I'm a bit confused on camera and baby monitor prices \ Developing baby RPi\OrangePi baby monitor

Hardware
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Been looking for a WiFi IP camera to use as a baby monitor. I also want to develop a simple python webapp to track a retro reflective marker on baby’s diaper to detect it’s presence and\or roll over. Potentially it should also be possible to use it to track breathing.

And am I missing something or is it really cheaper to buy an OrangePi or Raspberry Pi Zero W, an IR camera module and build it yourself?

RPI Zero W or orange Pi cost around 20-22$ here, and I think it’s possible to find it even for cheaper. A 5MP 1080p camera with IR support is about 30-37$, again it’s just the first thing I found.

And it will have more than enough processing power to not just be a 'dumb baby monitor with motion detection that triggers every time", but I’ll be able to develop a much more sophisticated system to track what’s going on, as well as add a MJPEG stream for HASS integration, and all that can be performed onboard.

So for a total of around 50$ you can get a wifi camera capable of a lot of onboard processing, 1080p, IR and you can always add extra stuff to it, and you will never be vendor locked or anything like that. Most decent 1080p IR cameras I could ever find are around 35-40$ anyway.

Wonder what your thoughts on the matter might be!

EDIT:

This looks fairly priced and has ONVIF support, hm!

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Get something off the shelf and keep it simple.

We have a simple monitor that shows an image and can pipe sound to any room through the included viewer.

As others will be watching your child at times it needs to be plain and simple. Imagine trying to explain to Grandma before you want to take your SO out on a date how this whole contraption works and what it all means. Saying click this button to view and this button to turn the volume up/down is easy and understood by all.

We often take our monitor with us on trips and even to a friends house when we wanted to put our child down and stay later than bedtime. All that is required is power. With a complicated setup you would need to connect to WiFi and get everything setup.

Keep is simple, you’ll have enough to worry about with a new little one in the house.

Finally, nothing would piss my wife off more than my contraption not working at 3 am when we just want to see what the kid is doing.

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@silvrr Thanks!

I’ve heard “KISS” before and multiple times. But the problem is that “off the shelf” solutions cost more than DIY ones, while offering much less features and potential. We will sure be getting a regular radio monitor for trips, those dont cost much. But for a house I’d like something a bit more functional. Something that won’t require to use a dedicated parent unit, because there are two of us and there’s only one unit.

For grandma it won’t be hard to figure out, because there will be a dedicated tablet or phone with HASS or TinyCam running on it 24\7, and set to auto start on boot.

What I’m saying is that I don’t want to pay 50+$ for a shitty product when you can build a much better one for cheaper. And I’m talking only about a camera here. If you look at branded baby monitors it’s even worse! They are just radio or ip cams and they cost 100-250$. And of course no way to re purpose them later and no ONVIF or even just MJPEG support.

I already have a Yi Dome 1080p cam, and it’s such a pain in the ass to use it in any other way but through their proprietary app.

What I’m trying to do now is prepare for it. And automate as much as possible - while I have time. Exactly because I know that I won’t have time for it when there’s a child.

And all my ‘contraptions’ work fine so far :slight_smile:

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Damn it, as usual - I’ve been searching for a cheap enough wifi camera with decent quality and ONVIF support, and could not find one. Until I posted here. Looks like DIGOO is at least one way to go.

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Fact is both of you are correct. Video baby monitor prices are absurd when you take a look at quality and performance. You can certainly build something better but it will end up being more complicated to use.

We ended up going both routes. Which is certainly more expensive, but also more effective for us. We ended up buying a used Camera-Monitor set from ebay (still cost $100) that just works. You probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between an actual toddler or a doll with it thanks to the potato quality camera & screen. But our crew of babysitters (grandparents) have no problem using it with ease and it does the job. The range sucks, the audio pickup sucks, and the USB charging port eats micro-usb cables for breakfast. But it’s simple and portable so it fills most of the needs.

I also have a little Wansview 720p camera mounted above the crib that is tied into BlueIris. This means the wife and I can use our phones or laptops to check in on him when in the yard (just out of effective range) or when my wife takes the monitor to bed with her I can just pull it up on a 2nd monitor or tablet. It helps too when we hear a loudish bang from the monitor and look only to see him face down in the crib. We can use the nicer camera in BlueIris to go back and see that he was just moving around, kicked the side of the crib, and settled in to continue sleeping. No more creeping in as silent as possible with zero light and trying to make sure he is still breathing. Also, we use it to get glances of him while we are at work and just need a little pick me up but I guess that isn’t as important.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with @silvrr (and my wife) and say that while you could make something that works better for you at home, you’d probably be better off getting at least the “official” monitor. Especially if anyone outside the household will be babysitting.

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@oembob, thanks for your reply. Yes, I agree for the most part it looks like we view it in a similar way. We’re sure are going to get or borrow a portable monitor for when we need to go anywhere or leave kid with parents at their place. Most of the time they will come over to our place to watch the kid though.

I do want to argue this statement, though. It all depends on how you set it up. I’m not a full time UI\UX designer, but it is actually part of my work and I always try to make my tools and products extremely easy to use.

So If i were to take up on this project I would certainly make it very easy to use. And I’m sure my parents will be able to handle a tablet just fine, they may be not the most tech savvy people, but they have phones, tablets and laptops after all. They know how to start apps. For me it will be like giving them a tablet and saying “use this icon to open an app, and you know how to control volume on a tablet, right?”, and that’s it. I’m not sure if my parents are just more comfortable with tech than an average ‘grandma’, or if it’s just some common misconception that I hear so often. I am only talking about an IP camera after all. All the ‘fancy’ processing will happen in the background with another app that just grabs the same video stream. TinyCam or HASS will have access to it as well. That’s the point of ONVIF compatibility.

I’ve discussed it with my wife and she has the same opinion, she does not see the point of paying THAT much for something that you can make for less. And I do count development and DIY time into it as well. If there was a product of decent quality, with enough features and it cost me same or even slightly more to buy it than to DIY something, I’d go for it without a second thought. But as you said - it’s either ‘potato quality’ or it’s too expensive. And I don’t see the point of potato quality camera. Whats the point of a baby monitor if you can’t tell if your kid is even breathing or not? That it’s just there?

Portability is another issue, but i’m not even sure if we will go anywhere with the kid in the few months when it’s most important to watch it. And if we do I have a friend who I can just borrow a monitor from.

I just found this camera on sale for 14.5$. It claims to have ONVIF support so I should be able to connect it to HASS and to whatever custom software I decide to develop. From reviews it seems it has decent quality and it’s 720p. We’ll see when it arrives.

Mass produced products should be cheaper than DIY solutions, because mass production allows to drop prices. What makes me angry is the fact that most of the time they just play on people’s lack of knowledge or in case with baby products - their hormones. Sure you can pay 300$ for a camera, it’s for your kid! Even though the same non-baby product costs 30$.

And hey, it’s HomeAssistant community after all, not Apple one, we’re supposed to like DIY, OpenSource and better solutions here :smiley: Or maybe I’m just not making myself entirely clear or my intentions. I just want a camera that I can connect to from any device, as well as a dedicated one, that’s ONVIF compatible or at least has an open RTSP or MJPEG feed that I could use to ADD my own ‘smart’ processing to as a bonus feature. And until now I just could not find a camera cheap and good enough.

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And? What was you experience with the camera? And did you manage to create a cool baby monitor?

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Ah well, I guess a report is in order.

Right now we have 3 camera units that we use. We decided that we don’t need audio monitoring, because:

  • Our apartment is not that big, if baby screams we’ll hear it. Babies are quite loud, so we hear him even through earplugs
  • Audio monitoring is distracting, he may make a fair amount of sounds, stirring, sometimes moaning - all in his sleep. If audio monitor picks it up and amplifies it - we won’t have any sleep ourselves, and even if we dont sleep it’s more distracting than useful
  • Breath\Audio monitoring does not help prevent SIDS as someone else pointed out, and we learned more about it later. If breath monitor detects lack of breath it’s likely too late already. There are other measures that you must take to reduce the risk of SIDS like making sure your kid can’t roll over by fixing him(her) in the crib, and making sure they dont sleep on their stomach until a certain age. Also it’s important to stop using diapers when they learn how to roll over themselves. THere are also other precautions and there are books about it.

So, now to what we have working and my experience:

Digoo DG-M1Q

This camera is monitoring the baby bed, it’s attached to a bendy arm that’s designed to hold tablets. It’s long and was a perfect fit for our baby’s bed, and it can be attached anywhere.

Camera itself performs quite well, especially if you consider that it’s less than 15$. It does not handle multiple clients well, so I have a motioneye docker container on my main home server restreaming footage from the camera. I found that 10fps makes it most stable, is more than enough to see if baby needs attention and for motion detection to work. Image quality is quite good, and I even only use it in 800x600, don’t need more really. I do this to reduce load on my server’s CPU, just because it’d be a waste.

Downsides - it has weak WiFi and it does require connection to their server. I tried blocking it and it works until you reboot it, then it will go into bootloop until it can connect to the internet.

So my verdict on this camera: It’s the cheapest option I could find and it works quite well, but I can’t recommend it to everyone. It loses connection to the router quite often, so we lose feed now and then. It does have two way audio, but it only works with their native app. You can hear audio with TinyCam, but I had to restream it with motioneye, and motioneye does not support audio.

Yi Home Dome 1080p camera

My favorite camera so far. Really great unit. But I’m also just a Xiaomi fan, so maybe there’s that. But anyway, it’s a good 1080p camera with good quality from a big-name manufacturer (unlike Digoo) and it’s cheap at less than 80$.

I’ve installed yi-hack-v4 on it, and after a small donation to the author of this firmware (any sum, even 1$) you get access to it’s RTSP server. And it still works with native app. And it does not require active internet connection to work, so you can block it and use just locally if you worry about privacy.

With native app you get - high quality 1080p image, two way audio, child cry detection, local and cloud recordings.
With new firmware you also get RTSP feed, FTP server and some other useful features, so you can integrate it easily into Hass or anything else.

Works great with multiple clients connected to it, and offers stable 25-30fps.

Verdict: I do recommend this camera, it’s probably best bang for buck if you are not worried about it’s cloud stuff for privacy reasons and are fine with flashing custom firmware on it.

Raspberry Pi 3B with a USB camera

Third unit is Raspberry Pi with a USB web camera. I just had it lying around so I installed motioneye on it and use it whenever I can’t use other cameras. Works great ~30fps feed. Not sure what else to add here. Well, there’s no audio and I don’t know of any USB web cam with night vision and IR. If there is one - this is probably the best DIY camera you can get.

Raspberry Pi Zero W + Pi Camera 1080p with IR

I have all the hardware for it, and I tested it with motioneye. It gives great quality, and its cheaper than any other camera of the same quality (not cheaper than Digoo but that’s not a good camera). And you control the software 100%. I don’t use it because of 2 reasons - it looks creepy with it’s 2 IR lights looking like eyes. I bet kid would freak out if he saw it. And it heats up way too much, not sure if it’s a faulty camera unit I have or if it’s just like that.

So instead, since I also had a Respeaker2 pHAT I turned it into a smart-button\voice-assistant unit. It uses 3 LEDs as menu selection, and with one button you can control Hue bulb’s brightness in kid’s room. Useful when my mom stays over to help with the kid. Voice Assistant is a custom one and is a WIP, it can turn lights on and off but that’s it for now.

Monitor

Just an old Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with an extended battery and LineageOS. Lasts about 8-12 hours with a screen on and TinyCam streaming feed from Digoo and Yi cameras.

HomeAssistant also has these two cameras on it’s home page, so multiple people can watch the feed.

There are also motion notifications coming from the Digoo camera’s feed, processed by motioneye and triggering HomeAssistant’s script through API that sends Slack notification to use and on the ‘parent unit’, and if I’m not asleep it also flashes a few lights red in my room.

We also have Aeotec Multisensor in baby’s room and it takes care of tracking temps and humidity in the room, and it also sends notification and changes some light’s colors if it gets too hot or too cold in that room.

So in the end I basically got everything I wanted worked, except for breath detection which I don’t think is that useful in the end. Now could I put it all into a single camera\temp\humidity\motion monitor unit? Sure, I even got all the hardware. But I did not really have the time for that in the end.

What’s next

Next is that we’re going to the country and on vacation after that, and I can’t take all this with me. So I’m now looking for a portable baby monitor anyway. So while all this was a fun DIY project - you’ll likely still need a portable baby monitor with direct connection between the camera and the parent-unit.

So if I manage to find a baby monitor that can have direct offline connection with parent unit AND provide RTSP\ONVIF feed - that’s what I will likely recommend going forward, even if it costs more. It will just save a lot of hassle.

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Update, so we’re in the country and bought an AngelEye AE603, not sure if its available worldwide or not. Its relatively cheap, about 100$, has two way audio, decent screen quality, good video quality and surprisingly high fps (depends on interference too of course). Even has a temperature sensor in the baby unit.

Parent unit has battery that can last just around 4 hours, baby unit is mini-usb powered. Both issues can be solved by using a powerbrick if needed.

Obviously its just direct transmission over the radio, looks like digital (sometimes notice mpeg artifacts). Delay is just about half a second and it makes it really creepy when you bear baby crying with an echo which then sometimes gets looped :smiley:

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Stumbled upon this old thread. Since then I figured out that this AE603 monitor is actually some chinese one that’s rebranded by dozen other brands. Usually retains model ID of AE603 or something similar. Can be purchased for even cheaper from aliexpress and the like.

Also - it’s not really 4 hours, it’s around 4 hours with the screen always on, but it has a “VOX” mode, where it only turns the screen on when it detects loud noises (like baby crying) so it allows the parent unit to operate from a single charge throughout the day.