4 ms·

The trouble with hacking these things together yourself is you need to be sure they're reliable. Can you be certain that at 3:46 in the morning that you'll be

The trouble with hacking these things together yourself is you need to be sure they're reliable. Can you be certain that at 3:46 in the morning that you'll be able to pull this up on your phone from bed and it will just work? What about if you are out and left the kid with a babysitter - can you reliably access from outside? I went through quite a few Amazon cheapo RRSP cameras and they would invariably just stop working randomly in the most scary way for a baby monitor: they'd freeze frame and there is no way to know if the baby is just still or if the feed has hung. I thought about perhaps rigging up some infrared flashing LED or something but this was all a lot of effort and time and energy that as a new parent I just didn't have. In the end I got some Nest cameras and have had zero downtime and they just work at home and when out and about. Say what you want about Google but I probably trust them more than most places to not let the cameras get hacked trivially.

lostlogin 3y ago
> Can you be certain that at 3:46 in the morning that you'll be able to pull this up on your phone from bed and it will just work? What about if you are out and left the kid with a babysitter - can you reliably access from outside? It needs to work and reliability matters, but isn’t mission critical, life or death. It is possible to raise a child without a baby monitor.
- mattlondon 3y ago
  Depends on the child. If you have a totally normal healthy baby sure, do what you want. Others have complex needs.
  - rcoveson 3y ago
    If your baby's needs don't allow for a monitor that might fail, then don't put your baby to sleep in a different room.
mcpackieh 3y ago
The chance of a technical failure and an emergency both happening at the same time is not zero, but it's also pretty low. Most of what baby monitors do is provide peace of mind because most of the time everything will turn out to be fine.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Can you be certain that at 3:46 in the morning that you'll be able to pull this up on your phone from bed and it will just work? If not... I'm walking to the kids room to check. Which is not such an uncommon task that a slight risk of additional instances is a big deal. > What about if you are out and left the kid with a babysitter - can you reliably access from outside. If I left the kid with a babysitter it is because I uave sufficient level of trust in thr babysitter, and a baby monitor accessible from outside is a risk, not a benefit. > Say what you want about Google but I probably trust them more than most places to not let the cameras get hacked trivially. I trust a baby monitor that isn't exposed on a network more than one managed by Google.

lostlogin 3y ago

> Can you be certain that at 3:46 in the morning that you'll be able to pull this up on your phone from bed and it will just work? What about if you are out and left the kid with a babysitter - can you reliably access from outside? It needs to work and reliability matters, but isn’t mission critical, life or death. It is possible to raise a child without a baby monitor.

mattlondon 3y ago
Depends on the child. If you have a totally normal healthy baby sure, do what you want. Others have complex needs.
- rcoveson 3y ago
  If your baby's needs don't allow for a monitor that might fail, then don't put your baby to sleep in a different room.

mcpackieh 3y ago

The chance of a technical failure and an emergency both happening at the same time is not zero, but it's also pretty low. Most of what baby monitors do is provide peace of mind because most of the time everything will turn out to be fine.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> Can you be certain that at 3:46 in the morning that you'll be able to pull this up on your phone from bed and it will just work? If not... I'm walking to the kids room to check. Which is not such an uncommon task that a slight risk of additional instances is a big deal. > What about if you are out and left the kid with a babysitter - can you reliably access from outside. If I left the kid with a babysitter it is because I uave sufficient level of trust in thr babysitter, and a baby monitor accessible from outside is a risk, not a benefit. > Say what you want about Google but I probably trust them more than most places to not let the cameras get hacked trivially. I trust a baby monitor that isn't exposed on a network more than one managed by Google.