Gearhead Mom

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

MacGyver Baby Monitor

Posted by Roger W. @ 6:00 AM

Diaper bag? Check. Baby Bjorn? Check. Food for toddler (just in case)? Check. Pumpkin pie? Check. Green bean casserole? Check. Out the door we go to Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt’s house. We’re only 30 minutes late.

As soon as we walk in the door, we show off Baby G to the family, some who haven’t even met him. We know we have a short time window before he needs to go to sleep for the night. And this will be the first time he’s ever gone to bed outside our house.

About 20 minutes later, after being passed around from relative to relative, it was bedtime. Missy took Baby G to the spare bedroom and nursed and rocked him to sleep. Dinner was now being served.

Sy was having a blast with her cousins and aunts and uncles so I knew she was fine. I wolfed my dinner down so that I could relieve Missy. And then it occurred to me…

Crap. We forgot the baby monitor.

I really didn’t feel like staying in the bedroom all evening while dinner was going on. Nor did I want Missy to do that either. What were we going to do? Check on him every 5 minutes? That would surely wake him up. Take turns being in there? Wasn’t ideal.

No, the answer was: iPhone to the rescue. With Baby G in my arms, I went into the App Store on the phone. Did a search for “baby monitor” and found a handful of programs. Good thing Apple has customer reviews and ratings in the Store because otherwise it would be hard to choose.

Babyphone is what I bought and downloaded. Over the air. In my aunt’s house, in a dark bedroom. With a lightly sleeping baby. The iPhone is a wonderful thing, I thought. I really hoped this app would work as advertised.

The way Babyphone works is that it uses the iPhone microphone to listen for noise. If the noise reaches past a certain level that you set, it calls a pre-programmed phone number. Brilliant isn’t it?

Baby G was asleep enough now for me to put him down into the Pack ‘n’ Play. I opened the program, went into the settings and typed in my brother-in-law’s phone number because Missy never has her cell on her (Ed. Note: Let’s be clear, you’d leave your lame pink flip phone at home, too. Tis a far cry from your fancy iPhone). I then flipped the On switch on the main screen and now I could see the sound level meter at the bottom flicker with the white noise of the party outside this room. I adjusted the slider for the maximum noise level it should reach before calling.

To test it out, I blew into the microphone and I saw my phone dial out to my brother-in-law. Excellent. I reset the app and set it by Baby G’s feet, with the microphone pointed towards him. Then I left him in the bedroom and rejoined the festivities.

Of course we checked on him from time-to-time, not really trusting this setup of course, but Baby G was sound asleep and fine. Finally after a couple of hours, my brother-in-law’s phone rang. It was my iPhone calling him because the baby was crying now. It worked! And we could hear Baby G on the other end of the line.

I went and got him and now it was time for us to go. We all had a fun and enjoyable Thanksgiving.

...

Babyphone is a very easy to use iPhone app to use as a baby monitor when you’re on a pinch. All you do is tell it who to call, set the noise threshold and turn it on. There is a setting for Sleep Interval, which is essentially how long the program should wait after the call has hung up before listening again. I usually set mine for one minute which gives me enough time to get to the baby.

If your iPhone receives a call, Babyphone will resume after the call goes to voicemail. The app will also work when the iPhone goes into sleep mode. Just make sure that you turn the phone on silent (don’t want a call waking up the baby!) and that you have a good cell signal.

For anyone with a baby and an iPhone, I think this is a must-buy. This is a handy solution for short-term travel situations.

Snapshot
- Easy to use, simple setup
- Cute design
- Inexpensive
- Works well

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