Create your own smart baby monitor with a RaspberryPi and TensorFlow

There might be depression and increasing anger, once you realise the kid is still needy and your partner is now occupied with #2.

On a more serious note, for me consumption at this point in my life is a vicious cycle that does not make me a happier or better person - yet the circumstances keep pushing me towards it.

Then we used a Yi Dome camera for a while, but it craps out of a few seconds occasionally and when it does the app mutes the feed when it resumes, making it useless at being a baby monitor. Also, privacy concerns since you had to access it via the internet.

We ended up going with a generic IP camera - Amcrest's 1080p wifi camera, to be specific (would have to go look up the model number if people want to know EDIT: IP2M-841B). You can change just about anything about the settings you could want to (such as adding a timestamp so you can verify it hasn't crashed), including disabling access from the internet so you can only access the monitor from the LAN. It's been rock solid for ages - there is a setting that will reboot the camera once a week, but you can set the time, so I set mine to reboot about an hour after the kids normally get up so it never bothers us.

We just have the feed pulled up on an Amazon Fire HD8 tablet that we got for $60, lets us get a 1080p video stream with an ONVIF-capable camera. The Amcrest app isn't terrible either, only downside is that there's an option for 1, 4, 9, or 16 cameras - but I only have 2, so I have to waste half my screen (and the app will only play audio from one stream at a time). And if you don't want to use their app, once it is set up and connected to the network (which you probably don't even need the app for if you are hardwiring with ethernet) you can connect to it via IP address with any RTSP/ONVIF app or even via VLC, or once the firmware is upgraded you can view the stream in the browser.

It has motion sensor capabilities but I haven't experimented with them.

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, kid has a "mild reaction" to a certain vaccination? Forget sleep, forget "stuff that needs to be done", survive while keeping the basics in order. And with more than one kid expect to be on call for every minute you are home. Nothing can go by uninterrupted if you have small kid and a toddler and only four hands.

I envy everyone that has a different experience. Grandparents/relatives help a lot. COVID-19 does not.

Projects suddenly need to be small or non-critical.

It works great! And it'll keep working until we don't need it. No software updates, no discontinued support, no questionable data storage policies on chinese servers. Just a monitor.

And it turns out that once the baby's passed ~4 months, the video isn't too important anyway. It's mostly "Is he crying or not".