This will be a quickie, since Mr. DD (who arrived safe and fairly sound last night from his week-long trip to Boston) thinks I’m doing something productive like creating an ebay listing…
The video monitor we have for ZGirl is actually a combination of a small screen TV and a home-improvement store-bought surveillance camera. Combined, the cost was only a tad more than buying a good quality “baby” monitor, but the benefit was worth it.
I’m basically as blind as a bat without either my glasses or contacts. The small screen TV sits on my nightstand and it’s about a 11-13″ flat-monitor screen so it actually takes up little space (if you had to, you could mount it to the wall). Those baby monitor screens run about 5-7″ and that just won’t cut it. Granted, my version isn’t portable, but we also use audio monitors so IF we had to go outside or whatever, we could still be within shouting distance.
It’s fun watching ZGirl play in her natural habitat without her knowing we are watching. We’ve caught XBoy going in there in the mornings to entertain her and that’s cuter than heck, too.
I would only warn you that if you decide to get any kind of video monitor that has infrared for night vision that your baby’s eyes will glow creepily when they are open at night. It can be a little disconcerting at first.
I love DIY ideas like this. And I bet it works much better than any of the packaged baby video monitors which, I have read, aren’t very good.
I wonder if you could hook up something to record XBoy entertaining ZGirl? That sounds like something for the family movie collection!
By: Summer on August 9, 2009
at 2:12 pm
You mean my kids eyes aren’t supposed to glow like that all the time?? Uh-oh.
By: ohn on August 9, 2009
at 2:57 pm