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We're having a baby!!! My wife drug me to BabieRUs, and when I saw the baby monitors for $150-$250 my techie kicked in and said "I bet I could do that for a lot less." I only have a little experience with webcams: for my college thesis where my professor and I set up an IP camera that allowed other researchers to view live feed of my tests. Figured the TR community has more experience and could help me out.

I feel like making a baby monitor is as simple as grabbing an IP camera and using an app on our phones (something like this). The downside of my idea is the fact that people typically leave the baby monitor on all the time while baby is sleeping (night/naps). That's a huge drain on cell phone battery, but I've got a few old cell phones laying around that I can connect to wifi and a wall charger... Or I could just get an audio only monitor to leave on at all times, and use the webcam for "investigating suspicious noises".

I probably need to keep this under $100. So, any recommendations on:
1) Is this a good idea? Or just get a pre-made baby monitor?
2) Webcam suggestions, needs IR/night vision obviously, needs a microphone, no pan/tilt, can be wired or wireless.
3) Software suggestions. I think most IP cameras come with included software, or use an app from Google Play Store.

For a do-it-yourself project, how about a Raspberry Pi with the official NoIR camera? Computer, case and camera altogether will be well under $100 US, it'll be of much higher quality than an off-the-shelf camera (especially from Babies 'R Us, when we looked at them I laughed out loud at how terrible they were for the price), you can have the video stream accessible via your network, and it'll be more secure.

DPete27 wrote:

2) Webcam suggestions, needs IR/night vision obviously, needs a microphone, no pan/tilt, can be wired or wireless.

Infared is the problem.

Let's say you find one for $30, get some IR LEDs for say 5, and then some smarts in the form of a Raspberry PI 35 + 10 for power. You're getting perilously close to a hundred dollars already, aren't you?

I've looked, there really isn't any regular USB IR webcam just generically available as far as I can tell (and I would love to be corrected on this!). So without going the NoIR route, you'll basically left with doing eye surgery on an existing webcam to remove the IR filter.

EDIT:

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

For a do-it-yourself project, how about a Raspberry Pi with the official NoIR camera?

Right, but without an IR lighting source you won't be seeing much of anything.

Thus this turns towards the electrician-side of things as opposed to the system-assembler/software side of things. That changes the nature of the project somewhat.

Dumb question but didn't someone on hackaday do this??

He isn't going to need a large number of IR LEDs for a baby room, and they can be had cheaply.

Someone already did pretty much exactly what he was looking for last year, and posted a build log with part links. It isn't the only example, either. It looks to be doable for at or below $100.

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

He isn't going to need a large number of IR LEDs for a baby room, and they can be had cheaply.

I specifically quoted about 5 dollars for them, my point is that your original example completely failed to mention how it is a requirement.

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

It looks to be doable for at or below $100.

Yes. As I said. The only thing I didn't mention was the microphone, under the assumption he might already have one and because he already knew he would need one.

My point is that you omitted something essential. Yes, this is doable, but it starts to involve physical modifications and wiring, activities that are either more trouble than it's worth for some people or perhaps beyond their comfort level. It's not just a matter of snapping some stuff together and then plugging it in.

<Bump> Still looking for suggestions.

DPete27 wrote:

<Bump> Still looking for suggestions.

Foscam FI8918W + "tinycam monitor pro". $50 for the camera, $4 for the app. Done! Got IR LEDS, pan/tilt, audio + video. They have HD cameras as well (but cost more). Plus, it expands to as many cameras + monitors as you want. I'd recommend wired ethernet if you can, as the first one I bought had problems connecting, but newer ones were much better.

Edit: And congratulations!

Happy to answer more questions, you're welcome to PM me if I forget to check back in this thread.

Couple other thoughts while I'm editing:

I see they've got some HD cameras for not much more, like the FI9821P on Amazon for $70. I haven't tried that particular one, but the FI8918W is getting a bit old, and I've got one of their HD ones (FI9820W I think) and like it pretty well. On most of them, there's a noticeable "Click!" when it switches between night and day modes, so I tend to use the tinycam app to set it into permanent night mode. (When deciding between color and not waking the baby, I'll go B/W night mode, thanks!) Other companies also make WiFi/LAN cameras with IR LEDs as well. I haven't tried any, but the "tinycam" app has quite the selection of cameras it understands.

Oh, and I forgot, you can talk through the cameras -- I think most of them have a speaker as well as a mic. It's not all that useful, as the only scenario I can see using it is when they're a little older and you want to tell them to get back in bed without getting up from the couch, LOL. But by then you won't really need the camera anyway.

Also, the app itself can show more than one camera at a time in a tiled mode, but I believe it only has sound from one of the cameras. (They may have improved this.) Until you get a baby #2, you won't care about this unless you add more cameras for another reason. By the way, they sell security cameras too.

It sounds like you're on Android, but I'm sure there's an iOS app, too. Probably other camera apps for Android as well, but I can vouch that your $4 for tinycam PRO is well worth it.

Thanks for the advice!
I'd actually put a reference to TinyCam in my OP, but removed it because I didn't want to bias responses. Nice to see someone recommend it.
Also thanks for the camera recommendations. They look like good units at the right price point.

DPete27 wrote:

Thanks for the advice!
I'd actually put a reference to TinyCam in my OP, but removed it because I didn't want to bias responses. Nice to see someone recommend it.
Also thanks for the camera recommendations. They look like good units at the right price point.

To be fair, I haven't actually tried any other apps. I downloaded the free version of the app just to make sure it worked with the camera, and then bought the pro version to get the various necessary features (like audio -- you really need audio for a baby monitor).

I generally hate wifi stuff -- perhaps because consumer-grade APs are all junk, perhaps because of cheap wifi chipsets in the devices themselves -- so I wasn't surprised to see a tiny bit of instability. I've re-used old phones as monitors -- buy a cheap docking station for
though, and I've very few connection/dropping problems once the cameras were on wired ethernet.

I'd highly recommend a static DHCP reservation for the cameras. (And remember it's got a different MAC and thus IP address for the wired and wireless interfaces.)

(edit: wrong "its", can't let that one stand!)