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Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

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Re: Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

#41

Post by mattlondon »

This is great and all, but it has to be 100% utterly completely reliable with no false-negatives.

If it doesn't tell you (i.e. false negative) even once, then you can guarantee that it will never be trusted ever again, especially by the birth parent.

We've gone through a range of frankly awful monitors and cameras that simply were not reliable. E.g. cameras that would regularly go offline for maintenance between 3am & 4am (precisely when you need it...), or cameras that would freeze and show you a sweetly sleeping silent baby that turned out to be simply a frozen frame from 45 minutes previously etc and the live stream had failed, cameras that would lose wifi for no reason that required intricate sequences of button-holding-down-for-x-seconds-then-tapping-then-releasing-etc (not great when you've had about 30 minutes of sleep over the past 36 hours), app-connected things with awful apps that crash or don't quite work right unless you do things in the exact right order etc. We even ended up with a digital clock in-frame for a while so when we looked at the video we could tell if it was "live" or not... this is how unreliable a lot of baby monitors you find on amazon or high street retail.

Once these things fail you once, they cannot be trusted again. Ever.

Perhaps me and my wife are just ultra neurotic, but there you go.

We ended up with a fairly reliable set up for multiple redundancy that seems to work:

- a DECT-based monitor from BT that actually does detect cries (you can entirely mute the intercom but it will audibly-beep and flash a warning if it hears a cry - also does temperature read outs and alerts). 100% ultra bullet-proof reliability so far.

- a Google Nest camera (only camera we found that has been acceptable in terms of reliability & non-shonky app - it does mysteriously "go offline" from time to time, but it sends a notification & and email as well as the app being clear it is offline, and usually recovers on its own fairly quickly). Expensive compared to other options (and not specifically a "baby monitor") but worth it I think (we do not pay for the subscription though)

- an "Owlet" heart-rate and oxygen sensor (although this has poor hardware reliability - the charging port physically crumbles and the "sock" that the sensor goes into is easily moved to a bad position by the baby squirming around.... although the fail-safe there is that it will alert if this happens).

Re: Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

#42

Post by blacksmith_tb »

scruple wrote: post #34
rhacker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not this specifically but a similar tech should be considered to detect babies in hot cars.

Automobile manufacturers are doing this now, IIRC. With sensors on the seats to remind you that you put something heavy into the car.

Hmm, I don't think so - seat sensors are used to enable / disable passenger airbags, my memory is that they only register weights over 40lb / 18kg.

Re: Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

#43

Post by mattlondon »

rich_sasha wrote: post #31
segmondy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have less time, but you learn to organize and structure your time better. You also realize that if all you do is carry the baby, feed the baby and change diaper you will lose your mind, so you begin to find ways to push out work in 15-30mins increments. At least that's my story. :-D

Lucky you. Baby #1 required beyond constant attention, literally like 30hr per day (healthy just needy). Baby #2 is sweet and easygoing, but then there’s 2 of them...

Agreed. We found Baby #1 to at times be a full-time job for two people in the first couple of months.

Down-time is precious precious precious. Either catch up on sleep, or relax as best you can. For me personally, consumption has largely taken over from creation which I am not sure how I feel about but its working so far :-)

Re: Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

#44

Post by birken »

beervirus wrote: post #36
tomkat0789 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harder still is getting it past the spouse regulatory approval process.

My wife has been pretty accommodating for any nerdery I want to engage in for taking care of the kids. The only project she really put her foot down on (and probably correctly so) was about building a crib myself. She figured there were a lot of safety standards about materials, size, bar spacing, etc. that were best left to the professionals.

I don't know your woodworking experience, but I don't think building a crib is dangerous at all. The safety standards are pretty straightforward and they are very clearly spelled out. And for me at least, no mass manufactured piece of furniture is even close to a minimum quality that I'd build myself.

On the other hand, a crib is a particularly annoying piece of furniture to build. First, it has to be able to break down, so that is an engineering challenge if you don't have experience with that. Second, it is a particularly monotonous thing to build, especially if you go with spindles all the way around. Cutting, sanding, assembling and finishing ~50-60 spindles is a lot of very boring work. So you may have dodged a bullet on that one.

Re: Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

#45

Post by redisman »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #3

I don't get it. We bought a baby monitor in 2012 that was probably $80 (Philips brand I think). It was based off the DECT standard that was developed for wireless landline phones, so range was around 1200ft line-of-sight, in practice you could go two stories down in our apartment building to visit friends and it would stay connected just fine. The baby unit was quite bulky and ran off wall power, but the parent unit…

I gotta say, you guys must own some giant houses if the monitor is the only way to tell the baby is up and crying.

Re: Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

#46

Post by mattlondon »

beervirus wrote: post #37
rich_sasha wrote: post #18

Other comments notwithstanding: how does a new parent find time for this???

You get a few months of lead time to get the house ready. Don’t waste it.

100% agree with this.

If there are any pending parents reading this, get all those outstanding things done now.

"We'll do that once baby is born" - nope! Get the nursery set up as best you can, get the buggy/stroller unpacked and assembled, get a stockpile of nappies/diapers, fix that broken light switch or dripping tap etc, get the car serviced and the tyres changed etc.

If you have any side-projects (or even games you are playing through) on the go, get them to a good place where you can stop and leave it for a while. I had grand ideas of continuing to hack away at some projects - even if it was just 15-30 minutes at a time - but of course like everyone says there is no time for that. I should have tied things off before baby arrived so things were neat and tidy (i.e. not in the middle or some epic refactor or juggling a bunch of PRs that need to be merged etc), left myself some notes, and then come back to it in 6-9 months when you get a bit more time again.

There wont be time when baby arrives. Good luck! :-)

Re: Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

#47

Post by LeifCarrotson »

the-dude wrote: post #9
lqet wrote: post #6

"Lavish attention on me and entertain me." ― Maggie Simpson via the baby translator https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Baby_translator That being said, every parent knows the "he/she has never cried like this" moment where your blood freezes and you rush to the child's bed. Seems hard to add this to the model in a reliable manner.

Please fill me in as a non-parent : what was actually up when the baby cried like that?

There's a difference in many of the cries: Boredom, hunger, pain, cold, heat, exhaustion, loneliness, no reason at all, fear...and, once, a hair tourniquet.

A hair tourniquet is formed when a strand of hair lost in a onesie or sock wraps itself around a toe, penis, or finger and the appendage swells, cutting off its own circulation.

It's terrifying to blearily try to diagnose the issue and they just don't stop. Eventually we undid the swaddling and took off the sock and found the purple toe, removed the hair, and then there was a change to the screaming as skin pinch went away and the feeling returned to it, but that was good news.

Re: Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

#48

Post by david-gpu »

mattlondon wrote: post #41

This is great and all, but it has to be 100% utterly completely reliable with no false-negatives. If it doesn't tell you (i.e. false negative) even once , then you can guarantee that it will never be trusted ever again, especially by the birth parent. We've gone through a range of frankly awful monitors and cameras that simply were not reliable. E.g. cameras that would regularly go offline for maintenance between 3am…

Have you considered therapy? Not just to provide support for your mental health, but also the (future) mental health of your child.

I mean this from a place of kindness and compassion. As a father of two, I can't imagine going through multiple baby monitors and eventually settling on a three-device redundant sensor array that sounds like it belongs more in a NICU rather than in a home.

Re: Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

#49

Post by mattlondon »

david-gpu wrote: post #48
mattlondon wrote: post #41

This is great and all, but it has to be 100% utterly completely reliable with no false-negatives. If it doesn't tell you (i.e. false negative) even once , then you can guarantee that it will never be trusted ever again, especially by the birth parent. We've gone through a range of frankly awful monitors and cameras that simply were not reliable. E.g. cameras that would regularly go offline for maintenance between 3am…

Have you considered therapy? Not just to provide support for your mental health, but also the (future) mental health of your child. I mean this from a place of kindness and compassion. As a father of two, I can't imagine going through multiple baby monitors and eventually settling on a three-device redundant sensor array that sounds like it belongs more in a NICU rather than in a home.

This is with therapy! :)

Everyone's scenario is different. We have our (private & personal) reasons why this level of monitoring is something we need for our baby.

Re: Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

#50

Post by knicholes »

rich_sasha wrote: post #31
segmondy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have less time, but you learn to organize and structure your time better. You also realize that if all you do is carry the baby, feed the baby and change diaper you will lose your mind, so you begin to find ways to push out work in 15-30mins increments. At least that's my story. :-D

Lucky you. Baby #1 required beyond constant attention, literally like 30hr per day (healthy just needy). Baby #2 is sweet and easygoing, but then there’s 2 of them...

I have compassion for your experience having two of my own where one still is difficult after seven years, but I'm here to nitpick and win the pedantry award on your addition of "literally" when it's impossible to take 30 hours per day, as a day is only 24.
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