The future of baby monitors?

The latest concept baby product from the design conscious Danish is the Sikker. You’d be wrong to think it was something to do with vomiting. Sikker is Danish for safety. In fact its a baby monitor, radio, alarm clock and watch rolled into one.

One bracelet stays on the baby; the other on the parent. The units work in tandem with the base station to transmit basic biometric data about baby’s condition like temperature. The units also transmit sounds and even remotely play music for baby.

The whole unit is very stylish and would appeal to the techies amongst us. It’s a great idea, but we just have a few reservations. How long would the battery life be? We would also want to know what the range/power is. Particularly as the transmitter is so close to the baby! And would the sound be clear if baby or parent are lying on the monitor during sleep?

But this is where the industry should be moving – toward intuitive, non-intrusive monitors … as long as they work as baby monitors.

More information on  http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/03/19/sikker/

When a Dog is better than a Baby Monitor

The KESQ.COM News Channel 3′s Elyse Miller wrote a report about a family who normally use a Baby Monitor to ensure they know if their 9 year old daughter Makenzie is having one of the life threatening seizures she suffers with.

Recently the family received a “Seizure Response Dog” called Disco from Canine Assistance. This marvellous dog is trained to recognise when a person is having a seizure and will do everything it can to alert others of the problem. The dog will find someone else, run around in circles barking, and then literally pull the person toward the individual suffering the seizure.

Within 10 days of receiving Disco she has already saved Makenzie’s life when she had a seizure by attracting her sister’s attention and bringing her to her stricken sister.

If that isn’t impressive enough, the dog has also been trained to open doors, close doors and even to use the phone!!! Everything that might help the dog to raise the attention of someone to come help.

We thought it was interesting that Baby Monitors can help parents to look after older children with epilepsy, but found it fascinating that dogs can be trained so well and literally help save lives.

Man’s life saved by Baby Monitor

A reader has just pointed us to this news item on the BBC News website from last month.

The item reports on a man who had a heart attack in his bedroom. His wife downstairs in the house heard him gasping for breath via their Baby Monitor. The transmitting unit was on the landing which enabled her to hear him. She gave him CPR and after an unprecedented 18 minutes of not breathing for himself, was resuscitated by the ambulance crew. A heart warming story I’m sure you’ll agree.

However, it also highlights a ‘favourite topic’ of ours here at TheBestBabyMonitors blog, the importance of using secure digital monitors…

If a Baby Monitor on a landing can pick up a man gasping for breath, imagine how easily it will pick up a couple in the throws of passion!

So remember – if you aren’t using a secure DECT Baby Monitor, then you could very easily be transmitting your own late-night erotic radio station to your neighbours!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8505038.stm

Baby Monitors to translate cries

The Internation Journal of Biometrics recently published an article by Hiroshima International University researchers. The researchers claim to have created a computer program that analyses a childs cry and identifies what the child is trying to communicate.

The researchers admit that they are relying on the Parents’ judgement as to what the cry means to determine the success of their software.

We here at TheBestBabyMonitors blog believe that although this might sound great, it’s unlikely to be as good as the instinctual judgement a Parent can make as to the needs of their child.

There could possibly be a use for it in the context of Baby Sitting as a kind of ‘proxy’ for the Parents experience, but we’ll reserve judgement until we actually get to test one for ourselves.