Nursery Cam

Oh my goodness–this is cool! I had heard that you could use a surveillance camera as a video monitor/nursery camera awhile back, but I didn't act on it then. We recently took the side rail off of Penny's bed, and I decided it would be nice to see what's going on in her room, so we decided to try this. There are tons of cameras you can buy, but we bought this one:



A new model just came out, so the price of this one dropped a bit. The new model is $110, and as of this writing, the older model is $80. This one works wirelessly, so it doesn't need to be plugged into your router (just for initial setup), and it has night vision, which is pretty essential for a nursery camera. If you want to look through more options (there are some less expensive), here are some more cameras. My husband had a feeling that it would be tricky to install, but it actually wasn't at all. It came with clear instructions and an installation CD. Once it was working, we each installed this app called "IP Cam Viewer" and now we are able to view our nursery camera from our iphones! So freaking cool. Here's the view from the nursery cam (and Penny's new bed setup):

I woke up during the night briefly and glanced over Josh's way and there was a bright light near his side of the bed. I was like "what are you doing?" Then I realized he was watching the video monitor on his phone! I think he spent half the night checking in on Penny. Also, when I was putting her to bed, he kept texting me saying "I see you." Maybe a little creepy, but still pretty darned cool!

If you have any trouble with installation, this link has lots of information, but I really didn't think it was hard. There's also an android app for you non-applers. People, in case I didn't mention this yet, this shit is cool.