Next Gen Baby Monitor

So when I got the Arduino I had the greatest idea, I was going to make the next generation of baby monitors. You see I had an old razr phone that I was never going to use again, but then I realized that I could use some of the components in the phone. So my remarkable idea consisted of using the Arduino to get take video using the phones camera, and get it to display on the computer (or anywhere).

So first things first I had to get the useful parts from the phone, which means demolition. After a while I had the phone apart, but it quickly became apparent that using it components would be much more difficult then I had anticipated.

Connections were so small and there were so many. I found the camera (not shown) and found that it probably required a lot more connections then I had available and I couldn't find any spec sheet for it (spec sheet is a sheet that gives general information about the part).

Really the only useful thing that I got from the phone demolition was the speaker, the lower left piece.


So I decided to change my plan a bit. I found a really cheap ultrasonic sensor (distance sensor) online one that would be useful for lots of different things. So I purchased it. And while it was in the mail, I did a little research on codes for the Arduino. The Arduino is open source (free, but also anybody can contribute) which is great, because generally there is quite a bit of information out there on it and lots of code that people have written.

Finally the ultrasonic sensor arrived and I could actually start to tinker with it. So I pulled together some code that I had been looking at, to see if I could get the sensor and Arduino to work. After a little bit of adjusting to the code I was able to get the sensor working properly.

Now I was ready to prototype the Next Gen Baby Monitor. I found another example online of an LED matrix and used the premise for that in my ultrasonic sensor program (code). After some effort I finally got it working.

The LED's will light up systematically according to how far you are away from it. It's range is about 6 ft to less than an inch. So now you put the ultrasonic sensor in some baby proof monitor thing, and connect it via radio frequency to a wrist watch light gauge. Now when the baby is on the floor, you can monitor your baby's movement without actually having to see them.

Arduino

The Arduino (Are-do-ee-no) is a micro-controller, that has 20 input/outputs. More simply, it is a circuit board for which you can easily write a code to tell it to read inputs from sensors and output signals to lights or motors or other actuators (things that move).

I got the Arduino board, so that I can increase my understanding of controls (engineering talk for robot stuff). Here is a picture of the board:

I told Jennifer how great and awesome it was and all the things that I could do with it, she allowed me to get it. But when she actually saw it her response was "...is that it??" I explained that great things come in small packages. Anyway this is my new project, I am going to see what things I can build.