My wife and I are expecting our first child, and we're looking into a baby monitor. My wife generally defers to me on technology decisions, and she has the final say on anything related to the baby. Baby monitors fall at the intersection of both our areas of expertise.
I was envisioning two inexpensive Hikvision cameras--one for the baby and one to keep an eye on the garage. I thought it would be fun to connect them to the Internet using a Z-Wave controller like Alarm.com or VeraLite.
See:
http://www.alarm.com/productservices/videomonitoring/video-monitoring.aspx
and
http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/IP_Cameras
My wife's friends swear by the simple baby monitor below. It does not integrate into anything, which makes my teeth hurt, and it includes a 2-inch screen. Why do we need a tiny screen when so many Android and iOS devices in our house already have *good* screens?
Infant Optics DXR-5 2.4 GHz Digital Video Baby Monitor with Night Vision
http://www.amazon.com/Infant-Optics-Digital-Monitor-Vision/dp/B0052QYLUM
Maybe this is more of a therapy post than anything else, but here are some productive questions for the group.
1) If we go for the simple, standalone baby monitor, is the Infant Optics DXR-5 a good option?
2) Can you recommend a better product that might offer more features?
FYI, I found a similar post here with no answers.
http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=40227&p=244065
TIA,
John
