The Internet is so much more than the web of interconnected computers we once knew. Anything can be hooked up to the Internet these days, from fridges to drones, to watches, so you can fulfill your inner James Bond fantasy by talking surreptitiously to your wrist like a super spy.
Pregnancy and child care are multi-billion dollar industries, so it’s unsurprising that the craze for “smart” devices has evolved to cater to new parents anxious to track every byte of data about their precious little one.
If you’re a mum or dad to be, or you need a gift for someone who is, here are our top seven internet connected gadgets for tech-savvy new parents to monitor their child on the go.
Nest Cam
The first step to keeping up with your little one is to keep an eye on them, no matter where you are. Thankfully, Nest’s internet-enabled Cam is perfect for parents who need to watch over their child from work, from their night out, and even in traffic on the way to and from home.
Pacif-i
This “smart” pacifier does a lot more than comfort a crying child. It also monitors their temperature, and sends the information to a smartphone app. Pacifi can alerts parents and caregivers if the child wanders too far away, or dumps the pacifier on the ground.
Sproutling Baby Ankle Monitor
The Sproutling Ankle Monitor is a smart wearable for your baby that beams vital data about your baby, like sleep habits, heart rate, and breathing rate to its companion app on your smartphone. And unlike a pacifier, you can be sure that your baby will always have it on.
The most obvious application is in preventing more instances of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). With the Sproutling able to send an alert to a parent’s phone should the baby stop breathing or develop breathing irregularities, more babies that succumb to sudden death overnight could be saved.
Digital Potty
Potty training is one of a parent’s nightmares. My two year old cousin is more adept on an iPad than me. That is why this 25 dollar device is genius. It is a comfortable potty that has a built in 360 degree activity stand for an iPad. Don’t worry, the seat is designed to not just hold the ipad securely, but also ensure that is is splash and poop-proof.
MimoBaby Onesie
This soft cotton onesie is comes with sensors that measure a baby’s breathing rate, heart rate, temperature, body position, sleeping activity and sounds in the room.
This information is sent via the affixed Turtle on the onesie to a Lilypad, which streams live data and audio to your smartphone.
Withings Smart Baby Monitor
From their smartphones, parents can see, talk and listen to their babies. This innovative monitor measures room temperature and humidity to ensure adequate conditions for the baby. Also, available sound and light functions make it possible to remotely soothe the baby.
Smart Diapers
Even though these are not in production yet, we can totally appreciate how incredibly useful smart diapers could be. The smart diaper prototypes from Pixie Scientific use a colour coded moisture detection system to track and understand the health of an infant. The colour labels are scanned and the connected smartphone app can analyse the results to test for anomalies like infections, dehydration, kidney disease and Type 1 Diabetes.
These results can be sent to a doctor for further diagnosis. If smart diapers eventually make it to store shelves, the days of paranoia about your tiny tot’s health could be be over because your baby could literally have a lab in their pants!
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Aizehi Oboh contributed to this post.
Photo Credit: Niko Knigge via Compfight cc
