false alarms a week where the pads had slipped, etc, but very comforting right after the official hospital-grade apnea monitor came off.

Slightly OT: Technology and Pr0n

[hndrcks]

Not to be glib (well, maybe just a little glib), but it is generally accepted that all technological improvements (beginning with pottery) are first taken up and exploited in the pursuit of 'prurient interest'. Examples include photography, motion pictures, videotape, ecommerce, and ... webcams. Perhaps the technology you seek is already perfected - it's just going to cost you $9.95 / minute to find out how.

Re:Slightly OT: Technology and Pr0n

[rjhall]

Am I the only person that read that as gee-lib (as in the libraries) rather than glib?
time to take time off...

Re:Slightly OT: Technology and Pr0n

[Eideewt]

Nope, you're not.

babies are the best

[cworth]

you'll want to get these two books. I have a two year old.

Babywise--- very good book on getting a baby on a schedule etc.

The Happiest Baby on the block--- how to deal with colic and comforting the baby.

also some other tidbits I've picked up along the way.

Get the folks at the hospital/wherever to show you how to swaddle the baby. newborns are used to being in a tight space and don't have control of their arms/legs so they'll hit and kick themselves while sleeping and wake themselves up.

1/2 hour before the baby gets shots. give them an appropriate amount of tylenol or ibuprophen(verify with doc on this) helps them get over the shot faster and the ibuprophen minimizes swelling tenderness at injection site.

also ibuprophen works best on teething pain.

and when the baby is ready for baby jar food, get it used to eating at room temp. Big convenience with this one.

and lastly.

when the baby is on table food. two things ours really likes are the quaker oats cereal bars, and waffles(they have a lot more vitamins etc than the pancakes.

congrats and enjoy. it is a wonderful ride.

Re:babies are the best

[Fishead]

Babiewise is awesome!

We learned a lot from Babywise, but also did our own thing. Best idea we came up with is light levels. During the day, kid sleeps in a light room, and during night, kid sleeps in dark room. When kid wakes up at night, and needs food, feed kid but keep the room DARK!!! Pretty soon, kid gets more used to sleeping during night. Our first was sleeping most of the night by the time he was 2 months old. Our second is only a week old, so we don't have her trained yet.

Babies are great, but when they get older and more interractive, they are even MORE fun. When I come home from work I like to sneak in and when I am close I yell my son's name in a deep loud voice. His reaction is that he throws anything in his hands, screams, and runs across the room to give me a hug. Very heart warming.

Once they are a bit older, Mythtv becomes a MUST. The ability to have a large archive of instantly available childrens shows with auto commercial skipping becomes pretty useful.

Re:babies are the best

[ted_the_canuck]

The methods metioned in "babywise" have been linked to dehydration and failure to thrive. New parents would be advised to examine current research to determine if this method of parenting is right for them. We took a somewhat different attitude, and picked ours up when they cried, and fed 'em when they seemed hungry. This worked for us, but of course the temperment of babies varies greatly, and your milage may vary. I agree that swaddling works well. The jar baby food works well for being out, but you can also just use the blender to mash up whatever you're cooking for the kid. They like bland stuff initially, but later they will eat more strongly flavored stuff.

Re:babies are the best

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a mouli (food mill) to prepare home-cooked food (steamed fruit+veg works well) is quite a good alternative to jars. There are plenty of things everyone can eat (e.g. lentil dal, soup [no added salt]) which saves preparing things separately.

If you want an alternative to giving your baby drugs, I found that giving something good to bite on usually works best on teething pain (maybe a cold damp facecloth), and most good homoeopaths can offer alternatives to vaccinations. Not all crying is pain - it's the only way they have to communicate at first - before long you'll recognise differences.

The Ergo carrier is a *really* great way to carry a baby/toddler around (including when asleep) - very highly recommended - much easier than a stroller for e.g. shops.

Cloth nappies are much less work than many people imagine and are really very much better than ones of 20 years ago. e.g. Growing Greens, Motherease, Bummis, in .uk Cotton Bottoms, Lollipop, and plenty of others. Much cheaper than stinking disposables in the bin until collection day. In .uk try freerangekids for carriers and nappies etc.

If they're with you, you don't have to worry about who's looking after them...

Everyone you ask will give different advice - you don't have to take any of it - just do what you feel's right and trust your instincts.

Re:babies are the best

[cworth]

>>>>The methods metioned in "babywise" have been linked to dehydration and failure to thrive. New parents would be advised to examine current research to determine if this method of parenting is right for them. We took a somewhat

Really? My wife breast fed so I don't know how that affects dehydration/thriving vs. babywise potential problems.

our take home message from the book was realy set a shedule for sleeping and stick with it. Which we don't particularly stick to on occassion.

Yesterday was the one of the first days she didn't take a nap. I put her down, but she spent one hour talking to her animals in the room and jumping in the crib. So daddy got her out of bed and she helped me put some shelves together.

she helped daddy squirt the glue and handed daddy the small screws as opposed to the long screws. She's the smartest baby in the world :)

Re:babies are the best

[DGregory]

The problem with Babywise and breastfeeding is that breastfeeding isn't something that can be put on a schedule. You try to put it on a schedule, and you end up with a hungry baby and a too-low supply, and end up having to switch to formula.

Re:babies are the best

[cworth]

Good point. I should have clarified that the scheduling we did WRT babywise was for sleep. The baby girl got fed when she was hungry. and seeing how she started walking at 9 months, she's thriving just fine. :)

If you have the money...

[duplo1]

...consider investing in something like the PelcoNet NET350, which supports dual mpeg4 as well as bi-directional audio streamed over ethernet. Coupled with a decent dome camera that supports full PTZ(Pan, Tilt, Zoom) controls, a microphone and speakers, you'll have the complete, latest-and-greatest in surveillance technology setup.

Don't forget to hook up the alarm, which should be programmed to go off upon detecting motion in the crib.

To access the video/audio stream, simply form a VPN connection to your home network, type in the IP address of the Net350 (or similar product)and watch away. You even have the added benefit of having the ability to speak to the baby, provided you have a decent mic on your laptop.

The entire setup will set you back a couple grand, but it should be the ultimate setup for geeks. I wired an entire college campus with a network of these things a few years back - really quite impressive, and it should stream just fine over a moderately fast DSL connection. Do however check up on the legality of the bi-directional audio capability. Last time I checked, it wasn't exactly legal in the US.

Canon VB-C10 is the best, but expensive...

[patniemeyer]

I've had the Canon VB-C10 point/tilt/zoom networked camera for over a year now and it is the best I've seen anywhere. The quality of the image and zoom capability means that I can check out my whole living room or zoom in on individual fish in my aquarium.

It has an embedded linux system that serves up an applet viewer, so you can use any web browser to connect to it... it's reasonably fast and works well. On my local network it runs 30fps easily.

It's a bit expensive, but I think it's worth it for the peace of mind when travelling, etc.

Pat Niemeyer

Axis

[PsychoStork]

I don't think it's a good idea to monitor your baby sitter, and you'll be too tired to use a video monitor on your child. However, relatives and friends will probably want to take a look every once in a while. When our first son was born, we set up a web cam (Axis 2100) sent a link out to friends and family. I also had it archive a jpeg every minute and made a stop motion video out of his first few months of life. You can see it here: http://krider.org/tmp/2002-07.rm

Baby motion sensor

[Adam9]

My sister has something like this.

It monitors the baby's movement (even breathing while sleeping). If there's no movement for 20 seconds, it'll sound an alarm. That could provide some peace of mind.

Re:Baby motion sensor

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how our ancestors contended with raising children prior to video survelliance? Perhaps our children our more frail nowadays and require all this added attention.

Re:Baby motion sensor

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, we have the AngelCare movement & sound monitor. Very damn good to be honest. Peace of mind for not much money. Battery backup in case of powerloss, remote with 2 frequencies (lucky for that someone else has one around here too it seems, they seem to use channel B :))

One thing though, you might not want it on while sleeping. Babies tend to make noises while sleeping and dreaming and can wake you anyway. Having the baby in the next room is great. We can hear the alarm with the doors open, but dont get woken by the baby's little mid sleep cries.

Get yourself a headset for the TV/PC too.. you can see the lights on the monitor go off, but you can still watch tv/play games on the PC etc :)

Re:Baby motion sensor

[Ulven]

My parents bought one of those when I was born. It was a few decades ago, so presumably less advanced. It didn't monitor breathing, only movement.

They got rid of it after a few days as I could go for longer than 20 seconds (or whatever the time was) without moving. The moment of dread when the alarm went off got too much for them.

Hey, I'm still alive.

Re:Baby motion sensor

[Software]

In 1999, I asked my son's neonatologist about one of these devices. He said that they didn't improve the mortality rate. Basically, the alarm was either false -- and there were a LOT of them, possibly enough to affect your sanity -- or (worst case) let you know that your baby was already dead.

I did some web research on SIDS. It's a diagnosis of exclusion, which means that the pathologist can't figure out what the hell happened, so he calls it SIDS. One theory, that I came to agree with, was that SIDS was caused by rebreathed carbon dioxide. The air doesn't circulate well enough around the child, so the carbon dioxide level in the child's blood goes up and up. What to do about it? For my child, I bought a crib with slats on all sides (no solid ends), a well-fitting mattress with a well-fitting sheet, and put the kid in there with nothing else (except clothing). No toys, blankets, bumper guards, NOTHING. Of course, put the child on his back. Do these measures work? For my sample size (3), they worked.

Re:Baby motion sensor

[CharlieHedlin]

This sounds rediculous for most parrents, but I have a friend whos daughter would would stop breathing do to some condition.

They had to sleep in shifts to monitor her. It was a regular occurance and a slap on the back would allow her to start breathing.

This wouldn't allow them to stop sleeping in shifts, but it would have provided a little comfort. (would probably want something a little better than consumer grade though).

Re:Baby motion sensor

[futuresheep]

Your advice is EXACTLY what is given at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle now. Infants do not need any of the cutsey bed items that are all over the market. They don't know what a pillow or a blanket is, and will be just fine sleeping in warm clothing. The CO2 issue is relavant since infants do not expel or inhale air that's more than a few inches beyond their faces. Crib bumpers and baby comforters are a big nono.

Apnea monitoring and SIDS

[scarhill]

It may give you peace of mind, but keep in mind that there's no evidence that apnea monitoring can prevent SIDS.

Here are the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendations.

Forgot the pretty geek toys...

[hoofie]

You can forget all of these pretty geek toys.

The best thing you can buy is a combined baby monitor/breathing alarm. I bought one the day my daughter was born and it paid for itself in no time, as it meant my wife and could sleep (when my daughter let us) without waking up to check on her every 10 mins. Try this company. Ok, its not a professional monitor, but it just might be the best money you have ever spent.

You will be too knackered anyway to so much as look at a computer, and your wife will take one look at your heath-robinson lash-up and demand you go and buy something that actually works.

My friend is an RF engineer

[proggoddess]

and the closest he's come to geeking out is to leave the store-bought receiver upstairs for his wife. He can work down in the basement and listen to the baby monitor with his own RF equipment.

As a software engineer, I know better than to muck with Proggoddess 2.0 while her system is rebooting. :)

For us, the storebought audio-only monitor was good enough. It is so sensitive, it can pick up the birds and crickets chirping outside when the windows are closed. We pretty much stopped using it after the 3rd month as our little screaming alarm clock is loud enough now at 6 months.

The Way I would do it

[poffy74]

I would use a multi tiered approach which is taken from other peoples past experiences. In house Video/Audio Monitoring: Go to a Security store (alarms etc) and get the night camera with sound. You then get the module that takes the video/audio signal and pumps it into your Cable system in your house. Whenever you are in another room you can then switch to channel 123(or whatever) and check on the kids. A friend with twins had this and loved it. Any TV in the house could be used as a monitor and it was downright funny when the boy twin learned to climb out of his crib and you could see him climbing on everything. Viewing. Then you run this to your favorite encoder card with your favorit software on your computer. I personally wouldn't want full video when I was away however, a still show emailed to my cell phone every 1/2 hour/hour would be nice to make sure the house was still standing. That can be done easily with scripting or software products that are out there. You could also timelapse at a shorter interval or record the time for later review. Hope that gives some easy ideas to do what you want to do. DRaiNO -- I've put the CyberPlumber out of business

Re:Don't do it!

[LetterJ]

I also didn't specify, but my challenge to the interrogation came from numerous comments that people not only thought I was doing the wrong thing, but that my (and my wife's) decision to enjoy our life together was wickedly selfish. This led me to ask, if NOT having kids is selfish (as asserted by my challengers), and that's a bad thing, while having kids is a good thing, do these people think that having kids is selfless? That questioning led to my little experiment.

I'm definitely not criticizing anyone for thoughtfully becoming a parent. I agree with your general approach. If, by some failure of modern medicine, we do end up with a child, I will not hesitate to love that child, provide for and parent that child.

Ask John Ashcroft

[shonagon53]

Maybe Mr Ashcroft knows how to fix this. The man is watching everything.

agreed.

[RMH101]

i think a good audio monitor by itself's fine: one with a noise gate on it so you don't hear every rustle - just when (s)he's crying or trying to attract your attention.
i've had a play with wireless cameras and there's two problems: if they don't work in the dark, they're of zero use (you won't be putting them to sleep in a well lit room: or if you are, you won't be doing it for long!) and you *will* be freaked out by the lack of movement.
if you fancy playing, get an old machine and hook up a cheap webcam and run apache on it. network it to your lan and you can try it out and probably learn a bit. you'll probably find you don't need it - although this approach would have the benefit that you could stream it to the web during the day and get baby and childminder/mum to wave at you whilst you're at work.

whats your wife think....

[mary_will_grow]

... of your plans to spy on your babysitter "...uhh.. babysitting"

Relax?

[12357bd]

A lot of posts say: "Relax, take-it easy",
It seems you are going to be inevitably nervous!
Best wishes :)

Cometeye

[Badfysh]

Just to *actually answer the question*, something like Cometeye might be what you are looking for. http://www.cometeye.com/

made me laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all even though it is your house you do not have the legal right to tape you babysitter without her explisit content. If she catches you she can sue you and there is no judge who is going to rule in your favour. The second thing is that in order for you be able to receive video and sound on your cell you will need quite a bit more upload speed than your current dsl connection provides and then your phone would need to be able to download a lot faster than current technology in the US allows. Sorry bud but you're out of luck in this venture. You might want to think about some therapy though. That should help with the trust problem.

time honored soloution

[BlindRobin]

http://www.iapa.org/ (International Au Pair Association)

D-LINK DCS-900

[WindBourne]

Actually, few real child development have little against high tech help. A physical therapist who used to strip and has messed up children is not where I would get advice from.

I use the dcs-900 camera. We also use sound via a 900 MHz monitor (Sound is really what I want). While I have been involved with wifi for years (as a start-up company doing wifi), I already had the room wired for networking. Besides, I prefer NOT having peeping toms be able to look in on the camera.

Why not just...

[Anonymous Coward]

... hire a babysitter you can trust?

Sheesh.

dosent everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

so cant you just put a sip video phone hanging on the celing abouve the crib? Dosent every /. geek have an * box at home filtering telemarketers, and doing your voicemail from PTSN interfaces? So you can have your voicemail fwd to work email? based on time of day? or just forward to your work sip phone so you can answer it at work?

I like good jokes.

[Futurepower(R)]

I'm not against jokes, only against immature jokes.

--
Before, Saddam was killing. Now, the U.S. Gov. is killing and destabilizing, and you pay. Improvement?

Re:I like good jokes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, that's the way the moderation system works.
If "bad" jokes get moderated you're going to see them.

Sense of humor is not something that can be categorized, plus the moderation system gives the moderators the power to decide for you what's funny and what's not funny. You don't like their choices? Meta-moderate more often, and be sure to label NOT FAIR all those jokes you don't find funny.

Babies can make excellent monitoring devices

[SuperKendall]

The only trouble is they are rather uncontrollable. When a camera is trapped to the head, the baby will often vary his/her view so you might want some sort of panning mechanism.

The only really good place to hide the battery is of course - the diaper. Believe me you'll have trouble reusing those later! You might want to go with disposables.

Babies, like Daleks, are generaly thwarted by stairs until older so be careful to select a baby with the right level of mobility for the monitoring mission you have in mind.

If you have a particular mark you want monitored try spearning a little strained peas in an inconspicious place so the baby is prone to follow them.

Good luck!

Go with the old stuff

[shpoffo]

Don't buy new synthetic fabrics and freshly paint a room in anticipation for your baby. The chemicals off-gassed by new polymers has been suggested to be linked with SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). The notion is that those chemcials are too much for the infant's system to handle.

I know this is not related to baby monitoring systems overtly - but part of the reason baby monitoring systems were invented is because of SIDS. Several posters above have even commented about how low-res LCDs may fool one into believing thier baby is not moving/breathing. Why would a baby stop breathing? Because of SIDS.

At this time of writing this I could only dig up this link to support the topic, but I know there are more properp journals. I think one of the researchers is named Richardson. For the record, crib-death was not so historically common across all demographics. it used to be associated mainly with the poor. What's the difference today? Plastics.

.
-sphoffo

Re: High Tech Baby Monitoring?

[thoellri]

Long time ago I picked up a VEO Observer wireless camera (see http://www.veo.com/ ). I wrote a simple program to extract frames from the camera on a regular basis (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000100.h tml ) and also wrote a minimal motion detector in perl (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000114.h tml ) to only capture "interesting" frames. Now that I've decoded the VEO TCP/IP protocol (see http://www.kahunaburger.com/blog/archives/000157.h tml ), I can do all this on my FreeBSD box.

Be careful that you don't get monitored yourself..

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of replies indicate for you to use an audio monitor. (That's what I did, nothing more, worked out well.)

Beware, though, that these are broadcasting your house audio for a couple blocks in each direction, and anyone with a scanner can pick it up. With the automatic level control built into these, when it's really quiet, the gain gets cranked up and the baby monitor can broadcast audio from several rooms away if the doors are open.

The cheap ones use 49 MHz analog FM. I don't know if there are more sophisticated ones that use a modulation scheme more difficult to intercept, like the spread-spectrum scheme some cordless phones use. In any case, keep this in mind!

Audio, not video

[cheezit]

Infants communicate through sound. Clear, compressed audio is the only important thing. As a new parent you will develop an awareness of your baby's normal sounds and cries etc.

I went through this same process of trying to create a IR-capable video setup; turned out we had twins, I never finished it, but by the time they were a week old I realized I didn't need it.

By the time your kids can do stuff you want to see, you can *hear* what they are doing. Then they talk, and they tell you. Then they get old enough to try to hide stuff from you, at which point you should be thinking about privacy anyway.

Now here's the unfortunate part---baby audio monitors absolutely suck.

How many nay-sayers have kids?!

[radar_uk]

I can say from personal experience that having a video system in the rooms of our two children (4 & 1 yrs) has been extremely informative and helpful to parenting.

We have a simple "Summer's Eve" setup (IR cams, three channel B&W rcvr). Ran us a total of $150 with two cameras but it was the cheapest option I could find given my limited expertise and the need for a reliable system (didn't want to be rebooting etc at 1 AM). Quality is good enough (sleep, awake, playing around, reading), but not that high.

For the nay-sayers I will say that the camera profoundly helped my wife and I understand our son (and later our daughter). We learned what kind of behavior accompanies what kind of cries and how best to respond to it (or not). Now that he's older, we can see what he's doing in his room when we put him to bed. We learned that sleeping isn't an immediate response to the door closing.

Monitoring of any kind should be taken for what it is: augmentation of natural senses. It helps, but should not replace, good parental instincts (which seem to be something any /.er can pick up if you read the posts from posters w/out children...).

Want cheap, go Summer's Eve. You won't fool the babysitter though. The cameras are pretty big and the range is limited.

Re:Don't (and here's why)

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, related to another reply to this post, it will be harder to attract quality babysitters if you have a really draconian-seeming monitoring system. You're better off with minimal monitoring and maximal babysitter trust - friends' children, neighbor children, kids you have your own relationship with, those are the best.

Personally, when I was growing up, I was probably better liked by my peers' parents than my peers themselves. I socialized with my parents' friends at their dinner parties. At one point, when my parents had gone out for the night and left me and my older brother with a babysitter, they came home to our stories about the babysitter's obnoxious and immature behavior, and decided to start paying us to babysit ourselves instead of paying some punk kid they couldn't trust, and we did that until we were old enough not to have needed a babysitter anyway.

In short, I was exactly the kind of kid that people wanted to babysit for them. But I would've thought twice about babysitting for somebody who had really extensive monitoring in their home.. it just would have made me uneasy, like they didn't really trust me. I might have turned them down just based on that (of course, I probably wouldn't have said it was because of that).

So I agree with my sibling-poster: find a babysitter you trust, pay them well, make them part of your family, and don't worry about the high tech monitoring. Maybe just an audio monitor in the baby's room, or maybe a panic button on a computer that'll page your phone and open up a two-way text messaging session or something. But don't make the babysitter feel watched by Big Brother - it'll do you more harm than good.

Being CF is fine, just don't be a jerk

[LookSharp]

My wife and I have been married for 8 years, and we were enjoying a CF (Child Free for the uninitiated) lifestyle for 6 of those, until the goalie was asleep in the goal and let one in. ;)

We always knew we wanted to be parents "when the time was right," and it took a hiccup of nature to convince us this was the right time. My son is 18 months old, an absolute gem, and my wife is expecting out second (and likely last) child.

I preface with this background because during the time before having children, my wife fell in with some very angry, selfish people that populate Internet message boards. These people's sole purpose was to rant about filthy, dirty "crotch fruits" and how society's child fetish causes them so much grief.

To some degree, I agree with them. Having children is not for everyone in the same way that going to college is not for everyone, being a computer geek is not for everyone, etc. My brother never wants children. My friend and his wife never want children (though she had to spend 5 years shopping OBs until she found one who would do a tubal ligation on a woman under 30). This is a prefectly reasonable point of view, and I definitely recommend enjoying your "selfish" time with your spouse. I doubt my wife and I would have as strong a relationship as we do if we would have had children immediately after getting married at 20.

What I do have a beef with is the scare tactics and rants coming up from the know-it-alls on the Brats Rant page, et al who think their point of view is the only one. Yeah it's freaking stupid for people to bring their child to Dave and Buster's at 12:30 am, or bring a toddler to see a 9:00pm PG-rated movie. Sensible people know that. But what you do is take all of the caring, nurturing parents who rear their children appropriately and lump them all is as "st00pid breeders."

I just wanted to take this opportunity to tell warn you about this mindset, and publicly ask the ranters to STFU. The reason you can't handle children is likely that you haven't stopped being children yourselves. I'm not trying to excuse the bad behavior of bad parents... most of the miserable people who should not have had children... but I do want to stop hearing about my choices are hurting your enjoyment of the planet. Your enjoyment of the planet ain't gonna last, but respectable children brought up to be respectable adults are the only hope we have to improve society over time.

Unless you've prefer us to all be "decanted" from our "bottles," raised to wait in line for our SOMA rations. *smirk*

Re:Don't do it!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't mind me asking, what's your reason for not having a child? Personally, I can't wait until I get some kids :) The stumbling block for me is not the desire to have kids but rather finding a girlfriend/life-long partner :(

I'm not saying having a child IS or IS NOT the right thing to do... all I'm asking is why you chose what you chose...

Thanks!

Get a Nanny or Au Pair

[mekkab]

Fuck that, I have no time for a child. Besides, they should be seen (when schedule permits; perhaps once a quarter?) and not heard.

Best to get a nanny to do all that horrible 'raising.' Yecch.

Re:Get a Nanny or Au Pair

[Ironica]

Fuck that, I have no time for a child. Besides, they should be seen (when schedule permits; perhaps once a quarter?) and not heard.

In that case, get a vasectomy *now* (unless you happen to belong to the /. minority and would need a tubal ligation).

It would be massively irresponsible for you to breed with this attitude. I love kids, I've always wanted kids, and I'm thrilled I have a kid now... but people who don't share such feelings have a responsibility to society to corral their gametes.

And, as such, your advice is useless to people who actually *want* children... move along to a conversation where you have more relevance.

(One of my best friends had a vasectomy earlier this year... I was kind of sad, because I think his kids would have been a kick and a half, but I admire him for taking that responsibility for his total lack of interest in breeding.)

Re:Get a Nanny or Au Pair

[mekkab]

Perhaps we should change your screen name to "Sarcastica?"

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

why hassle with your hangup why not answer him?

[Anonymous Coward]

If i recall the gentleman wasnt asking for opinions or sermonse or your own personal
1.hangups
2. rightous crusades
3. closed minded opinions etc......

here is a novel concept try answering his question.... first... then if yours so self absorbed that you feel your way is only way or best add your two cents at the end where they can be convienently ignored

im tired of idiots on forums who rant and rave (like i am right now) instead of answering some guys question..

he didnt ask how to live his life or what the best way is he asked how to do something specific...

by the way i felt same way and i didnt use a cell phone i used my laptop so i could be in my office and observe her.. i used an open source cam program that i just hitt (behind my firewall) on as specific port with my browser and bam could monitor my daughter while i worked...

every nut in the universe said i was insane to want to watch my daughter ...you can hear well enought cant you .... so if its so stupid why do they sell this crap at wallmart...

sorry i cant remember the name of the software used but remmeber this if you create a public access it is public not only you might access it... thats why i kept mine local and killed it once i didnt have to keep to close a tab

here is the only usefull reply i got

If it helps, you might wanna look for software which automates this process, obviously you'll grant that particular software access via your firewall for it to work.

Have a look at this

ER4S3R.
Hope That Helps.

____________________________________________
### Nobody believes the official spokesman, but everybody trusts an unidentified source ###

but i did finally prevail just took a while with google but its out there best of luck

and i heard rabbies shots will ward against forum fanatics....

Re:Don't do it!

[LookSharp]

Getting my wife pregnant is the WORST mistake I ever made.

I don't suppose you ever took the effort to consider your point of view, and both your wishes, before getting married? Or are you one of those idiots who "gave in" so your wife would quit whining about kids?

You didn't make a mistake, you're just an idiot. :)

cheap cam

[pruss]

I bought a 1.2ghz (no interference with wifi) pinhole camera on ebay together with a receiver that I then plug into a composite-to-firewire converter. Quality is low but it more or less does the job, except that it doesn't cover every corner of the room and we have a toddler. It needs good light. I could have instead opted for an IR cam instead for a little bit more. If I want to (say to monitor from a laptop), I can have the desktop the receiver is plugged into serve up the video online.

It cost me $45 for the camera/receiver, which is less than the video baby monitors they sell (except those come with little TV screens, but a lot of them are 2.4ghz which is not acceptable in my setting).

what is it with you people?

[chegosaurus]

why do you have to bring freaking linux into everything?

chips

[rootsrockrebel]

You could always look into getting one of those chips inplanted into your baby. Actually, what do /.er's think about this? If your baby was kidnapped, would you regret do this?

pctv + linux

[dindi]

cam solution
4x pctv or 1x something with 4 tuners (that way you also have 4xpip tv tuners to play with ...
or 1 pctv for TV +other inputs + a few webcams ...

a tip (that probably you know) :
check the webcam if it sees infra !
point it at yout TV remote (or whatever infra) and see if it sees the light ...

after all you can buy 100s of inra leds, to illuminate a (dark) room and still see it ....
(please note that most infra controls have a warning not to point it into eyes = make a research what infra does to your or babys' eyes) (I think nothing, but U know, do not sue me :)

streaming: an IPAQ with linux has mplayer, or even wince has streaming options....

Use an extra craddle next to your bed/desk/kitchen (for your IPAQ-to-USB) , and you do not wireless pollute your home ... (also USB is faster(??) than wifi ... you need power anyway, because an ipaq runs for 2 hours tops with my SMC wireless sucking webpages (with streaming I guess 1 hour tops)
(I would not put a wifi shit next to my baby ... ) - actually I am thinking of making a faraday cage/room as my new home's bedroom ... (walls wired to filter any/most radio freq)

** pctv : no matter what brand, I prefer bt848, it works fine and easy in linux

tuner advantage over webcam: usually faster encoding with separate sound inputs (you can save soundcard for telecom/whatever)

tip: did you know that an sblive can be used as 2 cards ? (2 front 2 rear speakers separately)

nah ... these came in mind ....

actually as soon as my house is complete, I am planning on a ligh gas blimp with a cam over the garden :) fixed to the floors with 3-4 wires ... :)

linux motion sensor: while not complete/perfect, an interesting software to play with is "motion"
while not good for motion detection alone (use an x10, that signals to linux, and works OK) it can capture some images when babisitter goes to places she should not (eg your home office)

Re:Don't do it!

[Anonymous Coward]

stumbling block for me is not the desire to have kids but rather finding a girlfriend/life-long partner

Well, having kids with some woman just to chain her to you for the rest of your life is certainly the wrong motivation. If it doesn't work out between you two, your life and the kids' lifes will be miserable because you'll still share a lot of responsibility.

By the way, I'm not the original poster, but I choose not to have children, too. That's because personally, I've never seen anyone who hasn't become a totally boring person after having kids. Their family instinct kicks in and all of a sudden, they're occupied with all this mundane family shit and how cute this or that is. It completely changes your life. You won't be able to devote as much of your time to develop yourself anymore and you won't be able to spend your money and other resources how you want. Basically, you'll become a drone who only lives to raise his children. And then, when you've put them through college and they're out of the house, you'll be old and totally drained. Your life will be over. As a reward, your children will visit you once every 2 years and put you in an old peoples' home.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I've never understood what makes people with creative and free minds have children. However, I've seen such people have them and kiss their freedom and creativity goodbye. Take care.

SIDS

[phorm]

With the exception of when a baby might roll over and accidentally suffocate or something similar - I would wonder what a parent might actually be able to do for a suffocating child. Not to say that an effort wouldn't be good, but it would be even more heartbreaking to find that not only has your child passed away due to some unknown defect/condition, but that you couldn't save him/her.

Visible cameras or warnings

[phorm]

In most of these cases, the camera is either visible (in which case it's not only a monitor but a deterrent), or a warning may be posted to effect of "security cameras present."

Perhaps posting such a sticker up would cover you, "this home monitored by closed-circuit security cameras."

Oh, and on the technical end, there are lots of programs for snapping a shot from your webcam, etc, and I manage to get decent resolution on my old Creative Webcam Go (there is a 'nix kernel module for it) as long as the light doesn't suck too badly.

X-10 wireless video

[Anonymous Coward]

Carefull if you decide to go the cheap route with your survelance of baby. You might not like it if people can monitor the inside of your house with your very own security cameras.
http://ibmgeek.shacknet.nu/projects/x-10 /wardrive/ wardrive.html

dosman

Parent

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it the parent's choice what they should do? If he wants to watch his baby 24/7 then let him. Everyone thinks he is "right" or "wrong" (read some Sartre, everyone thinks their decision is the "universe's" dicision.

Furthermore, comon! This is Slashdot! Where are all the geeks! Someone talk about really geeky spy-camera-linux-quantum-binary-chemical-open source -hacked software that they wrote!

veo observer

[way2trivial]

damn thing ROCKS! mines wired, cost $200, and only works with internet explorer...

I can watch it in house, and my mom can watch from north carolina, and other family & friends can watch from over seas!

newer models allow for ten streams, not sure if IE explorer is still a requirement..

it records video and takes stills for the viewer, has pan/tilt options, large frame sizes, in house we get a very good video in 640X480.. it's great..

Re:Don't do it!

[TimTurnip]

The whole maintenance of our species thing aside, I agree with you.

Re:Don't do it!

[LetterJ]

Tell you what. When world populations fall back to where they were 200 years ago, I'll take one for the team and have a couple of kids. Let me know when that happens.

My Solution

[drosoph]

Added a couple of IR Cams (No audio) from an EBay sell (they're almost always available, and decent quality - They claim color, but are mostly pink/blue colors ~65$ each). Put them through a 3-cam RF Modulator (~70$) so we can turn on the TV and see how the little one's are doing. Buy a cheap vid card (Winnov Videum, 3 inputs ~30$ on ebay) and some cheap webcam software (WebCam32 -- Not supported, but works fine) ... and you're up and running. Put a few passwords on things for the web stuff ... and don't monitor 24x7 for your own sake. But, if you hear a bump in the night, you can flick on the bedroom TV and see which one is up and if its worth going in to check on 'em. It's also a good trigger for "GET BACK IN BED!"

Absolute crap

[Anonymous Coward]

"Being there" for 24/7 is the best way to raise a sociopath. Your kid needs to spend some time outside of the maternal/paternal umbrella.

Maybe that's true for a teenager, but for 0 - 6 months, your kid does in fact need you there 24/7. The whole idea of separating baby from Mommy - different room, formula feeding, scheduled feeding, letting the baby "cry it out" instead of comforting it, daycare eight hours a day (say, who's raising your child anyway?) - is a 20th Century Western Middle Class aberration.

ZoneMinder

[Anonymous Coward]

I just stumbled across this on freshmeat a few days ago. http://www.zoneminder.com/

Welcome to ZoneMinder.com, home of ZoneMinder the top Linux based video camera security solution. ZoneMinder is intended for use in single or multi-camera video security applications, including theft prevention and child or family member or home monitoring and other care scenarios. It supports capture, analysis, recording, and monitoring of video data coming from one or more video or network cameras attached to a Linux system. It is suitable for both do-it-yourself and professional installations.

Feature List
- Runs on any Linux distribution!
- Supports video, USB and network cameras.
- Built on standard tools, C++, perl and php.
- Uses high performance MySQL database.
- High performance independent video capture and analysis daemons allowing high failure redundancy.
- Multiple Zones (Regions Of Interest) can be defined per camera. Each can have a different sensitivity or be ignored altogether.
- Large number of configuration options allowing maximum performance on any hardware.
- User friendly web interface allowing full control of system or cameras as well as live views and event replays.
- Supports live video in mpeg video, multi-part jpeg and stills formats.
- Support event replay in mpeg video, multi-part jpeg, stills and statisticss formats
- User defined filters allowing selection of any number of events by combination of characteristics in any order.
- Event notification by email or SMS including attached still images or video of specific events by filter.
- Automatic uploading of matching events to external FTP storage for archiving and data security.
- Includes bi-directional X10 (home automation protocol) integration allowing X10 signals to control when video is captured and for motion detection to trigger X10 devices.
- Highly partitioned design allow other hardware interfacing protocols to be added easily for support of alarm panels etc.
- Multiple users and user access levels
- Multi-language support with many languages already included
- Full control script support allowing most tasks to be automated or added to other applications.
- Prototype mobile/cellular phone access, enhanced interface coming soon

low tech can work

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with rolling your own is making sure
that whatever you *rely* on is safe to rely on.

For example, you could install your own web cam, audio, etc and pump it through your home network, you could attach it to a web server, etc. etc.

But consider one feature of the low tech baby monitors you can buy at babysrus - if the base station loses connectivity to your monitor, the monitor will emit a load uncomfortable noise to alert you to this. This can and does happen because of loss of power or being out of range.

Will your home-brewed solution also take this into account? Will it just silently fail?

My advice is to get the low tech baby monitor
and the el cheapo video monitor if it will give you peace of mind. It will be much easier to give instructions to whoever might be caring for your child.

Then go for whatever home brewed solutions you want - just be aware that you might not have designed for every last conceivable failure so have a back up with the low tech cheap stuff that has been tested in the lab and in thousands of homes.

Honestly, when your new arrival shows up the last thing you will likely have time for is configuring some fancy dyi solution - you will just want to plug in something and try to get a few minutes rest!!! Congratulations!

You're a tool. Lighten up.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are too many of you chai-sipping, turtleneck-wearing uptight neodorks around here. If you want more chin-stroking and less lightheartedness, to your specific standards, grab the Slashcode and roll your own snobatorium.

Good day, sir.

I SAID GOOD DAY!

I use 3 cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 3 cameras monitoring my daughter's room. Two are Lorex SG6060 low-light black and white cameras with infrared emitters, the other is a color wireless X10 thing. I have a supplemental IR light to brighten up the picture even more at night. We use the color camera for videotaping the room when it's well lit.

Despite all the negative comments I read here about monitoring, I love this system. The two B&W cameras cover the entire room even in complete darkness. You learn an awful lot watching them. When my daughter was young, she used to scam us, crying to get us to come in and put the bottle back in her mouth. She kept doing this when the cameras clearly revealed she was easily able to put the bottle back in her mouth herself. Lately she's been quietly taking off her pants and diaper, and using the video we've managed to catch her before disaster ensued. Of course, the audio is the most useful part, and the noise floor is much lower then the typical wireless baby monitor.

Technically here's how it works: the cameras are hooked together through a Dayton 3 channel "frequency agile" modulator, then a 25db video amplifier and sent via coax cable to various TVs around the house. I used to use an amp and low pass filter on my incoming cable and put the cameras on high channels. The amp had the property that it is one way, so I'm not sending baby pictures to the neighbors.

Now that I have digital cable, cable internet & HDTV, the low pass filter filters out stuff I want, so I no longer use it. Instead, I have an independent system of cables for the closed circuit TV. Most of my TVs have enough inputs so they can access both the cable and closed circuit (and DVD player...). In a few places (like my home office, where I do all my work) I have dedicated TVs. Future plans include more channels (cable box, DVD player, maybe more cameras for outside) and UHF transmitter & portable TV for more freedom.

For a while, I used an X10 device that converted video to USB. It came with software that would sample the video signal, and put jpegs where I could get them over the net. It was fun to check it while I was travelling, but otherwise not particularly useful to me.

In the same boat...here's my research so far

[w0rn]

We're expecting soon also. All of the affordable wireless camera systems are insecure. Google X10 wireless camera and hack and you'll see that whatever the camera sends out is unencrypted and never requires authentication. What does that mean? Anyone else with a reciever within range of your wireless camera (300-1000 ft) can intercept and see what you see. This is true with a majority of the other kit camera rigs available on the Net and on eBay. Your best bet (cost effective, useable with good picture, and secure) is a wired camera network. Search eBay for wired camera PVR or DVR and you'll find several types of solutions. Also, another thing to note is that in the US, it is illegal to have a spy camera that sends video and sound. There are ways to get around this, but it's illegal, so I'd stay away from the configuration. What I got so far: 1- P4 2.8Ghz 512Mb 200Gb hd PC running Windows XP 2- 2x 4-RCA-to-BNC (the security industry's roots are in BNC cameras, but home security cameras are primarily RCA) PVR capture card. $40 eBay with PVR software that can monitor and capture up to 16 cameras. 3- 2x wireless cameras for outside monitoring (it's outside, who cares if someone else can see what happens in the backyard or front door?). $40/camera with reciever, camera, 2-AC power bricks for the camera and reciever, & A/V cables. 4- 6x wired weather resistant day/night cameras with 300ft cables and power brick. $35/camera. That's it. I've set up the wireless cameras and working on getting the house wired for the wired cameras (nursery, living room, kitchen, etc.) I hope this helps.

Words of Advice from a Proud Father.

[LifesABeach]

Sounds like your first one, congratuations.

Okay Rookey, some words of advice. Check with your mom, and or dad on the following:

The first child can come at any time, all the others take nine months.

Heavly consider a Epideral for child bearing, its liquid La Mosss. Other wise, your wife will never let you forget what she went through.

If your wife comments on her looking fat. LEAVE THE AREA IMMEDIATLY!!! Life is to short for what's going to happen next.

Raising children is not a spectator sport. Its hands on 7/24. You're are already Biometrically equiped. A cheap audio feed back device is more than enough for the job you have to do.

There is no 1-800 number for user manuals, complaints, or refunds.

If your child cries, check diapers, bottle, formula. Repeat for the next 18 years.

Beating your child is a waste of time, and could give you meta-carpel. A little swat on the bottom seems to be a decent attention getter. A 60 second timeout in total continual silence helps the child to stop and think, and you to calm down too. Just about every criminal was beaten/abused as a child.

Bring pictures to the work place, these will be worth more than gold.

When you talk to others who have not brought a child into the world; They will have no idea what you're talking about, or why.

The first 2 weeks of raising a newborn child will be hell for you. Then, after that; It won't get much better.

Once again, congrats.

Re:Words of Advice from a Proud Father.

[MrGibbage]

Yes, this one is my first one. Thanks for the comments and suggestions.

Re:Words of Advice from a Proud Father.

[achacha]

Epidural should not be recommended for everyone, it's an invasive procedure that mucks with the spinal column (I almost laid out the anethesiologist who said, "oops, went too far, got some blood", he's messing with my wife not some lab speciment).

Another problem with epidurals is that the woman is numb and has a hard time feeling the child pass through, a a result tears occur due to "over-pushing" that take a few months to heal (no sex for a few months :( ), they can damage their lower back due to too much pushing, since they don't feel the pain an dthere is no pain-easeoff feedback.

Overall this is my theory:
You just got an epidural:
1. Incur difficulty in pushing
2. Get your self on a ptosin drip and get some nasty irregular and unnatural contractions
3. Baby comes too fast and you get a lot of tearing or a caesarian section
4. Doctor is probably happy, insurance claims with caesarian section are less likely to stick in case of problems since it's considered an invasive surgery

We switched obgyns in the last week because the doctor we had was too gung-ho about induction and c-section. Using a mid-wife in a hospital was a far more rewarding of an experience.

Now back to the topic at hand:
Check out one of the small X10 cams (or similar). Attach them to your PC and have them take snapshots every 3-10 seconds (depending on preference), run an FTP daemon (or web cam uploading program) bunch of those available to send those images to you web site (or if you ahve one running locally you are all set). Another thing is to get a cam program that lets you take time-lapse video, one frame every second or two, so you can quickly check on the baby sitter.

There are also privacy issues, I don't know if you need to tell your baby sitter about the fact they are being video taped, since you don't want any lawsuits. However telling the baby sitter that the house has web cams all over will probably make them think twice about shaking or ignoring the baby.

The big father is watching!

Re:Words of Advice from a Proud Father.

[DGregory]

Holy cow, a guy who really knows his stuff. I salute you.

Pitocin can cause the baby's heart to not fluctuate how it's supposed to during labor, and that's when they want to do the emergency c-section. Cervadil (what they use to ripen the cervix when they induce) says on the insert that comes in the box "Not intended for use to augment labor", and has a long laundry list of side effects.

If at all possible, do NOT get induced. Only get induced if there is a real medical reason for it. There's a 50% chance of c-section if you get induced (which then dr's want to only give you c-sections later because of the chance of hemmorage). Not to mention if the placenta on future pregnancies decides to attach to the c-section area, you either have a hugely problematic pregnancy or you have a miscarriage. And there's more to it than that, but suffice it to say you don't want a c-section unless you really have to have it.

The woman can't move around while on the epidural, so the baby has the greater chance of not being able to move into the correct position... resulting in a c-section.

Even with midwives in a hospital, you have to choose them wisely. A lot of OBs have CNM's in their practice not because they're pro-midwife but because midwives bring in clients. The CNMs have to follow what the OB wants and even they can be pushy with the interventions. I give a CNM in a hospital one thumb up, but a home birth two thumbs up.

Also, some good childbirth classes are a huge plus. Not the crap classes they give at the hospital ("... and then you get your epidural!"). Ones geared towards natural childbirth that are 6-8 weeks long, give a lot of ways to manage labor pains (it just takes concentration, it's not THAT hard, I've done it once before and it was a long labor with a 9 lb baby). They also give tips for a successful breastfeeding relationship, and post-pregnancy care.

Re:Words of Advice from a Proud Father.

[dacaldar]

Epidural should not be recommended for everyone ...

While that is, of course, true, as a recent new-father myself, I feel the need to present a counter example. People should be aware that in many cases it can make things much better.

My wife is a type A personality and was naturally high-strung during L&D. Her water broke, and then she only dilated 2 cm in the first 5 hours, and was not making much progress, but was in more and more pain.

After the epidural, she calmed down, relaxed, and dilated up to 8 cm in just over an hour. Things went very smoothly from there.

We agree with many aspects of natural birth proponents, but since many people do want the safety of a hospital environment in case something goes wrong, an epidural can help the situation along, when doctors will usually call for a C-section after it stalls for too long. It was too bad that we couldn't try a more natural sitting position, or hot-tub birth, but in our case, I'm pretty confident it worked for the best.

Yes, there is a risk with an epidural (I can't imagine how I would have reacted to the "oops, blood" comment!), but it can also reduce other risks, such as those associated with C-sections, and amount of time baby's head is being deformed during pushing.

(By the way, my wife had no tearing and no episiotomy, which made her quite happy!)

Re:Words of Advice from a Proud Father.

[Anonymous Coward]

If at all possible, do NOT get induced. Only get induced if there is a real medical reason for it.

And don't take any bullshit about "failure to progress" from your obgyn. That's just doctor speak for "my book says it should take x, and it's taken 1.5x so far".

Here's the real deal: Medical science doesn't actually know all that much about the way that people work. We know enough to try to fix things when they break, but we're hopeless at trying to reproduce all the subtle feedback mechanisms in the body.

If you have an epidural, you'll end up on your back (conveniently constricting the pelvic opening), having an episiotomy, pitocin, and quite possibly a c-section, and the poor baby will come out drugged and semi-comatose.

Home birth is the answer. Really. Something like 3% of births actually have difficulties for which you'd want to go to a hospital. Most of those can be spotted beforehand. At home, you feel more relaxed, as you're in your own environmant rather than an opressive sterile hospital, you won't find anyone stopping you from eating and trying to tie you to a bed with an IV line, and you won't wing doctors who are overly keen on pitocin and episiotomies in a home birth practice.

If you can, labour in a water pool (the bathtub is too small for you to move properly - you can rent or buy special birthing pools, or you can just use a deep kids' inflatable paddling pool - it works just as well. It'll really help with the pain.

When you've had the baby, pop him straight on your breast and let him feed. New babies don't want or need the grilling that they get in a hospital - your body will keep the baby warm, and his feeding will stimulate oxytocin release in your body, which will help the uterus contract and stop bleeding.

If you have experience of hospital births, I recommend that you try a home birth - you might be surprised how comparitively easy it is.

Re:Words of Advice from a Proud Father.

[Koguma]

That AWSOME!

But this article is OT, it belongs in parenting.slashdot.org

And let me add.. having a midwife present as an advocate will keep your stress down.

Re:Words of Advice from a Proud Father.

[thempstead]

You don't need a 1-800 number for a manual ... just refer to Amazon :)

see here

t

Re:Don't do it!

[LetterJ]

For me, it's several things.

1. In the absence of a reason why I SHOULD have kids, I don't think it's a good idea. For some reason, in this area, the decision which results in another human being in your family is seen as the default and, rather than THAT decision being the one requiring justification, inaction is the decision that requires justification.

2. In almost all cases with people who say they want or wanted kids, they've imagined themselves as parents and enjoyed the fantasy. Not me and not my wife. By my age, my parents were actually DONE having 3 kids. Yet, I still have no desire. I don't have dreams of myself as a parent, etc.

3. Probably the most important for me is that I'm currently happy with my life and, anything I add to it should be something I'm reasonably sure will make my life happier. Given the huge numbers of miserable parents I know, the numbers aren't in my favor for something I don't really want anyway.

Trixie Tracker

[Aquarion]

Sounds like what you're looking for is The Trixie Tracker, which is the software that runs The Trixie Update (Possibly the most comprehensive single baby site on this whole interweb thing)

They're selling hosted versions of the system at TrixieTracker.com

Actually, this is quite common here.

[StarKruzr]

In fact, we typically just dig a nice hole and plant them (legs-first, of course) directly into the soil, then tamp it down a bit to keep them secure. Properly watered, most babies tend to take root within a few days - and as an added bonus, the soil tends to absorb and compost all that yuckiness you usually have to depend on diapers to contain.

Re:Actually, this is quite common here.

[dubiousmike]

i have heard of migrant workers in South America digging a hole, placing their children in, and covering it up with a board so it doesn't get eaten by animals.

Video Chat

[adamjone]

I've been in your situation not too long ago. Our first child is going on 8 months now, and I remember thinking some of the same things when preparing for his arrival. My goals were a bit different though: my wife would be home with baby, and I just wanted to be able to check in and keep up with developments. Kids grow so fast, I didn't want to miss anything by being at work. There are a couple of things we did.

1 - Radio Monitor
The only time we really use it is when we want to go outside and do some gardening while the baby is napping. The battery operated monitor lets us know when he is waking up, so we can go back inside and get him. Otherwise, babies are loud, and your ears are tuned to hear their cries. You won't really need the monitor while you are inside, although it is fun to listen to your neighbors argue as they forget to turn their monitor off.

2 - Cheap USB Web Cam + Mic
I went to Target and got the $30 GE / Jasco special. It takes a decent picture, sort of grainy, but I can make out what is going on. I use the web cam / audio features built in to the Instant Messenger, and my wife will setup the laptop in whatever room they are in and let me peek in on the action for a while. I still have to work, so I can't spend all day ogling them, but it is a nice break from time to time. Make sure that the firewall you have at work is compatible with the IM video chat feature first though.

Otherwise, we really haven't had a need for further "surveilance". When he cries, we can hear it from any room in the house, even with the home theater playing.

How about some REAL answers

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the advice is nice (although most of us soon-to-be parents have already heard it), but how about some real answers to the question? There are additional reasons to have such a system that don't succumb to the "be less paranoid and more happy" argument, like giving your spouse a chance to check in while away.

As a father of 4 ranging from 8 mos - 20 yrs......

[Newer Guy]

As a father of four great kids, I'd advise you to stop wasting time doing such meaningless things. Believe me, once your child arrives, you'll be lucky to have time to check email let alone administer Linux servers and watching baby on your cell phone! Once your child is 4 - 6 months old, find a good babysitter you can trust and take your spouse out on a date at least every other week. Forget about having any outside life together the first six months; it just isn't gonna happen! And, finally, enjoy your new baby. Kids rock, no matter what size they are. Right now I'm 50 with an 8 month old; she makes me feel young and I'm very happy and grateful she came into my life.

Do

[geekoid]

How do you find a babysitter to trust? Well respected Nanny companies even have problems with trained Nannys. How do you expected to be able to trust some 16 year old down the street? Hell, I want to be able to check my child in daycare from time to time.
Trust is earned.
The only risk I see is I might catch a baby sittter abusing my child. Theh I would go to prison after I chained the babysitter to the bumper of my car and drove around town.

Re:Do

[Ironica]

How do you expected to be able to trust some 16 year old down the street? Hell, I want to be able to check my child in daycare from time to time.

In fact, you *should* do this... drop in unexpected. If they don't welcome you, change daycare *fast*.

Same goes for nursing homes. Any facility caring for those who can't care for themselves should be fine with unannounced visitors, if they have nothing to hide. (There may be cases where you'd be interrupting a particular activity if you go in and say hi to your loved one, but they should at least be able to show you what's going on through a window.)

Any care facility that has a policy of no unannounced visitation is one to steer very clear of.

Re:Do

[DGregory]

Also what you can do is hire the babysitter to babysit while you're there. Get some work done around the house. Watch the babysitter interact with the baby. You should be able to get some decent vibes from that.

And I thought Slashdot legal advice was bad!

[peacefinder]

It's quite a bit harder for a baby to interact with it's environment if it's dead than if it's on its back.

As other posters have pointed out, this isn't a crackpot recommendation: "In 1992, the AAP recommended putting babies on their backs to sleep to prevent SIDS. As a result, SIDS cases have since decreased by 50 percent." Weigh this reduction in death rates against what you're trying to avoid: "Head flattening is primarily a cosmetic concern, physicians agree."

Check your priorities, mate.

In any case, pretty soon the baby will be able to roll over on its own and the whole issue will be beyond your control.

Re:And I thought Slashdot legal advice was bad!

[Bald Wookie]

"Head flattening is primarily a cosmetic concern, physicians agree."

Head flattening eh? Interesting... I'm going to have to get in touch with the Japanese Square Watermelon Concern before my wife goes into labor.

If you live next to any bloggers

[Shadow of Eternity]

Buy their webcams, emo-blogger-cutternuts always have great webcams.

I have to be careful what I emphasize

[MrGibbage]

Watching the baby sitter is definitely an important reason why I wanted to set up the camera, but I was also looking to use while the baby was sleeping and to have a quick and easy way to see if she is OK. We probably won't be having any baby sitters for a while, but I do know that every time she (yes, we know "she's a she") makes a sound in the middle of the night, my wife will want to go to her room to see what's up. The camera could make life a lot easier. Also an important quality will be low light level operation.

How big is your house?

[Anonymous Coward]

> How will I watch the video while in our house?

Dude, leave the door to the baby's room open and check in every once in a while. Your kid will be thankful one day if you spend actual time with him, rather than observing it through a surveillance camera.

ffmpeg and logitech web cams

[russg]

I setup a Linux box with a couple of inexpensive Netcams from http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details /US/EN,CRID=4,CONTENTID=5042. I use ffmpeg http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/index.php to capture the data and provide streams for ffserver.
I then can watch my monkeys playing all day from Windows Media player at work. By the way, I have firewall rules that only allow access to me and other family members. This isn't to watch a baby sitter as much as it is to be a part of the lives of my children. I wish we all didn't have to work and could stay with our children full time. But we can't. Video and audio during the day on breaks is good for me.
--russ

Another useless /. Thread

[Deeper Thought]

Another useless SlashDot thread. :-( I'm tired of reading this crap.

I really hoped to see something technical here... not a bunch of smart-ass jokers.

Hello? Anyone technical left out there?

Re:Don't do it!

[Black Susan]

"That's because personally, I've never seen anyone who hasn't become a totally boring person after having kids."

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAA!

It's called growing up. Some of us who are childless have discovered that we have still become more "boring" as we age. Less barhopping, less video games; more working, more home maintainance, and more trying to pay the the daily bills of housing and medical care.

It's a sad thing, maybe, but when you realize that it is not simply children that change people you feel a little better about it.

Welcome to being a grownup. :) Failing to have children won't guarantee that you won't change as you age.

Now, excuse me, I have to go rake the lawn.

Baby care

[CmdrTostado]

1st child -> boil bottles and pacifiers for 10 minutes, after each use

2nd child -> boil bottles and pacifiers for 10 minutes, after dropped

3rd child -> boil bottles and pacifiers for 10 minutes, once a month

4th child -> boil bottles and pacifiers for 10 minutes, before major holidays or reunions

5th child -> blow the germs off the bottle or pacifier, after dropped (only if grandma is watching, otherwise simply reinsert)

6th child -> ???? (don't know yet)

Re:That argument's a setup

[writertype]

>>While taking care of the child once it arrives may be selfless, the reasons for choosing to have them in the first place are almost always centered around the parent rather than the child.

That seems to be an impossible challenge. You're asking for a general imperative that is specific to the individual, but isn't itself subjective?

So you're ruling out arguments like "I want to pass on my genes" (a poor argument, but just an example) as well as "well, that's why we have _reproductive_ organs" as well as "Given all the poverty and unhappiness in the world, I would like to give a child the chance that I had".

OK, how about this one? As a species, we have a biological imperative to breed. That's a universal truth, common to all life. However, that urge is instantiated in the individual. It is a selfish act, because humans are driven by individual impulses, not the collective will of the majority (unless we subsume it, as in a democracy).

We have to make the choice, because we're individuals, driven by a genetic imperative. Why is sex pleasurable? We didn't invent it. It's there to encourage us to breed. We've just begun to learn how to fool it, that's all.

Practical Considerations

[bjelliot]

I have spent considerable time on multiple revisions of this solution myself.

My daughter wakes often and my wife and I very much want to keep an eye on her. She can hear us if we come within ten feet of her door, so using a camera was a necessity.

Practical issues - her room is dark. Do not underestimate the importance of low lux (slow shutter) functionality. I extensively use the Toshiba IK-WB11A (specs). It offers 0.03 LUX minimal illumination. This can connect wired or wirelessly (802.11b) back to your network.

The Java interface is a complete joke with a ridiciulous memory leak. Simply Ethereal capture the device, grab the "hidden" url for the underlying static graphic and write your own JavaScript for downloading that graphic. I accomplish this simply with two image buffers (in DIV tags) that alternate on loads. Build in error catching and timeouts for these loads.

More interesting than this for me was replacing the audio monitor (and being able to keep the doors closed). For this, I have only begun the implementation. Basically, I have a laptop in her room (old 300MHz system). It ties directly into the microphone via Windows APIs. I then sample the spectral range on a 5 Hz basis. By creating a very, very simple "shrillness" algorithm along with volume determination - it is easy to get a simple "detection" of the cry.

With this audio detection, I simply have the monitor mute the audio of my daughter until a certain amount of time has passed with continuous audio. Thus priority 0 audio (noise characterized like her just-changing-positions audio) must be maintained for 30 seconds before the audio is passed into my bedroom. Higher priority signals have shorter durations. A simple "scoring" system based on audio "shrillness" and audio amplitude yields the minimum duration value before audio passthrough.

I did something similar...

[Insolence2003]

in a embedded linux-based network video recorder using a USB webcam (phillips-based, using pwc). After trying everything, we ended up using VLC's video streaming server. It is a little quirky, and all of its codecs don't work with standard video clients (but they always work with VLC curiously). I've also setup a security system with 4 pwc-based cams and a linux-based server to record and monitor activity.

With VLC's Server, you can have it record to the hard drive in a higher-quality format and also have it lower the FPS and stream it to your VLC from anywhere (firewall rules notwithstanding). You can tell it to turn off the audio to save disk-space/bandwidth (depending on if you're recording or streaming). I typically used the msmpeg4 codec for streaming because it's the smallest (bandwidth) and highest quality video codec at about 5 FPS for my security project. It worked rather well, and there was enough USB bandwidth to capture from 4 cams on the same USB port with a USB hub.

It's just something worth checking out! I know it worked for me, and if I had a child, I know I'd be setting one of these up in my place! =) Take care!

- Insolence

Re:I did something similar...

[Insolence2003]

In reply to my own comment, and to answer a few of your questions... with VLC's Server, I could watch this stream from my PDA, Mac, or PC. You can even encode a stream perfectly sized for your PDA. =) Cheers! - Insolence

Try Low Tech

[Frailty]

Try the DIY approach; Stop what you are doing walk quietly to the sleeping childs room and take a peek! As a father of 3 there is nothing that will mill make you beleive in all that is right with the world like the sight of your children sleeping angelicly. And nothing makes you feel better than seeing it with your own eyes. Also read "The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury http://www.veddma.com/veddma/Veldt.htm before you get to techy with your childcare. he he he.

my baby monitoring experience

[edwastaken]

I have found audio monitors work well. I have a philips 900Mhz that works well although it does pick up occasional static. I tried a 2.4Ghz but in my area of silicon valley I get worse range with it. These things are very dependant on construction. Audio only is fine and I don't worry about breathing but just crying. If you are worried that the baby is not breathing then video will not make you feel better. I tried a 2-way radio (walkie talkie), but getting the right signal to noise was tough and it just ended up broadcasting static. Do recall that almost any system will end up bugging your house. Not that your baby crying is something anyone wants to see. I took the wireless monitor and baby on vacation recently and oh, how great! We could put our 6 month old to sleep for the evening and go to the hotel restaurant. That was great and relaxing. -Whatever you decide, set it up now. In the first few months the sleep deprivation makes troubleshhoting very hard. So set up the monitoring system, the web site photo gallery and any other technical or software projects before the baby comes. -Best of luck and have fun.

Cot death and baby monitors

[Elivs]

The "apnea monitors" have been shown not to work. Either the manufactures set the senativity so high that it goes off every couple of days with "false alarms", or the sensativity is turned down and many actual SIDS (cot deaths) are missed. Basically there is no happy medium. Child care professionals in most countries suggest you don't waste your money.

Similarly there is no point in a normal baby monitor for preventing SIDS. With a normal baby monitor you hear breathing, rather than the absense of breathing. With such a monitor when the breathing stops, the parents don't notice until the baby is dead.

If you want to prevent SIDS the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend placing you child on their back to sleep. They have the catch phrase "BACK TO SLEEP". This simple measure alone has been shown to reduce cot death by 40%

Known risk factors (from "Robbins Pathology")

Maternal:
=========
1) Youth (less than 20yrs)
2) Unmarried
3) Short intergestational interval
4) Low socioeconomic status
5) Smoking
6) Drug Abuse (any drug including alcohol)
7) Black race (?related to socioeconomic factors)

Infant
======
1) Prematurity
2) Low Birth Weight
3) Male sex
4) Product of multiple births
5) Not first sibling
6) SIDS in priot sibling.

Overall the best advice is don't smoke indoors and place your child on their back. After that you can only hope all goes well.

Elivs

Re:Cot death and baby monitors

[russint]

2) Unmarried
...
3) Male sex
Oh yeah, I guess not being a good christian is dangerous too..

D-Link DCS-900W

[edanshekar]

I picked one of these up @ Office Depot while I was on a break from work... Just happened to be roaming the isles and came across it and it seems like it might be something of interest for your lil project. http://www.dlink.com/products/category.asp?cid=60

hmmm

[xbmodder]

If you want to see it on your cell phone you will need a very fast cell line. I think you can setup a real server which are not too cheap about 600 bux. If you want still images setup a video streaming server and there are some web apps (maybe write a python script) that will grab a frame from a nvs/web camera for you. You can buy small survellance cams from ebay hook them up whith a little multiplexer and a nice capture card (dont use a cheap ONE!) maybe you wanna use mythtv to record her/him. how old is your baby?
use this script and put in the babies age into there
#!/usr/bin/python
b=$baby's age
if type(b)==int:
pass
else:
print "dude the babies age is messed!"
if b>=8:
print """get a baby sitter which is 20 or younger"""
else:
print "get a baby sitter older than 18"
##########DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yah use that when your not root. if you want to spend like 10k get a tracking HD camera with a Radeon HD and a 300 gig hard drive. w00t!!!!!!!
please reply soon

Nannies, Au-pairs

[supabeast!]

Rather than rely on technology, it's much easier to just rely on the old fashioned method: get a nanny. If you can't afford a nanny, get an au-pair. As an added bonus, au-pairs are notorious for sleeping with the fathers of the kids they're taking care of.

Re:That argument's a setup

[LetterJ]

First, I only pose this challenge to those who feel it necessary to not just question my decision but to INSIST that I'm wrong, going to change my mind or wickedly selfish for not having children. Given that context, especially the accusation that remaining childless is ultimately selfish, the challenge stands as far as I'm concerned. While I stated that the desire to have children is selfish, I didn't say (or at least didn't mean to) that selfishness was a bad thing.

Personally, I think both situtations are driven by the selfish nature of pretty much everyone and that these forms of selfishness are morally neutral. The challenge is posed, not to paint having children as the MORE selfish decision or to malign that decision, but rather to point out that both are driven by selfishness (and as such, insisting that I have some higher mandate to breed should cease).

Re:Don't do it!

[mojogojo]

uh, adoption = finding a family for a child. it's ALL about the child when you're doing an adoption. don't have a child. there's plenty of children that aren't wanted out there, abused, etc... THEY need a caring, nurturing family. huh, nope, no I, me, or us used in all of above - it's as selfless as it gets when you turn the situation around like that...

Re:Don't do it!

[LetterJ]

This being Slashdot, I explicitely avoided any superlative comparison when describing the failure of those to whom I've posed the challenge. Rather, I stated that "many" have "difficulty".

You, of course, being a Slashdotter, apparently read it as "all" of them finding it "impossible" to find a single scenario which might meet my criteria. As such, you posed a single scenario, intended to invalidate the superlative statement you believe I made.

In addition, as only about 2% of people becoming parents are adoptions and I've not had this conversation with more than 50 people, it shouldn't be surprising that your hand-picked scenario hasn't applied to a single one of those situations.

Incidentally, when pushed hard by someone who appears unrelenting, I, indeed, point to adoption. If, for some reason, I regret my decision, I will pursue adoption.

To the privacy advocates and rude folks

[Anonymous Coward]

You know I think you folks need to realize that no matter the background checks and such you empolyee to guard your kids a camera is a much better choice.

Most of you may be asking why. Well I had a babysitter that hit me when I was about 6 or 7. I always lied about the bruises because she threaten to hurt my sister if I told. I begged my parents to put me into a martial arts class(told them so I wouldn't be bullied anymore). After a couple of months in class I started blocking her blows. She got very tire of that went for my sister one day. So I used the skill I learn and proceed to break her nose in 3 places and her left arm. I spent 6 month in juevie for assault and she spent 4 years for abuse charges when the truth came out. I still had enough bruises from unsuccessfull blocks to prove abuse with my sister testimony. My parents still feel guilty about everything but her reference were perfect. I do not blame them but you can bet I will have camaras in my house for any babysitters plus background checks and references. You can never ever be to sure about people. Trust is for the stupid!

Re:Don't do it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic... god you guys are pathetic. Get a life.

Going out?

[triso]

I'd love to push the video to that in order to see the video on my cell phone when we are out and the...

You are laboring under the delusion that you will be going out with your wife. Trust me, you will not. Going to work every day will be a treat with no crying, yelling, in-laws or diapers to change. It will be 7.5 hours of relaxation.

seems to me ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... like this guy really needs a hobby.

Re:Don't do it!

[Ironica]

Getting my wife pregnant is the WORST mistake I ever made.

Obviously, with that attitude. It was a terrible mistake. That poor kid has to go through life with *you* for a father. I can't imagine the misery to be so unwanted by the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally...

I have no pity for you, but all kinds for your child.

You may not be Daddy material

[NullProg]

Look,

Having a child changes everyones outlook on life. By you asking about being a Dad from Slashdot shows that your really imature or just plain socially inept (Something I excel at).

Your worried about monitoring equipment when you should be concerned about the quality of the sitter. Why would you have someone you don't trust watch your baby? Why mess up your time watching a sitter you don't trust?

With a child, your going to have to make sacrifices with your social and work life. Spend some more time with your wife at home, shes going to need it. Yes, your gonna get up at 11pm, 2am and 4am for feedings. Yes, your gonna have to learn how to change diapers. No, you will never forget the first time the child looks you in the eyes and smiles.

I lived through it with two kids, I'm sure you will as well. Use a little common sense.

Enjoy,

Re:Don't do it!

[Anonymous Coward]

How about to bring more good into the world. ;)

OT- Sig

[Anonymous Coward]

I have signitures off for a reason.

For the love of God, stop adding a pseudosig. People who have signitures off, have them off for a reason.

Low tech

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm also first time father.
My recomendation is to stick as much as possible to low tech. This is because, nobidy really knows how do radiowaves and magnetic fields influence human body. And this is a big problem especially for these small untrained babies.

I used lowtech for all my needs :) Now my kiddo is 2 years and is slowly introduced to high tech stuff like pcs games tv and such.

A.

baby monitors and baby food...

[Thecarpe]

This is an interesting article in that it shows a growing trend of control addiction. New parents rush into the doctor's office asking questions about baby food and solid food - what should I get? How early is too early for baby food? Is this going to make my baby ADHD? The fact of the matter remains - baby food hasn't been around nearly as long as babies have, but our historically newfound dependence on what society tells us we need makes us wonder how we ever got by without it. The same is true of baby monitors. Concern is healthy - no denying that. Love and a desire for connection is natural - no problems yet. However, the always dreaded "when I was a kid" shows us that growing up in our own nerdery, the technology was maybe limited to a nightlight and a few windup toys (I was a baby in the mid to late 70's, born in 1974). Don't get me wrong, I'll probably have a full X-10 system in my house when young whomever-my-proginy-shall-be comes, but I'll also have an ulcer from all the unnecessary worry. Bottom line - save the money on the spy cams, audio monitoring, infrared devices, laser grids, thumbprint locks and retinal scans and invest a little in the kid's education and the rest in therapy.

That was tactless...

[Millennium]

Dude, that was out of line by miles. The least you could do is be polite.

Nevertheless, you do bring up a valid question: could a high-tech baby monitor have saved your child? Sad to say, probably not. The research to date shows that monitors haven't had any significant effect in preventing SIDS deaths.

The urge to second-guess one's self after the death of a loved one, particularly a child, is only natural. But ultimately it doesn't do anyone any good.

Re:Don't do it!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. In the absence of a reason why I SHOULD have kids, I don't think it's a good idea. For some reason, in this area, the decision which results in another human being in your family is seen as the default and, rather than THAT decision being the one requiring justification, inaction is the decision that requires justification.


I really wish that more people would think about whether they want to have kids, rather than blindly shagging and seeing what happens. A significant minority of parents that I encounter in supermarkets etc. make me want to throw up, they're so bad.

I completely agree with you. If you don't know that you want kids, and don't want to give up some of your hobbies to spend the time with your kids, please don't have them. It's not fair on the kids.

Oh, and in "hobbies" I include working 12 hour days 6 days a week. If you're not going to be there when the kids are awake, don't bother.

Re:Don't do it!

[FurryFeet]

Getting my wife pregnant is the WORST mistake I ever made.

No. Believing it was yours was the worst mistake you ever made.
Sucker.

Ms. Coward.

Webcams

[kniLnamiJ-neB]

Someone mentioned those D-Link Webcams... before you buy online, check out a store like Best Buy or Radio Shack. There's one at Radio Shack with 2 cameras for like $50. If you decide to go nuts, they've got a lot in the way of home security stuff too, so you could get concealable cameras and stuff too.

Re:Don't do it!

[chickygrrl]

Being almost militantly childfree, I've got a couple of reasons for not having kids. I spent most of my childhood raising my kid sister. I can barely remember to buy food for myself, and my husband and I have been known to buy new clothes just to allow us to put off doing laundry for an extra day. Neither of us has any sort of patience, and I have issues controlling my temper. We make enough money to cover our bills and have a bit left over for buying our assoted toys and obsessions, but we know that it wouldn't be enough to cover the costs of childcare.

I like kids, and have done my fair share of babysitting for neighborhood families and working in kid-centric jobs like portrait studios and as the Easter Bunny at the mall, but I'm happiest when I can hand the kid back to its parant. I know that any child that I brought into the world would end up a prime candidate for protective services while hubby and I played MUDs and FFXI and various PS2 football games, yet it's these same game-loving attributes that have had people saying "Oh, but you two would make great parents!" ever since we got married two years ago and made it abundantly clear we were not breeding.

ailocom

[Anonymous Coward]

how about ailocom

http://www.ailocom.com/en_products_system.htm

NSV Option?

[D43m0nX]

Not sure if NSV was brought up at all. If you have a webcam and mic just setup NSV tools on a laptop or pc in the room then encode the feed and stream. Only things you would have to pay for is pc and cam. NSV quality will depend upon your cam and settings you use. Down side would be about a 45 second delay in video transmission.

www.nullsoft.com
www.scvi.net

D43m0nX

Are these the forums for Parenting magazine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is going to read this because I'm posting to an old story as an AC, but I just thought that I would vent.

Someone asks a great question about monitoring technology and nearly all the replys are jackasses giving him advice about parenting that he didn't ask for.

I thought this website was supposed to be for Nerds???

By reading these replies you'd think this was the forum for Good Housekeeping.

Wife Gave Flowers to Anesthesiologist

[KnarfO]

Epidurals are definately for some people!

:-)

OTOH, she hated getting induced - ouch!

Sixth sense

[muniram]

Develope yoyur sixth sense and you do not need to worry about gadgets monitoring your children. If your child is in danger you just know.....am I dreaming...what is going on....