9 Extra Uses For A Baby Monitor You Might Never Think Of

Stop! Don’t throw away your old baby monitor, sell it on eBay or give it away on Freecycle. If you think that baby monitors are simply for keeping an eye on your baby, you’re much mistaken. You may not realise it but they can in fact offer many extra uses!In fact, looking out for your baby is only one use for a baby monitor, and we’ve come up with dozens!Here are nine of our favourites. 

 

1. Listen out for the postman.
If you have a doorbell, it’s not always easy to hear it, especially if you’re in the garden. If you don’t have a doorbell then it’s terribly easy to miss whoever is at the door, only realising later when you find one of those horrid little ‘Sorry you were out’ cards poked through your letterbox. By placing a baby monitor near the door, and keeping the other unit nearby you, you’ll never miss a parcel delivery again. Of course, if you have a video monitor you can hook up the camera unit to look out of a window so you can see who’s at the door; you will never need to leap up from your garden chair again to answer the door to a salesman!

2. Don’t burn the dinner.
If you are the sort of person who sticks dinner or a cake in the oven, wanders off and forgets about it hoping that for once you’ll actually hear the beeping of the oven timer, a baby monitor could very well save at least your dinner. Simply place one unit near the cooker, set the oven timer, and take the other unit with you. When dinner is ready, or your cake is baked, you’ll hear the beeping straight away.

3. Keep an eye on a poorly child.
Your child may no longer be a baby, but that doesn’t mean to say you won’t find your baby monitor handy occasionally. If your child is poorly and off school then having a baby monitor in the room with them can be a real help. If they need you they won’t have to shout or get up, they can simply call into the monitor. If they are sick then you will know immediately and will be able to help them.

4. Keep an eye on the pets.
If your baby monitor works using your home Wi-Fi network and it allows you access using the internet from anywhere, then you can use your monitor to keep an eye on your pets even when you’re away from home for a bit. See what they really get up to when you’re out!

Could I do any harm?

5. Home security.
Home security cameras can be expensive, yet they’re really no different to a baby monitor setup in many ways. If you have a camera monitor, and have one which includes something like an SD card to record footage, and you can remotely access the video across the internet, then you have a first rate security camera system.  This makes it ideal for keeping an eye on your home either when you’re away at work, or even away on holiday

6. Wildlife viewing.
If you have a bird table, or there’s a nest in a tree in your garden, you may like to watch the visitors to your garden, and to see them up close, a baby monitor with a built in camera system is ideal. Simply have the camera positioned so that it’s watching the bird table or nest, and then you and the children can watch the birds at any time without risk of disturbing them. 

7. Be prepared for visitors.
If you ever have visitors who bring along a young baby then having a baby monitor handy will allow them to leave the baby resting while you and your friends get to chat and catch up on gossip without waking the baby and without missing those early signs that they’re waking up.

8. Record the saints and sinners going past your garden.
You’ve put a lot of effort into keeping your front garden looking nice. With a baby monitor you can find out who is stopping to admire your handiwork, and who’s chucking their empty cans and packets over your fence!

9. Prevent neck injuries.
How many times have you almost given yourself a crook neck trying to squeeze into a cupboard to look down the back to find a pipe, cable or socket? How many times have you wanted x-ray vision to see whether your child’s favourite toy is really behind the wardrobe, or wanted to see into the back of the loft without climbing right up into it? A baby monitor with a camera, and especially one with night vision capability, offers you an extra pair of eyes which can be held up high, stuck behind things and positioned to allow you to see round corners and in the darkness.
One or two of these suggestions may be slightly tongue in cheek, but we can guess that you can probably see at least a couple of uses here which you would find useful, either now or at some point in the future. If you have bought a good quality baby monitor then don’t get rid of it once your baby no longer needs it. Hang on to it, and consider it an extra tool that gives you even more value for your money.

Get The Best Reception From Your Baby Monitor

One of the things you expect when you buy a baby monitor and bring it home is that you'll be able to both hear and see your little one clearly, if you happen to have bought a video monitor. But sometimes people can run into difficulties with the reception of their baby monitors, and so in this post we thought it would be helpful to highlight a few of the difficulties which some people have encountered, and offer advice on how to rectify the problem easily.

One of the first things to be aware of is that there are two main types of baby monitor - analogue and digital. In most cases you'll find baby monitors these days tend to be digital, but you can still find analogue monitors around, and these are often very affordable. For people who live in a small property which offers very little in the way of interference or obstacles such as thick walls, an analogue baby monitor may well be perfectly fine, but they do tend to suffer from interface more than with digital monitors.

Digital monitors on the other hand offer the best reception, the clearest and the most secure broadcast. However, as far as potential interference is concerned this isn’t necessarily the end of the story. If you have a cordless phone or a wireless network you may find that these operate on a 2.4GHz frequency band, and whilst they may not interfere with each other very much, a sensitive digital baby monitor may possibly be affected. This is likely to result in your audio channel picking up a static hiss, pops, squeaks, and 'mush'. You may find this especially the case if you are actually using the cordless phone, if it is ringing, or if your wireless network is being used to transmit a lot of data, or is reconnecting. You might in some cases also find that your wireless network is disconnecting more often than it should, and your cordless phone picks up static. The best solution is to choose a digital baby monitor which operates at frequencies well away from the 2.4GHz frequency, and you can typically find monitors which use frequencies as low as 900MHz.

Philips Avent DECT Digital Baby Monitor

Another thing to try if you already have a digital baby monitor and you’re experiencing some interference is to switch off everything which uses a digital wireless frequency, such as your network and cordless phone and then switch on the baby monitor first. After the baby monitor is on, then switch all of your other devices back on. In some cases you can find this resolves the interference problem as some devices will scan for available frequencies and adjust automatically to avoid interference, and in other cases you can simply find which device it is that's causing the interference if you switch each one on separately in turn, and then look at seeing whether it’s possible to adjust the frequency of that device. 

Finally, some parents have asked about how to increase the actual range of a baby monitor. You'll find that most digital baby monitors today have a pretty good range, and if boosted by a good wireless network you really shouldn’t have too much of a problem.  One way in which we recommend to boost your baby monitors range is to use a smartphone baby monitor which connects using the internet. In this way you can connect to the unit in your child's nursery even if you happen to be on the opposite side of the planet, as long as you have an internet connection.  

 iBaby Smartphone Baby Monitor

We think it’s unlikely that you'll ever be much further than that from your baby!

Do you know what DECT means?

It may be a common four letter word that you repeatedly stumble upon when scrolling through your internet browser, DECT. But do you actually know what this means? Do you know how this relates to the products you are buying? And, in fact is this of any use to you and should you look out for this in the future when buying digital products?

So what does this word DECT mean when you see it in the name of a product? DECT stands for Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications or alternatively Digital European Cordless Telecommunications. Primarily used for cordless phone systems around the home or small offices, DECT ensures that the audio signal between both the receiver and the transmitter are clear and secure. Using a special frequency which is reserved for voice technology, DECT offers and ensures interference free communication. DECT is highly popular and often used in specific portable units such as mobile phones, cordless house or business phones and digital baby monitors. DECT technology guarantees zero interference from any other transmitting digital product.

DECT technology has now become popular within digital baby monitors. DECT offers parents interference free monitoring of their child which can be used to a range of over 300m. Data Encryption which DECT uses provides a secure and private connection, so you can be sure that you are the only one that can hear your baby through your digital baby monitor. DECT uses an uncommon frequency which is a great advantage as this means that is it highly unlikely that any other appliance in your home operates on the same frequency, meaning there will be little, if any interference.

Chart to show you the degree of interference

When looking to purchase your baby monitor you want to ensure that you are getting not only the best baby monitor for you but also the highest quality in technology. This may mean that you are looking for a baby monitor that has a clear uninterrupted signal. This is a very important factor, as crucially what your hear through your baby monitor can be the difference from a heart wrenching dash to your little ones room or a calm relaxed sigh as your hear your baby chuckling or snoozing away as they sleep.

Our Philips Advent SCD535 DECT Digital Baby Monitor

A recent study by Consumer Report ran a little test to see if in fact there were any disturbances between a digital baby monitor and a mobile phone. The report showed that a DECT mobile phone and a DECT baby monitor did not cause any interference with one another. The results of the report help to prove that no interference is caused by digital products around the home.

If you are looking to purchase a digital baby monitor and you happened to come across the word DECT, you should now understand that in fact it is a great additional feature to have within your baby monitor. DECT reduces the chances of interference in your home and with a DECT digital baby monitor you can be assured of private and secure monitoring of your baby.