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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

#61

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…

In our case we have a non verbal autistic son and a video baby monitor is really useful since it's not like he can call out for us or tell us if he has a problem. I am busy replacing his with a raspberry pi based ones because I've had enough trouble with Nest having too much control over the device and changing the functionality without warning.

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

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hope all is well. I did not consider the possibility of pre-existing conditions. I'm sorry.

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

#64
post #55
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Where my partner usually steps in is not safety, but time. It is great if you're able to build some things yourself. But the kid and in particular your partner need your hands on deck, not on the workbench for days on, just to end up with an unfinished crib. And there are so many other, more important things to do that cannot be outsourced that easily. And once the first kid is in the house, expect interruptions. Oh,…

Yes, I fully understand the time problem.

I put off building the crib until my son was 4 months old expecting to be able to finish it in 2-3 weeks. It took over 8 weeks and by the time it was done it was at least 1-2 weeks overdue. And a lot of the work was done between 10pm - 2am when everybody was asleep, which took away from my sleep!

I'm still glad I built it (now that it's done!), but yes, outsourcing it certainly would have been the correct choice.

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

#65

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…

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

#66

So, don't get me wrong. This is a fun project and a neat little device. I don't mean to take away from it in any way. However it is really important to consider why baby monitors are so primitive: because the cost of a false negative is huge. I didn't see any mention of this in the author's experiments (only a '>98% accuracy' note). So let's talk about this a little bit: is "accuracy" what we want? Probably not---I d…

Forgive me for bringing it up, but this is also the reason why smart gun technology is a complete dead end.

Cars are every bit as dangerous as guns. But no one here seems to be in such a panic with Tesla or self-driving cars.

I feel there is a bit of undercurrent of Luddite sentiment going around here. Lots of people mentioning how "primitive" a baby monitor is or should be. But is it? It's an LCD video screen powered by modern advancements in battery tech connected wirelessly to a CCD video camera, with sensing technology to detect when a baby is crying and even provide other information such as room temp. None of this existed 20 years ago. Not to mention that between now and back then, baby monitors went through a long phase of being hot garbage. Many still are garbage.

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

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hope all is well. I did not consider the possibility of pre-existing conditions. I'm sorry.

Well. No offence but you are such a... moron...

Imagine you know your baby has potential heart precondition. Imagine you had a huge argument with neonata cardiologist explaining to you how unresponsible it was to get pregnant (37y with lupus).

I would pay every money to monitor my baby. I would throw out anything that would fail once.

Sorry. Have to go. Have to feed my 4 weeks son.

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

#68
post #38
post #16

One of the extremely important things with any DIY project related to your baby is KEEP THE WIRES SECURED AND AWAY FROM THE CRIB.

Or just don't.

If you're not certain about your setup, yes, avoid doing anything. I have a Bluetooth speaker in the crib to play white noise for our baby. It's a ruggedized speaker secured to the crib with 150-pound zip ties, and we charge it when the baby's not in it and remove the charging cord entirely while the baby's in there.

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

#69
Please, please, do not use something like this as the only method of monitoring a child’s safety. This sort of thing has given me honest to god nightmares.

My day job is managing development and infrastructure of internet connected cameras, with motion detection, notifications, and all the rest of it. Every now and again someone new will start on the marketing team and put together something about using them as baby monitors, swiftly followed by the engineering team descending on them to explain there’s no way we can guarantee sufficient reliability for something where the worst case failure mode is someone’s baby dying.

If you’re going to insist on something like this you need to be absolutely sure that you have sufficient monitoring in place. If it loses video from the camera, it needs to alert. If it loses its network connection, it needs to alert. If whatever is meant to be receiving alerts doesn’t receive a heartbeat from the camera, it needs to alert. In all those cases that alert needs to be obnoxious as hell, and guaranteed to fire.

And the machine learning just needs to go away, unless somehow you’ve obtained video of every way in which a child can end up seriously injured, from multiple angles, with which to train it.

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

#70
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do I get to steal that pedantry award if I point out that two parents can take 48 person-hours a day?

But the baby itself can only get attention for 24 hours per day. I think you need to give that pedantry award back. :P
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