BigSister
Babies are fragile and need to be kept an eye on. This is tiring for parents and the first two years of a baby´s life can be important for the rest of their adulthood. In addition, we live in a modern society with such a fast pace to life that some new parents experience problems taking care of their babies. Any product that can reduce a mother´s burden, even if only a little bit, will be welcome at such an important time. From this general interest, I began researching opportunities to make an improvement to the bond between mother and child.
I developed a concept for a baby monitoring system, I called the ¨BigSister¨. It aims to help mothers by making their job easier, as well as allowing babies to have a wonderful sleep.
Design Concept
¨BigSister¨ has two associated part- An interface available through the mobile phone and a physical device which includes sensors to detect temperature, movement, noise and humidity in the baby’s cot.
The physical device contains components such as a speaker, controllable lights and a thermometer. It collects data from the baby’s cot and responds to commands from the mobile application.
On the mobile side, parents can monitor the baby´s sleeping behavior through the video window on the mobile app, as well as monitor the lighting, temperature and humidity levels. A sliding-bar allows the parent to control the light in the room.
If the baby’s movements fall within a significant range, a text-alert reading ¨baby is awake¨ will be shown on the parent’s mobile application. Minor amounts of movement do not register any alerts. If the baby begins moving or crying, the parent can try calming their baby by recording a voice message that will be sent and played gently over the speaker.
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Interface on Parents' Phone
In terms of designing the interface, I chose a blue-white colour scheme to create a calming aesthetic for the parents. Seeing is believing, in which case parents are able to view the video feed of their baby’s cot. I put the monitoring camera feed at the top of the screen, so that when parents open the application the first thing they see is the live video of their baby. The visualised data of lighting, temperature and humidity is immediately below the video, followed by a slider to control the light level in the room. The button on the bottom for the speaker is large and easy to press. All controllable parts are on the lower half of the interface, making it more convenient for thumb-press.
Interactive Prototype
For the physical prototype, the main challenge was to avoid wires in the device from contacting or crossing each other. As this product is designed to be hung above baby’s cots, a colourful appearance was an important factor to create visual interest and match children’s room décor.
List of Components
1* Lilypad Arduino board
1* Infrared camera (replaced with default camera in Mac OSX in prototype)
1* Audio player (default audio player in Mac OSX in prototype)
3* Lilypad white LEDs
1* Lilypad temperature sensor
1* Lilypad light sensor
1* Humidity sensor
1* Needle set
1* Conductive thread bobbin
Running software environment
Arduino
Processing
Libraries:
Opencv
ControlP5
Video
Minim
Arduino Frimatta
