Being a new parent is not easy. It comes with its share of new experiences, surprises, and requires some drastic lifestyle changes. In addition, having a baby can be quite stressful. To help new parents, there have been many books and new are being printed every day. But, now there are new gadgets that have been designed to ease parenting and make it less stressful.
The baby monitor has made life quite easy for many parents. It could be just a system relaying audio, or it could be a whole video setup that can be controlled with your smartphone – the baby monitor helps pacify the parents by allowing them to check in on their sleeping baby without having to enter the room.
Sproutling is a startup that has been founded by engineers who used to work with Google and Apple. They wanted to bring the traditional baby monitor into the modern world. The Sproutling Baby Monitor is their first product as can be pre–ordered for $249. This baby monitor comprises a wearable device that straps comfortably around the ankle of your infant and interprets his mood by measuring his heart rate and movement.
This device works with a “charging bowl” (that is what Sroutling calls the base station) that is kept anywhere in the same room as the child and sends statistics to the phone of the parent. In case your child rolls over on his stomach (studies have shown this to increase the chance of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), the monitor will let you know instantly so you can reset the child on his back.
This bowl measures the ambient temperature and the level of noise in the room and will alert you if the conditions are not ideal for the baby. It can also predict the time the baby will wake up from his nap, thereby giving you the exact idea of how long you have before your tiny one needs your undivided attention. It can also predict the child’s moods when it wakes up and if it will be fussy or calm. The app has the capability of monitoring multiple children provided each has a strap on their ankle.
The strap is made of a flexible core that is surrounded by a surgical silicon. It is completely washable and can be put on your child’s ankle with just one hand. The data is transmitted via Bluetooth to the charging bowl, which then sends the same data to the accompanying iPhone app via the servers of the company. The battery of the part that is worn lasts for three days and you can charge by placing it on the charging bowl. It takes about three hours to charge up.
You might be apprehensive about your child’s data being transmitted via the company’s servers, but the makers assure that the data is anonymised by the company making it unidentifiable. It does not share or sell the data unless parents choose to go for a data – sharing programme that has been designed to improve the product’s efficiency.
Parenting has not changed much, but with device like Sproutling’s, it can become a lot less stressful.
