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Show HN: AI Baby Monitor – local Video-LLM that beeps when safety rules break
Hi HN! I built AI Baby Monitor – a tiny stack (Redis + vLLM + Streamlit) that watches a video stream and a YAML list of safety rules.
If the model spots a rule being broken it plays beep sound, so you can quickly glance over and check on your baby.
Why?
When we bought a crib for our daughter, the first thing she tried was climbing over the rail :/
I got a bit paranoid about constantly watching her over, so I thought of a helper that can *actively* watch the baby, while parents could stay *semi-actively* alert.
It’s meant to be an additional set of eyes, and *not* a replacement for the adult. Thus, just a beep sound and not phone notifications.
How it works
* *stream_to_redis.py* captures video stream frames → Redis streams
* *run_watcher.py* pulls the latest N frames, injects them + the rules into a prompt and hits a local *vLLM* server running *Qwen 2.5 VL*
* Model returns structured JSON (`should_alert`, `reasoning`, `awareness_level`)
* If `should_alert=True` → `playsound` beep
* Streamlit page displays both camera and LLM logs
- temporarything 1y agoGreat idea! Is it possible to run this on latest Macbook Pros? No GPU unfortunately :)
- dghlsakjg 1y agoThe latest MacBook pros all have gpu cores built in.
- skull8888888 1y agowhy qwen 2.5 specifically?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rokset3 1y agowill it be able to process sounds, so it can beep while baby crying? i work with music in headphones, would be nice
- techjamie 1y agoThis could probably be achieved very simply by a device with a microphone and a script that just checks the noise level. Either checking for consistently high noise levels, or if you want to get fancy, maybe do some heuristic stuff to pick out crying specifically. Might be a cool project to do with a cheap microphone and an SBC.
- throwaway173738 1y agoThis is how a lot of baby monitors do it. Mine goes off if someone with a loud muffler drives by too which is convenient because my son will frequently be awakened by that so I get a little extra time.
- clarkcharlie03 1y agoPretty cool - I might try this with my kiddo
- up-n-atom 1y agoPerfect now we can put more good willing parents in jail for “neglect”. For every good idea, a bad idea will be born.
- bilsbie 1y agoI had this same idea for monitoring my pool while I’m away. Watching for things in pool, low or high water levels, cloudy water, stray dogs, etc. There are actually hundreds of applications for this basic idea. Common sense applied to a video feed.
- ozzydave 1y agoI want this for pedestrians and cyclists at intersections, and particularly HAWK beacons.
- csmoak 1y agohttps://www.roundabout.tech/ https://www.roundabout.tech/ tackles this problem
- throwup238 1y agoThere’s an entire Curb Your Enthusiasm season about that. (Just get a fence is the conclusion)
- bronco21016 1y agoI've thought of the same for my lake shore, which is very much not a "just build a fence" situation. We have 50 ft of lake shore with neighbors on either side. Assuming I fenced my 50 ft there is still a path around said fence on either side. At the very most I could gate the dock, but again, there are about 8 other docs readily available.
- Edmond 1y agotry Watchman: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44087499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44087499 I am the developer and happy to answer questions. You can basically setup your own instructions and setup you own observation solutions...you can imagine everything from security to farm operations, the sky's the limit.
- epolanski 1y agoAre we moving to a world where AI will be fed so much of our cameras for analysis?
- th3h4mm3r 1y agoWhat about hardware?
- dtgriscom 1y agoAbsolutely. I want a "Cat on the Counter" detector, but a) the hardware needs to be cheap, and b) it can't take more than a few seconds to analyze a frame.
- alibova 1y agoTotally doable! Raspberry pi and YOLO.
- throwaway173738 1y agoEspecially doable since the owner can probably get lots of pictures of their cat in different poses and lighting conditions and really overfit on their cat instead of just any cat.
- thenthenthen 1y agoHow would you go about to tune a model using your own images? Any easy/clear methods (e.g. $ llama.ccp -tune ./mycatpicturesfolder )
- zeenolife 1y ago+1
- zeenolife 1y agothe gemma 3n looks promising. Btw, it doesn't really sound like the problem needs a video as an input to llm. Feels like sending an image is okay. So that makes it less demanding(?)
- jxcole 1y agoIANAL but I would be scared of getting sued. For example, if I try to give a perfectly good car seat to good will they refuse to take it for liability reasons. Baby safety is serious business.
- worldsayshi 1y agoYeah it's an interesting project but it seems there should be lower stakes use cases that should be tried first.
- NitpickLawyer 1y ago> Baby safety is serious business. Are "regular" baby monitors any more complicated than a dumbed down cheapest you can build it walkie-talkie? Society really needs to stop wanting other people to be responsible for their actions. The choice of what devices you use on your kids should first and foremost be on you. AI or no AI. Fear mongering with literal "someone think of the kids" is getting old, IMO.
- itishappy 1y agoI don't agree this is a "think of the children" issue. Nobody is saying "don't use this on your kids" they're saying "understand if by sharing this you might be exposing yourself to potential financial consequences." Baby safety is serious business. * Summer Infant Baby Monitor Overheating Settlement – $10 million after reports of overheating monitors leading to fire hazards. * Angelcare Monitor Recall Lawsuit – $7 million settlement due to defective cord placement that led to strangulation risks. * Levana Baby Monitor Overheating Lawsuit – $5.5 million awarded in cases of monitors causing burns to children. * VTech Baby Monitor Battery Defect Settlement – $6.2 million after reports of exploding batteries causing fire risks. * Motorola Baby Monitor Signal Failure Class Action – $4.8 million settlement after claims of poor signal reception leading to missed emergencies. * Owlet Smart Sock Monitor Lawsuit – $6.5 million awarded due to inaccurate heart rate readings that caused false alarms and panic among parents. * Graco Digital Monitor Lawsuit – $5 million settlement after a lawsuit citing defective monitors that stopped functioning during critical moments. * Philips Avent Baby Monitor Lawsuit – $4.2 million after several reports of overheating and potential fire hazards. * Samsung Baby Monitor Fire Hazard Settlement – $3.5 million awarded due to incidents of overheating leading to home fires. * Infant Optics Monitor Class Action – $4 million settlement after claims of faulty batteries and wiring causing sudden shutdowns during use. https://www.personalinjurysandiego.org/product-liability/safety-1st-baby-monitors-lawsuits/ https://www.personalinjurysandiego.org/product-liability/saf...
- amelius 1y agoEven if this fails only in 0.1% of cases, given enough users this will kill babies. (Of course you should compare this to humans, but in any case, do the math! And get a good lawyer.)
- natosaichek 1y agoThis thing will not kill babies. That's like saying seatbelts kill people because they don't save everyone in a car accident. It is precisely this attitude that prevents good things from flourishing - the idea that if something is involved however tangentially in a safety important subsystem it must have perfect results. No, we should not have this view. If something is net positive, we should promote it.
- dsr_ 1y agoWhen people decide that the nannycam works, they will rely on it. Then, when it fails, their inaction will kill babies. It is amazing/horrifying to me how many people are intent on reincenting the reasons why we have UL, the FDA, the FCC, traffic laws, seatbelts, electrical codes, fire marshals and unions.
- icoder 1y agoWhat inactions? Apart from creating safe conditions beforehand (but perhaps that is your point), once my kid is asleep there's not much more I can do? Most of that time I'm sleeping myself.
- bethekidyouwant 1y agoIf your daughter can climb out of the crib, then she is too big for the crib. Also, if I accept your premise that a baby sleeping is inherently dangerous, then this is just an added layer of safety. It doesn’t remove safety. But really safety is a highly lame way of framing this. what you want is more hours asleep so you have this thing try to hypnotize the baby with lights, sound, vibration, and it only alerts the parent(s) if it fails Eventually it could just straight up talk to your three year-old read it a second bedtime story, dispense a cup of water convince it not to hang out with the bad kids at school etc
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- epolanski 1y agoHow about judging the software rather than speculating on what's in OP's mind?
- alibova 1y agoLove this! A long time ago I built a cat detector to keep my cat out of the baby play area, this was before modern AI systems and I'm sure it could be so much better now. https://www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/baby-proofing-raspberry-pi-machine-learning-twilio-programmable-sms https://www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/baby-proofing-raspberry-pi...
- amelius 1y agoReminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIbkLjjlMV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIbkLjjlMV8
- DonHopkins 1y agoThat would work great to keep babies from peeing on things, too!
- delichon 1y agoA small pilot study for more efficient nanny state technology. Just add scale.
- jerf 1y agoThe state is several steps ahead of you. Have you wondered why the push for AI all of a sudden, everywhere, all at once, really quite far ahead of its actual capabilities to help most of us? Huge monies thrown at it? An effectively-instantaneous turnaround on decades of anti-nuclear sentiment just to power AI? It's not because it's going to be good for us.
- dang 1y ago"Don't be snarky." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html p.s. If your comment was intended as a joke on the word 'nanny' then I take this back.
- delichon 1y agoI don't mean it to be a dismissal or snark. It wouldn't be as terrifying if I could do that. On the contrary it is remarkable how directly this exact baby monitor model can be scaled up to an automated intelligent panopticon. (Thank you, yes, baby monitor -> nanny state)
- DonHopkins 1y agoAt least give them the benefit of the Doubtfire!
- protocolture 1y agoYou hardly need AI at the state scale. They can just process footage at regular speed.
- mywacaday 1y agoI remember when we were preparing to have our first kid 10 years ago we bought a monitor with the pad underthe mattress on the advice of other parents. As a former cpr instructor I was dumbfounded when I realised that parents would spend 100s on monitors but not one person had bothered to learn infant cpr.
- OtherShrezzing 1y agoAny reliable places online to learn? Or is it a course that you should only do in person?
- coherentpony 1y agoI did an in-person class. I highly recommend it.
- sdoering 1y agoI do not know about infant CPR. But I would never trust myself administering CPR to even an adult, after watching something online. I have had regular first responder refresher courses at work every two years - and i have to say: I always relearned something every two years, because not having done it (luckily no-one needed my first aid) meant I had forgotten quite a bit in those two years. Especially how it feels to administer CPR. and how to position the person. So not sure where you are located, but in Germany, you can volunteer to become a first aid responder for your company - they love that, because from a certain size on they must have enough of us. And you get a certificate every time you retrain (you need to do this regularly every two years, as said). We even once hat a baby puppet for training, but I was not able to test it that time (as it was not mandatory, I wanted that the parents actually had the chance - or those planning for kids).
- d1sxeyes 1y agoCPR is one of those things where you hope never to have to be the best in the room at. Thank you for volunteering.
- 1y ago
- yusina 1y agoHow reliable is this, i.e., what is the failure rate? False positives / negatives?
- zeenolife 1y agoIt's a bit tricky, the fp rate is not ideal, it does wrongly beep from time to time. I haven't really had a serious false negative, but did have some true positives :) About the hard numbers, it's tough to test it quantitatively, because there's not a lot of data for babies in danger :D and I hope it stays that way In general, I'm hoping that the open models will get better, there has been a lot of acceleration in video modality recently
- Stem0037 1y ago[dead]
- laurent_du 1y agoAs a parent of several kids, I have no idea what is the use case for this. When does it ever happen that a kid too small to be safe by himself has to be let alone, with a camera to record him? My eyes are a good enough camera, and my brain holds a reasonable list of safety rules. What problem does this solve that isn't already near perfectly solved by my existence?
- jdminhbg 1y ago> When does it ever happen that a kid too small to be safe by himself has to be let alone, with a camera to record him? Nap time? Overnight?
- sokoloff 1y agoThe same set of problems that is solved by an audio or AV baby monitor. Surely you didn’t have the baby in the same room as an awake adult 24 hours per day for 730 straight days, right?
- Edmond 1y agoWhat about the AI playground monitor?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44087499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44087499 I am the developer :) That is a demo of course but I think what sets LLM tools like this apart from what came before is that implemented correctly, the user gets to decide what it is, and can change the meaning at any time, in other words what it should be looking for at any time. That is of course if the solution is implementation correctly. There is immense potential for these type of capabilities if they are done in a way that leaves the specific use case implementation up to users.
- victorbjorklund 1y agoYou never ever sleep? Did your children have an awake adult watching them 24/7 all year around? I doubt most people can have that situation since that would require a team of people taking shifts sitting looking at the child
- epolanski 1y ago
- bigmattystyles 1y agoI’m dumbfounded at the negative comments in here. Read the git read me, it’s a hobby for op, not some crazy commercial venture and he makes it clear it’s to help in the event one gets distracted for a few seconds. The only valid comment is his daughter being likely too big for her crib, but sheesh lay off op’s approach to actually trying something. Ps: am not op’s alt account.
- zeenolife 1y agoCheers! Yes, I tried to stress it hard that it's in no way a replacement for an adult, just an additional eye as a safeguard
- throwaway314155 1y agoThe only negative comment that is perhaps overly negative is the one mentioning "killing babies" (but they make a good point still). Everyone else's criticism is effectively entirely warranted even if it's just a hobby project if only because the criticisms are mostly pretty mild and reasonable things like "don't try to automate parenting with tech that still isn't ready yet".
- husband4412 1y agoTools that can cause harm deserve scrutiny, regardless if OP make money or not. Also who knows ? With enough popularity, OP might launch this into a startup.
- diggan 1y ago> Tools that can cause harm deserve scrutiny How on earth would this project, by itself, cause harm? Sure, inattentive parents can lead to children hurting themselves, but that can happen while browsing gmail, or even when frigate is setup, does that mean gmail and frigate cause harm to children? Obviously not.
- itishappy 1y agoGmail and Frigate aren't AI Baby Monitors. If you use Frigate as a baby monitor, it's absolutely worth scrutinizing your setup. The exact same thing can be said of a human nanny too. You wouldn't hire someone with no research.
- Foreignborn 1y agoway too many people get hung up on the idea OP led with. what OP has is a fully self hosted, private video feed that can alert for more sophisticated events like: - is anything happening that shouldn’t be? - are things not where they’re supposed to be? - has anything fallen? (plants, things into the pool) good job OP. i’m going to take a look at this in the next couple months.
- 3abiton 1y agoThis is such a fun project! I am curious about the hardware used? Or is the LLM hosted on a remote server?
- zeenolife 1y agoHey! It's fully local, I was trying to build it privacy first. All the things related to kids are very sensitive, I didn't want to send anything to cloud. But you can still run the inference remotely, changing that should be just a matter of changing the address.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- turtlebits 1y agoSorry, this is an interesting but terrible idea. If your crib is unsafe or undersized, the solution is to make it safe by adding guardrails or buying a safer/correct sized model. Or remove the hazard entirely by putting their bed on the floor. Adding AI/tech to catch deficiencies is not the right way to go about it. You're willing to risk injury/death in case the AI is wrong, you don't hear the beep, or there are too many false positives and you end up ignoring it? This is the same thing as self driving. It seems good enough to that it takes your attention away - until it doesn't. And it's AI, not a model specifically trained on catching the issue.
- its-summertime 1y agoI usually replace all my fuses with plain wire, since I know not to plug broken things in in the first place.
- asachanfbd 1y agoThis sounds interesting, I would give it a try coming weekend.
- pabe 1y agoWhat a cool project with local processing! Will check it out, thanks!
- barbazoo 1y ago> When we bought a crib for our daughter, the first thing she tried was climbing over the rail Maybe get a proper crib then?!