[blparent] Most accessible baby monitors (and thermometer)

[Niko C.]

Hi-

We got the Angelcare Video, Movement and Sound monitor. It is a standard
non WIFI baby monitor with one nursery and one handheld unit. It has
physical buttons for turning the unit on/off, controlling the volume, and
talking to the baby, but the rest is operated through the touch screen.
This is okay for us since my wife can see, and we live in an apartment, so
there'll never be a need for more than one of us to have a hand held unit
to hear or see the baby, but I realize this will not work for everyone.

I had initially thought about the WIFI baby monitor, or a DYI security
camera solution, but I chose not to go that route for a couple of reasons.
For one, it offers us personally no benefit. Like I said before, there is
no real reason for both of us to ever need to have a handheld unit, since
we live in an apartment, and even if we didn't, it would generally be
assumed that the one with the unit would either get the baby when they cry,
or ask the other person to do so. Secondly, I've seen no solution that uses
strong, "trust no one" encryption; this means end-to-end encryption where
no third party has the key. This is of utmost importance to me, because I
don't want anyone to be able to listen in on our home, or talk to the baby
from some random place on the Internet, both of which have happened more
than once with these solutions. Even with the security camera solution,
I've heard of several cameras that have been found to have a default
password, or exploit allowing anyone with limited technical skills to
search for the cameras and then view and control them. All of these
solutions use the internet. I had initially thought that some WIFI baby
monitors just used your wireless network as a means to talk to the
handheld, but didn't connect to them over the internet, but I've so far
found none that actually work this way. This means that if your internet
service is down, so too is your baby monitor, not an inconvenience I'm
willing to unwittingly experience in the middle of the night, when my baby
is crying and nobody is coming to see what is wrong because someone tripped
over a cable in Comcast's data center. Finally, I like using my phone. As
far as I know, if you take a phone call, you don't hear or see the baby
monitor app. If you want to play music, or watch a video on Youtube, same
thing happens. Too inconvenient. The only benefits manufacturers offer when
selling these monitors is that Grandma and Grandpa can see the baby too
from their home. If you can find one person who actually thinks this is a
benefit, please let me know, as this person needs to be studied. :)

I don't want to say all of this to detour you from finding a clever
solution for monitoring your baby, but simply because I think  it might be
helpful to think about before you go down that road. If you find some WIFI,
but non internet using solution that works well for you, please let me know
as I'd be interested in playing around with it.

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 7:50 AM, Steve Repsher via blparent <
blparent at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> My wife and I are expecting our first child in a couple months, and being
> the computer nerd and engineer of the two of us along with being visually
> impaired, I took on the task of finding a baby monitor that would be
> accessible to me without taking away any "sight" features from her (e.g.
> video is a requirement).  Instead of going with a typical baby monitor with
> a single receiver, I'm planning to go the more techie route and buy an
> IP/security camera, connect it to my home network, and use our phones and
> tablet as receivers.  There is plenty of info on the web about this more
> DIY approach, but nothing about the accessibility of the smartphone/tablet
> apps that would be used to control everything.
>
> So, without me wasting time and energy on going through testing all of
> them, I thought I'd ask the members of this list for suggestions on what
> worked for them and what didn't with this approach.  All comments are
> welcome!
>
> And while I'm on the subject of accessible baby products, what's the
> consensus on the best talking baby thermometer? (I know, the choices aren't
> exactly abundant).
>
> Thanks for your time!
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> blparent mailing list
> blparent at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blparent_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> blparent:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blparent_nfbnet.org/nik62591%40gmail.com
>



-- 
Niko Carpenter