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

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.

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.

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.

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: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.)