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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."
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....
WTF? Over?
to start teaching your baby about the PATRIOT Act :P
Monstar L
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.
Ydco co
Honestly, your biggest problem at this point will be getting enough sleep. everything else will be likely be lovely.
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.
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.
--sig fault--
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.
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.)
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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.
;-) (just kidding - honest!).
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
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.
Just install Linux on the baby and then you can monitor it with SNMP.
And if there's anything wrong, you can ssh in.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
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?
"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?
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
> 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!
A.
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.
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.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
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.