New Baby and Home Automation Ideas

Community Playground General Discussions
#1

My wife and I are having our first child and I’m looking for home automation ideas that might help us out.

My first idea is to add a Z-wave switch to turn off our Door Bell during Baby nap time. Any other ideas that a would help out first time parents? Thank you

#2

Other than a baby monitor/cam for your sake, you really do not need anything HA. When it is nap time, the door bell should not affect them unless it is extremely load.

#3

I think an argument could be made for a temperature sensor in the baby’s room that, if not directly used in a scene to keep the baby’s room an ideal temperature, at least alerts you to what the temperature is an allows you to manually make adjustments. Also, if a ceiling fan is not an option, a fan of some sort to promote air circulation has been found, in some studies, to reduce SIDS. As a parent myself, I won’t presume for a nanosecond to tell you what “studies” or “research” you should listen to, but googling ‘air circulation and SIDS reduction’ and ‘temperature and SIDS reduction’ will provide you with the links for you to make your own, personal decisions.

If you go either the ceiling fan route you could look into altsteon and fanlinc. For a normal table top fan, perhaps an Aeon Labs smart strip to turn it on and ensure it’s on (via energy reporting).

All this may just be overkill, by the way. It’s your first child and you and your wife will be hovering and obsessing for at least the first year! :slight_smile:

Also, congratulations!

#4

I recently went through the same thought process (daughter was born 5 weeks ago). Here’s what I ended up doing:

  1. Temperature sensor in the nursery then used AutoVera + Tasker to notify me of too high/low temperatures.
  2. Foscam webcam pointed at the crib integrated into Vera. You can also set it up as a motion sensor and use it to notify you. I also bought TinyCam Pro to view the webcam while on my home wifi instead of buying a [overpriced] monitor. Cool feature of TinyCam Pro is that you can set it up to connect to a Chromecast and you can even view the feed on an Android Wear watch!
  3. In the future I may setup a “nap” scene that could be triggered to turn off the lights, turn on the ceiling fan to low, set an alarm on your phone, etc. for a specific time period.

Hope that helps.

#5

Ceiling fan control and perhaps a humidifier connected to z-wave outlet if your temperature sensor also does humidity.

#6

First of all, congrats.

I put in a foscam, but ended up liking an old fashioned video monitor (summer infant) better. It is more immediate and you can leave the monitor (with sounds) on all night next to your pillow if you are sleeping another room.

#7

I think with a new baby one might want to increase security. Window and door sensors etc.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

#8

I used a temperature sensor along with a Vornado fan/heater in my youngest daughter’s room when she was an infant (we primarily used a wood stove for heat in that house so the bedrooms would get chilly with the doors closed). I got a non-digital Vornado heater that didn’t reset itself after being turned off, so the switch was always left on. That was plugged in to a z-wave receptacle, and then I had triggers set to turn the receptacle (and therefore the heater) on/off based on the temperature. I changed to this setup after the thermostat on another heater failed in the middle of the night and I walked in to a 95* room. I also would leave her ceiling fan on in reverse to circulate the air while she was sleeping, but that wasn’t automated.

I also used (and still use in the toddler years, provides some good entertainment) Foscam cameras in my kids’ bedrooms. When they were infants I used them in conjunction with a cheap audio only monitor, and then if I heard something out of the ordinary I could check in through my phone. I didn’t really find it feasible to sit and stare at a video of them sleeping or leaving a video streaming all night, so this combination worked well for us.

#9

Hi,

i’m also in the same position, one week to go!

Regarding the Foscam solution mentioned above, is this in addition to or instead of a traditional baby monitor? if instead of, how do you deal with sound?

Thanks

#10

[quote=“casmo, post:9, topic:185753”]Hi,

i’m also in the same position, one week to go!

Regarding the Foscam solution mentioned above, is this in addition to or instead of a traditional baby monitor? if instead of, how do you deal with sound?

Thanks[/quote]

Indoor Foscams have built in mic and speaker.

#11

I found the mic and speaker on the camera itself to be pretty poor as far as baby monitoring goes. Plus, I didn’t want to leave my phone or tablet or laptop next to me streaming all night long. I would recommend also using an audio only monitor if you want to hear clearly, without delay. The camera mic will work in a pinch, like if you are at work and want to check in on how nap time is going, but I personally would not want to rely on it for overnight. We used a Sony monitor that I think was around $30 and it worked well and was able to pick up much softer noises than the camera could. We also used white noise in the room and it was hard to distinguish baby noises from the white noise on the camera, but the monitor could be placed closer to the crib so you were able to hear the baby over the white noise better, if that makes any sense.

#12

First congratulations!

Second I use the Foscam since our 5 month old was born with great success. I use Z-Wave door sensors on the nursery door to enable the baby monitor on our whole home audio (audio turns on with motion in room).

Camera/Mic about 10 ft from the crib.

Details here: http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=26545.0

#13

[quote=“ctguess, post:3, topic:185753”]I think an argument could be made for a temperature sensor in the baby’s room that, if not directly used in a scene to keep the baby’s room an ideal temperature, at least alerts you to what the temperature is an allows you to manually make adjustments. Also, if a ceiling fan is not an option, a fan of some sort to promote air circulation has been found, in some studies, to reduce SIDS. As a parent myself, I won’t presume for a nanosecond to tell you what “studies” or “research” you should listen to, but googling ‘air circulation and SIDS reduction’ and ‘temperature and SIDS reduction’ will provide you with the links for you to make your own, personal decisions.

If you go either the ceiling fan route you could look into altsteon and fanlinc. For a normal table top fan, perhaps an Aeon Labs smart strip to turn it on and ensure it’s on (via energy reporting).[/quote]

I uses a Rabbit Air filter that shots air to the ceiling about 5 ft from the crib. It gives a constant, very slight breeze…and keeps the mobile moving ever so slightly. Have it running 24/7 though…but use Z-Wave switch to monitor the energy.