If you have a baby with fragile health, or if you simply need the assurance that your baby is okay while she’s sleeping or otherwise out of your sight, you are aware that sound or even video monitors for the baby’s room don’t give you enough information. The Owlet Baby Monitor gives you the extra information you need by using pulse oximetry to monitor your child’s pulse rate and blood oxygen levels. The monitor is in a little sock that the baby wears. It measures the baby’s vital statistics and reports them immediately to a relay device that will sound an alarm if there are irregularities in the pulse or oxygen levels. In addition to the relay, you can also monitor the information and receive alarms on your smartphone or tablet (iOS or Android). The Owlet should be available later this year. You can reserve one for $149.
Source: ZAGG Blog
Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
I realize that there are some babies where a device such as this is medically appropriate. However, for the rest of us, it is just a matter of overly protective parents over reacting to non-problems.
How did mothers manage and how did babies survive before we had the ability to monitor their status 24/7 where ever they and we are?
@Donald Schoengold Not all of them did survive. Children did and still do die of SIDS. These are seemingly healthy children with no known risks who just go to sleep and don’t wake up. If this had been available 18 years ago, I would have spent $150 for a monitor for my daughter without blinking an eye. I have no problem with being labelled “overly protective.”
I would not recommend buying this ‘on spec’ as the overall risk of SIDS is quite low. However, as the father of a child (not an infant at the time) with a history of status epilepticus that required midnight ambulance rides to the ER, I can vouch for the fact that there would be good reasons to use a system like this. It might have saved my wife and me a lot of nights spent sleeping with one eye open on the floor next to the crib whenever our daughter had a mild temperature.