Baby Monitor Recommendation

[klasipca]

Oh great. Is it very difficult to upgrade to Pandorabox?

Not really, but it took me a while to find good instructions and follow all steps:

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=54987&p=2 (see post #34)

Might help to add a note for AE seller that you expect to get pandorabox firmware preinstalled.

 

[Larebear]

Not really, but it took me a while to find good instructions and follow all steps:

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=54987&p=2 (see post #34)

Might help to add a note for AE seller that you expect to get pandorabox firmware preinstalled.

Thanks, I also found this link on upgrading the mini router. I also left them a message to make sure Pandorabox was pre-installed.

http://en.miui.com/thread-64391-1-1.html

 

[Larebear]

Might help to add a note for AE seller that you expect to get pandorabox firmware preinstalled.

Got a reply from the AE seller after I requested to make sure pandorabox firmware be preinstalled on the mini router that I just purchased. This is his/her reply:

OK ,no problem.

Guess I'll see how that turns out in a few weeks. :rolleyes-new:

 

[Larebear]

Didn't mean to change OP's topic but it seems that the portable mini routers that Klasipca linked to would be great for traveling or baby monitoring while traveling or at home. The Hik 2432 is a great choice for a camera as recommended by many.

 

[metro]

Didn't mean to change OP's topic but it seems that the portable mini routers that Klasipca linked to would be great for traveling or baby monitoring while traveling or at home. The Hik 2432 is a great choice for a camera as recommended by many.

Thank you! I purchased a TP-Link N300 travel router and the Hoo-Too one with the internal battery to test out. I'll post some results on here when I learn more about how compact the setup can be made and how long things can be used on battery power.

I'm considering the AC router linked, but I spent a lot of frustrating years in the DD-WRT world and never had a 100% working wireless router, so I'm not anxious to get back in to reflashing routers just for this limited situation. I have a new Asus RT-AC88U that I've put Merlin's AsusWRT firmware on and love it, but for this purpose (and for wife-friendly reliability), I'll likely stick to a commercial router with standard firmware.

 

[Larebear]

I'm considering the AC router linked, but I spent a lot of frustrating years in the DD-WRT world and never had a 100% working wireless router, so I'm not anxious to get back in to reflashing routers just for this limited situation. I have a new Asus RT-AC88U that I've put Merlin's AsusWRT firmware on and love it, but for this purpose (and for wife-friendly reliability), I'll likely stick to a commercial router with standard firmware.

The Asus RT-AC88U is a great choice for a router. My current router is a Asus RT-AC68U and have been very happy with it but plan on upgrading to one of the newer Asus models soon. I've purchased many Asus routers over the years and always recommend them to clients.

I always installed Shibby's TomatoUSB firmware on the Asus routers that I've purchased. I'm not familiar with DD-WRT, so that may be a challenge when the mini router arrives.

Good luck on your travel router. Let us know how it turns out.

 

[gotaudi]

Congratulations on your upcoming child. My child just turned 6 months today and let me tell you get ready to hold on. Its quite the roller coaster. We have been using the Hikvision 2432 as our baby monitor and its been really good. Our setup goes like this:

When he is in the crib the camera is hooked up to an ethernet cable that is connected to the rack mount POE switch in the network rack in the office.

When he is out of the crib and around the house (i.e. we want to monitor away from the crib) I have a plug in POE injector (cheap on amazon) and a 10ft Flat Ethernet Network Patch Cable(really flexible cable and not bky at all, plus gives you great distance from a plug). This allows me to use the flat patch cable and injector to power the camera while i stream the video over wifi.

The wifi has been working suprisingly well but my home isnt huge (1900 sq ft) I have the frame rate of the camera set at 10fps and that works perfect.

My wife and I use the app tiny cam pro on all our devices. We have two android phones, an surface pro tablet, and two amdroid tv's (Nvidia shield tv and nexus player) those devices all run the app so we can view and hear audio. A really nkce feature in tinycam pro is the background audio. This allows us to listen to the audio feed with the screen off much like a traditional baby monitor. Havjng the ability to play back video and audio through android tv has been my favorite feature.

I hope this helps you and if you have any questions just let me know.

Oh and try to get some sleep now. I havn't had a normal night sleep in 6 months lol

 

[metro]

Congratulations on your upcoming child. My child just turned 6 months today and let me tell you get ready to hold on. Its quite the roller coaster. We have been using the Hikvision 2432 as our baby monitor and its been really good. Our setup goes like this:

When he is in the crib the camera is hooked up to an ethernet cable that is connected to the rack mount POE switch in the network rack in the office.

When he is out of the crib and around the house (i.e. we want to monitor away from the crib) I have a plug in POE injector (cheap on amazon) and a 10ft Flat Ethernet Network Patch Cable(really flexible cable and not bky at all, plus gives you great distance from a plug). This allows me to use the flat patch cable and injector to power the camera while i stream the video over wifi.

The wifi has been working suprisingly well but my home isnt huge (1900 sq ft) I have the frame rate of the camera set at 10fps and that works perfect.

My wife and I use the app tiny cam pro on all our devices. We have two android phones, an surface pro tablet, and two amdroid tv's (Nvidia shield tv and nexus player) those devices all run the app so we can view and hear audio. A really nkce feature in tinycam pro is the background audio. This allows us to listen to the audio feed with the screen off much like a traditional baby monitor. Havjng the ability to play back video and audio through android tv has been my favorite feature.

I hope this helps you and if you have any questions just let me know.

Oh and try to get some sleep now. I havn't had a normal night sleep in 6 months lol

Thanks so much for your advice, network specs and otherwise.

My next question is going to be about what app to use to monitor the baby. My wife and I live in an iOS ecosystem, but I'd like a similar app to yours (maybe there's an iOS version, haven't looked). I'd like to use an audio-only feed AND have an option to have loud sounds register on some sort of lit-up sound meter on the screen so that I can visually discern that the baby is fussing. I'll have to shop around and report back what I found.

If anyone on here has an iOS app they'd recommend, let me know. The Blue Iris app is pretty good, but doesn't have some of these specialized features.

Thanks!

 

[alexvas]

Take a look at Baby Monitor for IP Camera for iOS. It allows background audio monitoring with switched off screen.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/baby-monitor-for-ip-camera/id511651356

 

[Redskulll]

I recently got a new camera that could do good as a baby monitor... Giantree ip camera... I found it on Amazon

 

[metro]

I recently got a new camera that could do good as a baby monitor... Giantree ip camera... I found it on Amazon

Thanks for sharing that. Unfortunately, I'm not getting any hits for "Giantree" on Amazon. Can you send a link?

 

[Redskulll]

Thanks for sharing that. Unfortunately, I'm not getting any hits for "Giantree" on Amazon. Can you send a link?

http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0191QRSAI

And here is a review video i made with it:
I haven't uploaded sample videos yet...

 

[fenderman]

Stay away from those cameras. They are the same cameras being marketed under several brand names like lefun. Complete overpriced junk. Some models, not sure about this specific one, do not support streaming to third party applications (not onvif or rtsp) and require the use of their mobile app and remote servers to establish a connection.

 

[Redskulll]

Stay away from those cameras. They are the same cameras being marketed under several brand names like lefun. Complete overpriced junk. Some models, not sure about this specific one, do not support streaming to third party applications (not onvif or rtsp) and require the use of their mobile app and remote servers to establish a connection.

That is true, doesn't support streaming to third party apps.

 

[fenderman]

That is true, doesn't support streaming to third party apps.

Its WAY overpriced as well. There are MUCH better cameras in that price range. These companies (lefun etc) use fake reviewers and paid reviewers to give the illusion of a quality product.

 

[metro]

That is true, doesn't support streaming to third party apps.

Yikes, that's a deal-breaker for me. Thanks for the info!

Chris

 

[metro]

All,

In case anyone finds it useful, I did a first run test with this battery:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B45EOYS

I hooked up the TP-Link TL-WR802N router to its USB port and the Hikvision 2432 to the DC output port. I then linked the camera to the router, connected to the camera's web interface, and started streaming high-def video at the highest bit rate. I set up a reoccurring ping to the router and then checked how long it kept responding to pings. This was basically a "worst case" scenario for power usage, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the camera streamed for just over 16 hours before the battery ran out of power.

I also noticed that I managed to buy the older (and more expensive) generation battery, so I'll be returning it and purchasing the second generation battery which supposedly has about 15% more power and two more USB ports. That should improve the run-time as well.

Thanks everyone!

 

[metro]

Another follow up, in case anyone finds it useful.

I reran the same test as above with the 2nd generation Anker battery. The only change was that I ran the video directly to my Blue Iris server instead of monitoring the video feed from a web browser.

With this setup, the Hikvision 2432 and the TP-Link travel router ran for 23 hours and 52 minutes on a full charge. That's incredible and more than enough to get me through a typical day-travel setup.

My only wish was that the battery pack was physically smaller (even if that was at the expense of diminished battery life), but after pretty thorough research, I believe this 20,000 mAh battery to be the smallest battery with a 12V DC out.

I also need to retest the bandwidth capabilities between the camera and the router. I did not bother to troubleshoot or diagnose at all, but when I cranked up the camera to its highest bitrate (12,000 Kbps), the frames per second seemed to be less than one. I'll have to go back and check on my settings and the wireless router setup.

Thanks everyone for your help. If anyone has any suggestions on a battery, router, or a baby monitor app, I'm still all ears.

 

[metro]

Take a look at Baby Monitor for IP Camera for iOS. It allows background audio monitoring with switched off screen.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/baby-monitor-for-ip-camera/id511651356

So I was sure this app was going to be a winner, but I actually set it up last night and had some problems.

First, the list of supported cameras is quite small with no Hikvision cameras listed. I tried to see if any of the other listed camera settings from the dropdown would work, and I got limited functionality with the Onvif Profile S option. It would display a single image, but would then freeze.

Has anyone had success with their Hikvision camera with the Baby Monitor for IP Camera for iOS and could share their settings? Are there any other apps anyone would recommend?

Thanks!

 

[metro]

So I was sure this app was going to be a winner, but I actually set it up last night and had some problems.

First, the list of supported cameras is quite small with no Hikvision cameras listed. I tried to see if any of the other listed camera settings from the dropdown would work, and I got limited functionality with the Onvif Profile S option. It would display a single image, but would then freeze.

Has anyone had success with their Hikvision camera with the Baby Monitor for IP Camera for iOS and could share their settings? Are there any other apps anyone would recommend?

Thanks!

In case anyone finds it useful, I figured out one aspect of my problem with the Baby Monitor app. It turns out that when I had the camera set to stream video at its full 12,288 Kbps, it would lock up the app. If I turned it down, even as little as to its 8,192 Kbps option, the app worked fine. The only other side effect was that the higher the bitrate, the longer the lag between realtime and when things would appear in the app's video stream.