A baby monitor is a device that allows you to remotely check on your baby. By monitoring your baby you can safely do household chores and relax a bit while the baby sleeps. If it wakes up or is in discomfort you will be alerted directly through the monitor. The use of digital baby monitors has grown rapidly due to the positive security effects, ease of use and price tag that most can handle.
The name baby monitor is not entirely accurate since many parents find good use for the monitors with children all the way up to school age. Whichever way you use it, a digital baby monitor is a cheap and simple security product that provides ease of mind and sometimes helps save lives.
Digital baby monitors can be divided into three main groups: audio monitors, video monitors and heart rate / movement safety monitors. Most work with wireless communication where one remote is placed by the baby, the other by the parent. Some baby monitors can manage several signals and for twins it is usual to monitor each baby with their own transmitter sending to a single parent receiver. Many monitors have settings that allow you to set sleep timers and alerts.
Baby audio monitors only transmits sound and will probably find most use with parents of somewhat older kids. Heart-rate / movement monitors are mostly used with the youngest babies. Heartbeat monitors, or Doppler monitors are for prenatal use and allow you to hear the pre-born heartbeat.
Video baby monitors find use in both camps. A baby video monitor takes a video feed from a remote camera that is placed by the child and shows this on a parent screen. There are several types of baby video monitors with everything from simple hand held receivers with built-in small screens to exclusive sets with standalone big screens, or a combination of both. The small hand-held sets only provide a visual cue with their small screen but they are as portable as a phone and allow you to move about the house or garden.
Some digital baby monitors can provide a signal that you can open in a window on your computer while you work from home. If you are handy, you can build your own baby monitor setup with a webcam but the cost of the webcam, transmitter or room-to-room cables and dedicated software will often be on par with a dedicated system that also adds value with hand-held remotes.
We recommend you buy a fabricated digital baby monitor and not tinker with home-made solutions. Take a look at our categories for shopping recommendations.
