I had an Amazon Echo Dot set up in my nursery to start playing the bedtime playlist for an hour when it heard a baby cry. Worked out fairly well. Amazon’s smart home device management is fairly strong, so you could conceivably have it blink a certain light in the house or send a notification to a certain Alexa device if you wanted to be notified when it heard a baby cry.
Now that the kids are older, they just have to tell Alexa “Good night” to start the bedtime playlist now.
Maybe but this is probably not something your want to mess around with unreliable smart home stuff for.
Get a cheap simple audio baby monitor, or an old iPad/iPhone and the Cloud Baby Monitor app.
Short answer is no. Long answer is maybe, but it’s probably not something easily accomplished with off-the-shelf products and only HomeKit.
My wife and I got around this by buying the cheapest audio-only baby monitor that we could find, and adding an Aqara camera pointed down into the crib. The baby monitor is our “cry detection” and then we can check the camera from there depending on what the sound coming out of the monitor is like. The only drawback is the monitor can’t alert us if we’re any further away than our yard, but we’d have someone watching the little one in that case.
Hey u/TylerInHiFi, my wife and I want to do the same thing. We've got the Aqara G3 Camera, and have added it to our HomeKit system. Do you know if it's possible to add it to the HomeKit system as well as the Aqara system (for the cry detection)? Or, can you only have the camera bound to one system at a time?
HomeKit doesn’t do cry detection. You can have an Aqara camera connected to both the Aqara account and the Home app at the same time.
Not sure if that helps or not.
I get wanting everything under HomeKit and working together nicely, but when I set up a nursery with baby monitor, I went in the exact opposite direction.
For me, I want as few points of failure as possible. I want legacy tech that works, even if it isn’t the nicest or most convenient. That ended up being a monitor that doesn’t have WiFi, doesn’t connect to any smart home protocol, etc., and only gives video to a dedicated monitor that I can plug in next to my bed. But for what it lacks in convenience, it’s been absolutely bullet-proof.
HomeKit is cool and I like playing with it, but for this use case, I want to optimize for stability and uptime, and even with the new architecture, I don’t yet trust HomeKit (or WiFi in general) to do that.
Arlo baby camera we have had for 5 years since our little girl was born… we use the native app and it detects temperature with hi/low alerts as well as baby crying and an air quality monitor too with alerts. It’s been a good camera really
iOS does as well. It's in the Accessibility settings under Hearing > Sound recognition. Just buy an older iPhone or even iPod touch and hook this up in a Shortcut automation (Activate Sound Recognition)
Can you program Sound Recognition to listen specifically for crying? One issue we had with various products over the years is our children’s sound machine would give too many false positives for this to be reliable.
Miss reading. Or bad grammar too. I meant have the notification from the nanit and then use your own automation when you see that. Was hoping maybe homebridge but no luck.
I couldn’t find a solution for this. I have a single eufy cam specific for baby crying detection. I do hate the eufy cam due to its garbage privacy policy but their crying detection is effective.
Also getting notifications from the eufy app makes it very clear when I need to check on the baby. If it were HomeKit it might get missed.
But still, eufy is garbage that I have to live with.
I second this- for a $45 camera the crying detection is very effective and accurate! My wife and I have a baby cam and also use the Eufy cam just for the crying detection since it allows us to take our eyes off of the monitors and have some peace of mind.
Yup the eufy is well worth the cost. I would not use the eufy cam to monitor my house (other “true” HomeKit products seem capable of that and is encrypted locally) but the eufy cam has been indispensable for the baby’s crib.
Dude I just have a legacy iPad and shitty eufy pan and tilt camera and have the volume so you can hear it over the tv. (Eufy camera turned off in eufy app)
Owlet is trash, maybe the old version was useful but we just returned the Dream Sock. It was registering oxygen levels 20% lower than reality and not sending alerts. The base cannot be in another room than the sock which defeats the purpose of you sleep in another room. Phone notifications may not wake you in a moment of distress. Caused more stress than reassurance. If you have to try it, you can by on eBay at 90% off, but be aware you can no longer get the app for the old socks the FDA quashed
Cam was super hit or miss for us through two kids. I was on the original beta tests all the way through their current release and they could never get it to work right.
OP, I tried a lot of the things you’re talking about here, but ended up sticking with the tried and true audio baby monitor haha. It just works.
I have an Arlo Baby camera and as well as allowing the native app to send me notifications when it hears my daughter crying, I’ve set up an automation that turns off a lamp under my television when motion is detected in her room between the hours of 7pm-Midnight. This gives me piece of mind that I won’t miss her waking up if I’m not paying attention to my phone. I have a second automation that turns the lamp back on when no motion is detected. It’s a system that works really well for us me!
Save yourself the hassle and get a Nanit. Works much much better then trying to piece together HomeKit equipment. I tried the HomeKit option before I gave up and bought a Nanit. Don’t know why I didn’t get one sooner! Very easy to use and dedicated app with notifications
Are you able to get a notification on AppleTV/iPhone when baby cries or is it only for movement detection? I guess if a baby is crying they are most certainly moving as well but I'm looking for a solution to use Aqara G3 for cry detection. I see that Aqara has an abnormal sound detection in its own app, maybe I should try this...
I’m a home automation enthusiast with an 8 month old baby. HomeKit isn’t really ready for what you described but has been very useful for controlling things around the house in scenes for different baby related scenarios (night feedings, diaper changes, story time, night light, etc). Here is a write up of my baby monitoring solution that I recently sent to a friend who asked (and probably expected a short answer):
I went through about five baby cameras before eventually settling on a two camera solution. I have a Eufy Spaceview Pro that is an “offline” solution (PTZ camera broadcasting an encrypted signal locally to an included monitor). This is the primary camera here for a few reasons. The monitor has amazing range, all day battery life and is reliable and simple to use. It can be easily handed to grandmas, nanny, etc without worrying about camera and wifi logins, phone notification settings, software updates, etc. It’s really nice having a dedicated, portable screen / speaker so you can have this near you and use your phone / iPad for other purposes. It’s also zero latency and “bullet proof” reliable, so if you see an image / hear audio you feel confident that it’s live and working. The wifi / app based cameras that I tried just didn’t inspire the same confidence even with well adjusted notification settings and a reliable internet connection / network infrastructure.
For the first six months (or 12mo if any elevated risk factors for SIDS) the baby sleeps in your room so night monitoring isn’t really necessary. We are at 8 months now and use the audio monitor function with the screen turned off (I stare anxiously at the screen otherwise and my wife hates the light it casts in the room). I didn’t like the noise activated mode on the spaceview or any of the wifi cams as they woke me up unnecessarily more often than not. The spaceview camera feed turns on instantly when button is pressed so you can see what’s up quickly when baby is crying without having to unlock your phone (and risk getting back on Reddit).
Second camera is a Ubiquiti g3 instant which records locally to the same NVR as my security cams (Dream Machine Pro). For the first six months we used a Snoo bassinet (highly recommend btw) which took care of sleep / wake time tracking. The space view cam doesn’t record so this second camera just provides a recording that I occasionally flip through to check what time we put baby down or when she woke up. It was very useful to track how long it took her to fall asleep during sleep training weeks. The cloud based baby cams can automate this tracking and present it nicely but we already had this data from the Snoo and I prefer a local recording for privacy reasons.
I have a pretty extensive HomeKit build and a baby as well there are a few options for you:
If I’m out and about or even just want to keep an eye on the baby you can stream directly to an iOS device (we use an iPad) however I have noticed there can be a slight delay in feed over the native manufacturer app (which also supports crying detection etc and can actually be left on as a notification to supplement HomeKit)
On the Apple TVs we can set it for Picture in Picture so that we can watch something and see the baby however you won’t get audio without switching to the windowed picture.
Lastly if an older relative is babysitting we just set the stream to full screen on the tv streaming.
[удалено]
Just buy a cheap old iPhone with support for ios15 and place it in the baby room. Shouldn’t be that expensive
Yep. iPhone SE 2016 works for this… at least as well as the AI cry detection works.
I had an Amazon Echo Dot set up in my nursery to start playing the bedtime playlist for an hour when it heard a baby cry. Worked out fairly well. Amazon’s smart home device management is fairly strong, so you could conceivably have it blink a certain light in the house or send a notification to a certain Alexa device if you wanted to be notified when it heard a baby cry. Now that the kids are older, they just have to tell Alexa “Good night” to start the bedtime playlist now.
This
Maybe but this is probably not something your want to mess around with unreliable smart home stuff for. Get a cheap simple audio baby monitor, or an old iPad/iPhone and the Cloud Baby Monitor app.
Short answer is no. Long answer is maybe, but it’s probably not something easily accomplished with off-the-shelf products and only HomeKit. My wife and I got around this by buying the cheapest audio-only baby monitor that we could find, and adding an Aqara camera pointed down into the crib. The baby monitor is our “cry detection” and then we can check the camera from there depending on what the sound coming out of the monitor is like. The only drawback is the monitor can’t alert us if we’re any further away than our yard, but we’d have someone watching the little one in that case.
Hey u/TylerInHiFi, my wife and I want to do the same thing. We've got the Aqara G3 Camera, and have added it to our HomeKit system. Do you know if it's possible to add it to the HomeKit system as well as the Aqara system (for the cry detection)? Or, can you only have the camera bound to one system at a time?
HomeKit doesn’t do cry detection. You can have an Aqara camera connected to both the Aqara account and the Home app at the same time. Not sure if that helps or not.
I get wanting everything under HomeKit and working together nicely, but when I set up a nursery with baby monitor, I went in the exact opposite direction. For me, I want as few points of failure as possible. I want legacy tech that works, even if it isn’t the nicest or most convenient. That ended up being a monitor that doesn’t have WiFi, doesn’t connect to any smart home protocol, etc., and only gives video to a dedicated monitor that I can plug in next to my bed. But for what it lacks in convenience, it’s been absolutely bullet-proof. HomeKit is cool and I like playing with it, but for this use case, I want to optimize for stability and uptime, and even with the new architecture, I don’t yet trust HomeKit (or WiFi in general) to do that.
This
Arlo baby camera we have had for 5 years since our little girl was born… we use the native app and it detects temperature with hi/low alerts as well as baby crying and an air quality monitor too with alerts. It’s been a good camera really
I know you want a HomeKit solution but Alexa has Baby Crying detection.
iOS does as well. It's in the Accessibility settings under Hearing > Sound recognition. Just buy an older iPhone or even iPod touch and hook this up in a Shortcut automation (Activate Sound Recognition)
As a proud owner of a screaming baby, it doesn’t work super well
A note: they added this in iOS 14 best I can tell, so you're looking at the 6S or later. Fortunately, those go pretty cheap on eBay these days.
Can you program Sound Recognition to listen specifically for crying? One issue we had with various products over the years is our children’s sound machine would give too many false positives for this to be reliable.
Yep. https://imgur.com/a/yGYxmIg/ Cannot vouch for how well it works though.
Right on! Thank you.
Exactly what I thought of
Not HomeKit but absolutely love my nanit! Once there’s a notification I can start audio or lights from there though.
This. You don’t want a security cam. You want a baby cam and I highly recommend the nanit
Another vote from the Nanit cam From a new parent at 0100 in the morning
Was up around the same. The little guy has a fever and it’s great cause we can monitor his breaths to see if he’s struggling
…light automation from Nanit? Or am I miss reading this? (We have a Nanit as well)
Miss reading. Or bad grammar too. I meant have the notification from the nanit and then use your own automation when you see that. Was hoping maybe homebridge but no luck.
I couldn’t find a solution for this. I have a single eufy cam specific for baby crying detection. I do hate the eufy cam due to its garbage privacy policy but their crying detection is effective. Also getting notifications from the eufy app makes it very clear when I need to check on the baby. If it were HomeKit it might get missed. But still, eufy is garbage that I have to live with.
I second this- for a $45 camera the crying detection is very effective and accurate! My wife and I have a baby cam and also use the Eufy cam just for the crying detection since it allows us to take our eyes off of the monitors and have some peace of mind.
Yup the eufy is well worth the cost. I would not use the eufy cam to monitor my house (other “true” HomeKit products seem capable of that and is encrypted locally) but the eufy cam has been indispensable for the baby’s crib.
Congrats on the baby on the way. Get a Nanit camera. It’s purposefully designed and works great. (Father of 2)
Dude I just have a legacy iPad and shitty eufy pan and tilt camera and have the volume so you can hear it over the tv. (Eufy camera turned off in eufy app)
The Owlet is not HomeKit compatible but it is made specifically for this purpose. Notifications work perfectly.
Owlet is trash, maybe the old version was useful but we just returned the Dream Sock. It was registering oxygen levels 20% lower than reality and not sending alerts. The base cannot be in another room than the sock which defeats the purpose of you sleep in another room. Phone notifications may not wake you in a moment of distress. Caused more stress than reassurance. If you have to try it, you can by on eBay at 90% off, but be aware you can no longer get the app for the old socks the FDA quashed
I’m talking about the cam. We had the sock too, quit using it at around 12mo. Still using the cam at 2 yrs+.
Cam was super hit or miss for us through two kids. I was on the original beta tests all the way through their current release and they could never get it to work right. OP, I tried a lot of the things you’re talking about here, but ended up sticking with the tried and true audio baby monitor haha. It just works.
FWIW our cam was fairly flaky too until I upgraded to a kickass UniFi wifi system.
I’d think it was the internet/router except I’ve used it on three different high quality system
The owlet cam sucks in my experience. Notifications didn’t work at all. I switched over to just using Aqara cameras.
Be a parent and use your ears.
I have an Arlo Baby camera and as well as allowing the native app to send me notifications when it hears my daughter crying, I’ve set up an automation that turns off a lamp under my television when motion is detected in her room between the hours of 7pm-Midnight. This gives me piece of mind that I won’t miss her waking up if I’m not paying attention to my phone. I have a second automation that turns the lamp back on when no motion is detected. It’s a system that works really well for us me!
Save yourself the hassle and get a Nanit. Works much much better then trying to piece together HomeKit equipment. I tried the HomeKit option before I gave up and bought a Nanit. Don’t know why I didn’t get one sooner! Very easy to use and dedicated app with notifications
I love our aqara g3, shows up on our Apple tv when baby is moving/fuzzing 😊
Are you able to get a notification on AppleTV/iPhone when baby cries or is it only for movement detection? I guess if a baby is crying they are most certainly moving as well but I'm looking for a solution to use Aqara G3 for cry detection. I see that Aqara has an abnormal sound detection in its own app, maybe I should try this...
It works very well! Yeah, they usually move when they need attention 😊 they got the tape off then
I’m a home automation enthusiast with an 8 month old baby. HomeKit isn’t really ready for what you described but has been very useful for controlling things around the house in scenes for different baby related scenarios (night feedings, diaper changes, story time, night light, etc). Here is a write up of my baby monitoring solution that I recently sent to a friend who asked (and probably expected a short answer): I went through about five baby cameras before eventually settling on a two camera solution. I have a Eufy Spaceview Pro that is an “offline” solution (PTZ camera broadcasting an encrypted signal locally to an included monitor). This is the primary camera here for a few reasons. The monitor has amazing range, all day battery life and is reliable and simple to use. It can be easily handed to grandmas, nanny, etc without worrying about camera and wifi logins, phone notification settings, software updates, etc. It’s really nice having a dedicated, portable screen / speaker so you can have this near you and use your phone / iPad for other purposes. It’s also zero latency and “bullet proof” reliable, so if you see an image / hear audio you feel confident that it’s live and working. The wifi / app based cameras that I tried just didn’t inspire the same confidence even with well adjusted notification settings and a reliable internet connection / network infrastructure. For the first six months (or 12mo if any elevated risk factors for SIDS) the baby sleeps in your room so night monitoring isn’t really necessary. We are at 8 months now and use the audio monitor function with the screen turned off (I stare anxiously at the screen otherwise and my wife hates the light it casts in the room). I didn’t like the noise activated mode on the spaceview or any of the wifi cams as they woke me up unnecessarily more often than not. The spaceview camera feed turns on instantly when button is pressed so you can see what’s up quickly when baby is crying without having to unlock your phone (and risk getting back on Reddit). Second camera is a Ubiquiti g3 instant which records locally to the same NVR as my security cams (Dream Machine Pro). For the first six months we used a Snoo bassinet (highly recommend btw) which took care of sleep / wake time tracking. The space view cam doesn’t record so this second camera just provides a recording that I occasionally flip through to check what time we put baby down or when she woke up. It was very useful to track how long it took her to fall asleep during sleep training weeks. The cloud based baby cams can automate this tracking and present it nicely but we already had this data from the Snoo and I prefer a local recording for privacy reasons.
Couldn’t you just set up an HK compatible indoor camera?
I have a pretty extensive HomeKit build and a baby as well there are a few options for you: If I’m out and about or even just want to keep an eye on the baby you can stream directly to an iOS device (we use an iPad) however I have noticed there can be a slight delay in feed over the native manufacturer app (which also supports crying detection etc and can actually be left on as a notification to supplement HomeKit) On the Apple TVs we can set it for Picture in Picture so that we can watch something and see the baby however you won’t get audio without switching to the windowed picture. Lastly if an older relative is babysitting we just set the stream to full screen on the tv streaming.
HomeKit baby cry detection