My wife and I have just recently had our first child and I’m looking at getting a decent baby monitor (or security camera) setup.

Our place is not very big at all (think a studio with a separate bedroom/bathroom). I was given a cheap security camera to use for now but I want to start planning for when we move into a bigger apartment (security cameras) and a generally better system for monitoring our baby when we are in another room and cannot hear.

Should I invest in a baby monitor now or would it be better to invest in a decent security camera system instead?

I’m based in the EU and am quite tech-savvy so I don’t have a problem setting things up myself if it means a better system.

  • barkingspiders@infosec.pubEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    When our first child arrived I had a cheap IP cam lying around that I could flash with something I trusted and integrate into my other stuff (Homeassistant in this case). The camera didn’t really support a wired connection, only 2.4 wifi. This has probably been my single complaint about the setup generally. We live in a somewhat dense neighborhood and the surrounding 2.4GHz noise affects the stream quality, making it somewhat less reliable.

    I would say that if reliability and complexity are your biggest concerns go with one of the decent baby monitors. Very reliable, zero complexity. We didn’t find the reliability to be an issue in practice and I didn’t mind the complexity. I would say that if you go the IP cam route, do your best to go wired or at least 5GHz.

  • proudblond@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    It’s been a long time (my kids are 8 and 10) so I’m sure features have changed but I figured I’d chime in with my favorite baby monitor feature. Not all of them had it but I found it invaluable.

    I think ours were Samsungs? And they had a “vox” feature. Essentially, if the room was quiet, the monitor screen and microphone would turn off. If there was a noise, it would pop back on. (In this way, it’s different than an audio-only monitor which I presume is on all the time.)This allowed me to sleep (when sleep was available…rarely with our first) and be awoken when needed. I was way too sleep deprived for Nest Cam alerts on my phone to actually get through to me, especially since they popped up once; if I missed it then, it wasn’t going to keep nudging me.

    That said, the monitors themselves were cheaply manufactured junk, and not inexpensive. I liked the vox feature enough that when the first one started having problems with the antenna, we bought a second one and immediately taped the antenna down. Hopefully you have better options out there these days.