DIY Video Baby Monitor

With the arrival of our first baby we found ourselves with the need to monitor the baby, need is a strong word lets just say we wanted to make sure the baby was sleeping in the early evening whilst we were downstairs preparing dinner.

Like most people we have a number of old "smart" phones laying around the house never to be used again but perfectly functional so we decided to use one of them, P's old G1 Android phone as the baby video monitor.

The phone has a camera at the back that we used to broadcast the video feed to the internal house wifi. Then from any computer or smart phone in the house (also connected to the same wifi) we pick the video feed to monitor the baby

Because the video feed is only being broadcast to the local wifi, ie your house wifi, the neighbors should not be able to sniff in to watch your baby sleep.

Ingredients

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1 - G1 Android phone running donut 1.6

1 - Ip WebCam Android App (here)

1 - Universal Mini Tripod (We got ours here)

For the Mac OSx alternative
1 - Iris (here)

Directions

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Since we had no intention to use the old phone for any other function than broadcast the phone's camera as the video feed for the video baby monitor we removed all other applications from the phone to increase the phone’s responsiveness (it is an old phone after all...)

First connect the android device to the home wifi.

Ip WebCam Android App

Next download, or if it has already been downloaded open it and (I left all settings to their default values) press "Start Server" to begin the video stream.


After starting the server the screen will display the video feed from the back camera. In the top left hand corner there is a button that says "How do i connect?"

After pressing on the button the app will ask you if you want to connect to the feed either with your wifi router or using a mobile internet connection. If you have connected your phone to your home wifi (and since this is an old phone with no contract is my only option) then select "I'm using Wi-fi router"

The next dialog will explain how to connect to the feed by providing a url of the form http://10.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080/

Where 10.xxx.xxx.xxx is an IP address.

Once the feed has started it can be viewed from any computer in the house connected to the same wifi your android phone is connected to.

From a computer in the house open a browser window and enter the URL we obtained after starting ip webcam and voila you should be getting the video feed from your phone right into your laptop.

Since a mobile phone is not very "stand up right" friendly you can use a cheap tripod like the one provided in the ingredients to help position the phone and get a better shot. We use rubber bands to hold the phone with the tripod.

Mac OSx alternative

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We did use the above recipe for a while, but the camera on the phone is not very good in low light conditions. We found that the device we did have always in the room was a Macbook Pro so we decided to try the same approach with the Macbook Pro instead.

For this we downloaded Iris a Mac application that allows to do the exact same thing, share your Web cam's feed in the local wifi network.

Iris Main Menu

WebCam Icon

Download, install and start Iris.

From the menu select "webcam"and just like with the android version the application will provide the URL needed to monitor the web cam from a browser

URL to access webcam feed

Sliding barn style door with glass insert

We started our kitchen remodel project a couple of years ago and after the kitchen was functional, progress slowed down. We also had a baby in the meantime so progress really, really slowed down. Now the baby is 6 months old and we have a bit more freedom so our latest "finishing touch" was to complete the door between the kitchen and the laundry room. The original door was a regular door that swung into the kitchen and took up too much space. It was trashed during our remodel. What we wanted was a sliding door to use the space more effectively. We like the barn door look but we couldn't buy anything standard and needed to customize to fit our space. We fished a lot of ideas from DIY sliding doors on the internet and came up with our own. This is the door in its almost final state. Our refrigerator needs to be put back in place on the left with the door sliding behind it.

Ingredients

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Lumber:

• 3 - 1x8x8
• 1 - 1x10x6
• 1 - 1x8x6
• 1 - 1x46x
• 1 - 1x6x6
• 1 - 2x3x8 (to attach the rail)

Screws:

• EZ Twist and lock (Here)
• Wood Screw #8x3” (Here)
• 1.5 inch wood screws

Other:

• 1 - piece of glass
• clear caulk
• paintable wood filler
• Felt 1-1/4 Nail on (Here)
• Paint
• Rail (Pocket Door Hardware) (Here)

Directions

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We did a lot of sketching out on paper to get an idea of what we wanted. P has gotten really good at using Google Sketch Up since we have been doing a lot of home projects so he put together this sketch to help us get the full idea. M wanted to have glass on the top half of the door so she could see into the laundry room and into the backyard. We also needed to minimize the thickness of the door so that it would fit the space behind the fridge. We decided to create a sandwich with the wood and hold the glass insert in between the two layers.

Assemble door frames (layers)

We measured our door to fit the space based on where we would attach the rail to the wall for the height and from our side to side measurements on the door opening. One issue we had is that we needed our door to cover the door opening but it couldn't extend much beyond that because when open, it would hit the upright pantry we have installed next to the fridge. We started by cutting the lumber to create the two frames (layers) that would create the sandwich door.

We did not use any fancy cuts to put the pieces together, we used pocket holes done with Kreg Jig. These holes were on the inside of the sandwich so we didn't do anything special to cover them since there would be wood attached to this side that would hide the holes. We also chose to paint our doors first for a cleaner painted finish. It was also easier to paint individual pieces of wood rather than the heavy door once it was finished.

Route glass insert

For the glass to sit flat with one of the door layers we routed the wood to sit the glass inside it. We do not have a router at home so we decided to use a Forstner Bit instead (similar to this one) to make a series of round cuts in a straight line. P marked the drill bit with a strip of painters tape to mark the depth he needed. This was the depth of our glass plus a little extra for the caulk that would also be there. It is really tedious work but it was cheaper than buying a new tool at the moment. It took a bit of time, some light chiseling and some sanding but the glass fit perfectly. To keep the glass in place, we put a bead of clear caulk on each side of the glass along the edge.

Next we screwed the top layer trapping the glass in between. The pressure of the glass and of the second layer of wood when we added it flattened out the bead of caulk and sort of sealed the edges. We didn't add a lot so we didn't have any clean up on the visible part of the glass. If you did add too much caulk, you could just clean it off the glass after the wood frame was screwed together, while the caulk is still wet.

Rail

To attach the door to the wall, we used a pocket door rail from a home improvement store. We wanted the barn door hardware that we saw in several places but it was all too expensive. We may replace this rail at some point in the future with something a bit more stylish but it does the job. We attached the rail to a 2x3x8 then attached the 2x3x8 to the wall using the dry wall anchors EZ Twist and lock. Our wall has 1/2" dry wall which is attached to thin furring strips and concrete cinder block behind. We tried Tapcon concrete anchors but they did not work for us, so we decided to go with the dry wall anchors. The drywall anchors (we used 5) worked really well. Each anchor is rated to hold between 50 and 70 lbs. depending on whether something is mounted to a ceiling or wall. With 5 of them, we figured that would be enough to support our door which was between 50 and 70 lbs.

Pet door

We made one of our boards shorter to create an opening for a cat door so our two cats can come in and out of the laundry room. We are still in the process of adding the flap to it.

Final Touches

We deviated from our original plan a bit and didn't add the side boards on the bottom half of the door because we liked being able to see the boards underneath. To add a bit more stability, we decided to add the crosspiece on the diagonal. We used a 1x6 instead of 1x8 so we could see more of the boards. We also had to notch the piece so match the cat door opening. We then covered all the screw holes with a bit of wood filler and painted. Finally, we stapled a strip of felt to the bottom of the door so it doesn't scratch the floor. 

This is a pretty rough outline of what we did to create our door but we hope this project can help you get some ideas.