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 was significantly smaller than a modern phone and had a loud speaker plus a really strong vibration mode. And if it lost the signal from the baby unit, it made a hell of a racket to let you know you were out of range. It also transmitted temperature. Can't say we ever had trouble with it running out of battery either.
I mean, I get the appeal of hacking just as much as the next guy. But IMO it makes no sense to hack on something like a baby monitor, where there is very little to be gained over off-the-shelf products, and where the consequences of a hardware or software failure can be that your baby is left crying unattended for a long time.
Go grab an ESP32 and some WS2813s to pimp your stroller instead, much more fun.
> your baby is left crying unattended for a long time.
How is it possible?
Are people leaving babies in far away corners of the house and walk outside with baby left alone?
For me baby monitor is to inform me sooner when baby is starting to cry so I can comfort it faster and make it sleep again.
I have never ever been 100% dependent on baby monitors. I will always eventual hear when my baby is crying, I do it right now (I don't use baby monitors anymore because they were useless and loud and didn't have visual feedbacks).
If your partner isn't at home, and you're doing laundry in the basement while the baby sleeps on the 2nd floor, you definitely need it.
Also we let the babies sleep outside, it is a tradition around here [1]. Then you need a baby monitor.
And when our first kid got to the age where she slept fairly reliably (close to a year), we did go over to visit friends next door. The baby monitor was still in range there, basically twenty seconds to walk from door to door. But I'll concede that it's fairly unusual to have good friends living that close.
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.
The baby unit was quite bulky and ran off wall power, but the parent unit was significantly smaller than a modern phone and had a loud speaker plus a really strong vibration mode. And if it lost the signal from the baby unit, it made a hell of a racket to let you know you were out of range. It also transmitted temperature. Can't say we ever had trouble with it running out of battery either.
I mean, I get the appeal of hacking just as much as the next guy. But IMO it makes no sense to hack on something like a baby monitor, where there is very little to be gained over off-the-shelf products, and where the consequences of a hardware or software failure can be that your baby is left crying unattended for a long time.
Go grab an ESP32 and some WS2813s to pimp your stroller instead, much more fun.