Baby monitor iPhone app calls you when baby cries
A baby monitor iPhone app:
Monitor your sleeping baby with this iPhone app. Simply place the iPhone near your sleeping baby, if it detects noise, it places a phone call to the number of your choice, you can then listen in for activity from your baby. Great for when you are on the go or traveling, no need to pack your regular baby monitor. One feature that makes this application exceptional is that the monitor has unlimited range!(Via TUAW)Even use it to monitor when older kids arrive home from school, etc. The applications are unlimited. It also will detect if your baby picks up the phone. Great for curious toddlers that wake up from their nap without making noise. A fantastic value at only 99 cents.
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So an iPhone app that will allow you to leave your iPhone in one place and then somehow you will get a call to tell you your baby is crying somewhere else?
Isn't the whole deal with the iPhone that it's cool if you carry it around and do things with it? What's the point?
A fantastic value at only 99 cents.
plus an ADDITIONAL $300 for another iPhone.
I agree with Jack... It's not really accurate to say that this app is 99 cents. It's 99 cents plus the cost of the iPhone that you're leaving behind, dedicated to perform as a baby monitor. And the account and phone number it uses.
What if the kid makes toll calls to 900 numbers?
"use it to monitor when older kids arrive home from school"
Wouldn't that fall under this statute:
Wash. Rev. Code � 9.73.030: All parties generally must consent to the interception or recording of any private communication, whether conducted by telephone, telegraph, radio or face-to-face, to comply with state law. The all-party consent requirement can be satisfied if "one party has announced to all other parties engaged in the communication or conversation, in any reasonably effective manner, that such communication or conversation is about to be recorded or transmitted." In addition, if the conversation is to be recorded, the requisite announcement must be recorded as well.
Pick your state here:
http://www.rcfp.org/taping/states.html
You fail to mention the coolest part of this new app -- the quantum gateway that allows your iPhone to exist simultaneously at home in your nursery AND wherever you might be roaming.
Which gives a whole new cosmic meaning to the common phrase "You're breaking up . . . you're breaking up."
Think of it this way, you're at your relative's house, and the baby's room is upstairs. You're still at the house, so you just leave your iPhone upstairs and set it to call the home phone should the baby make a noise.
Voila, a portable baby monitor.
Jeez you maroons - how can you not see the intended audience? Putting the baby down for a nap and having a monitor with you means that as long as there's a second phone around (cell or not), you have a baby monitor. This sounds great for traveling or visiting family and friends.
This is almost the future - which means that while we don't all have jetpacks, it ain't tough to find two phones in one place.
If the app doesn't suit you or your needs, step back and consider that you and your needs perhaps aren't the only ones that developers are interested in. What's with all the consternation?
And then someone calls and wakes the baby...
I wonder if it gives you a different ring if the baby is choking?
Obviously the plan is that each new baby be given an iphone at birth.
I think it's great! Now I can go and run errands all about town while my baby sleeps, knowing that the iPhone is there watching over him! I'm getting a lot more done!
#13, damn you had my idea and you added funny!
Really, how far are you gonna go? i don't think unlimited range is a feature so much as very big problem, maybe even liability. What happens when some 13 year old baby sitter or knucklehead mother thinks they can wander around with there friend safe knowing the iphone will call them if baby wakes up. this is just a bad idea at least a normal baby monitor is always on so you can listen to everything.
This is very cool -- imagine having a baby monitor in your pocket at all times, in case you drop in at Grandma's house and put your kid down for a nap!
I bought it and set it up, and after I left my phone idle for a few minutes (running the monitor) it went to sleep. Loud noises didn't wake it up. Damn.
BUT: if you jailbreak your phone (it's a safe, point-and-click process these days, at hackthatphone.com), you can install a non-Apple-endorsed app called "insomnia" that will prevent the phone from sleeping, even when the screen is shut off.
On a side note, it's been pretty cool to see a whole shadow economy of iphone apps start up over at Cydia (a non-Apple-endorsed apps store). The phone hackage business has become just that, a business like a grey-market app store. Supporting the hack site is a loss leader for the Cydia people, who use a similar business model to the app store, but with additional revenue from ads. Their killer apps for me were sshd and the video recorder, but other interesting stuff includes MAME, a nintendo emulator, a bunch of call-management software, and of course a huge plethora of themes and wallpaper.
All of the examples of "grandma's house" are laughable at best. Most dedicated baby monitors are cheap, and it's a rare situation that's described at best.
What this really comes down to is a very disturbing trend: Tons of products being marketed to new parents that claim to be "helpful" and "keep your kid safe" when all they do is reinforce a parent's vanity (at best) or paranoia (at worst).
I work in high-tech, but this is just about on the same level of use as someone telling their wife they're buying an HDTV or "education" when the reality is they just want to use it for watching movies and sports.
At 99 cents + $300 it's a joke.
@ #13
Preventing some thirteen year-old babysitter or a dumbass parent from doing something stupid is a silly reason to bag on this app. We'd probably be better off if these people weren't allowed to own sharp objects, watch TV (or children, for that matter)- but who's going to be the judge?
You can't stop stupid.
Unlimited range means more that just distance. It also means that corner of the house that your regular baby monitor just can't reach without lots of static.
Also, if you want this monitor to be always on, you have that option. And, you can easily take it with you anywhere. It's a pain to haul a baby monitor setup with you to a family member's house. It's easy to bring you cell phone.
Battery life?
or it can be used as a spying device, hide the phone in a place where conversation might take place. when the monitor switches on the conversation will be sent to a recording device remotely
1) You leave this by baby. Baby wakes up, isn't crying, but needs something to teeth on.
2) Remember that one phone number in Argentina that you have in your phonebook?
3) You get your monthly bill--big laffs!
Reminds me of a prank I always wanted to play when I lived a couple of doors down from a lovely little romantic French restaurant. It was so tempting, when the babe was asleep for the night by 7pm, to head down there for a nice meal with my husband. We never did this without a sitter, but did joke often about the looks we would get if we set up the baby monitor on our table and had someone start making crying noises on it.
Could actually have gotten away with this more discretely and with better reception than a baby monitor if we had thought to use our cell phones.
Of course, you don't need an app to simply have an ongoing call between you and your spouse's phone and leave one behind to monitor.
FWIW, when I got a puppy, I brought him to work and left him in a crate in the car. Had the iPhone been around in 1999, I wouldn't have had to purchase a baby monitor to listen for when he woofed to go potty.
Now regarding the app. the tone of comments, though, made me think it was as if people were wanting to go out on the town for the night or travel to Pittsburgh or the mall while leaving the baby home alone. Yup, modern day parental solution to regretted births. Yay. :(
@#16 Jack:
"Most dedicated baby monitors are cheap"
True, but most dedicated baby monitors are not easy to pack. The wife and I haven't yet traveled by air with our 1-year-old, and god willing we never will, but given the need to minimize luggage for air travel, this would be helpful.
It still ain't gonna get me to buy this $300.99 toy, though.
cool app, but it does mean i need to purchase a dedicated iPhone for this (I need my iPhone with me at all times)
orima,
Your blog link can go on your profile page. Thanks.
I was recently visiting friends near Yosemite, and I didn't bring my baby monitor. Turned out their house was way bigger than I thought, and there was no way I would have been able to hear my toddler if she woke up calling for me. I spent the evening having to check on her every few minutes. If I'd had this program on my iPhone, I wouldn't have had to worry. Ah well!
#22, it's generally a bad idea to leave pets (or children) in parked vehicles. Particularly in summer, temperatures inside cars parked in the sun can reach dangerously high temperatures rather quickly.
Gotta repeat what Sabik said. Dogs die in cars, hot or cool. That is not a cool thing to ever, ever do.
The risk of asphyxiation is stupidly high, not to mention the poor pup being left alone!
@Mark F
Hey! Don't be lazy! You didn't just get this from TUAW.com, you got it from http://www.tuaw.com/2008/11/14/great-iphone-applications-for-parents/. That's like citing reference material from "Wikipedia.com".
loyaleagle,
Thanks for the link. Here's one for you.
I think these reviews are super entertaining. I found myself laughing out loud!
This is great, the people who dont get it are morons or dont have kids.
You put the Iphone by the baby, then grab your cordless house phone and go outside and chat with the neighbor over the fence or water the lawn or whatever.