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New Father Uses Wii-mote, Lasers to Keep His Child Safe
August 21st, 2012
It’s not easy being a new father. Infants are so tiny and delicate that I’m scared to even look at them. So I totally understand why this guy went the extra mile to look after his new child. Before his daughter was even born, hacker and blogger Gjoci was working on putting together a breath detector from a Wiimote and three 1 milliwatt lasers.
He positioned them above the crib and it sets off an alarm anytime his daughter’s breathing seems to stop or becomes irregular. It sort of does look like an alien is abducting your child, but it works and gives him some peace of mind while she sleeps. And that is priceless.
A simple program asks the camera every couple of milliseconds whether the lights are still moving. If they are, then everything is good. As long as there’s a little bit of motion, the detector knows everything is just fine. Should anything bad should happen, an alarm sounds, alerting the parents immediately.
[via Hack A Day via Geekosystem]
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This guy is a genius. Some may say he’s paranoid, but hundreds of babies die from suffocation yearly. He needs to patent this right away before someone else capitalizes on it.
Pretty a similar thing has already been patented, but even if he cant patent it, he’s still a genius, to be able to come up with and build something so usefully simple.
BRILLIANT!!
Great idea… until she gets an eyeball full of laser.
I agree with this and this that is actually a pretty serious concern if it happens. Maybe this can be done with some halmless low power IR laser or something?
IR lasers are just as dangerous, if not more so, because you don’t close your eye when it hits you.
Well that is a great idea. Letting a small infant sleep on their side/stomach is not however…
Why is that baby sleeping tummy down on a soft blanket? If you’re worried about SIDS the FIRST thing you should do is make sure theyre belly up with no squishy bedding and bumper pads.
Actually that is false, all of this sleeping on their backs talk really irritates me. Doctors shove it down new parents throats like the newest drugs. “If you’re worried about SIDS the FIRST thing you should do is make sure theyre belly up with no squishy bedding and bumper pads.” FALSE, a baby is more likely to lay on their backs and spit up, and if not prepared, this can cause the baby to drown in it. If SIDs is going to happen, it will happen whether the baby is laying on his back, side or stomach.
This is ancient thinking, and dangerous for you to be spreading. Every single organization dedicated to the reduction of SIDS recommends back to sleep.
Canada was one of the last countries to recommend back to sleep, and had the highest SIDS rate. Once it finally switched over to the “back to sleep” program, the SIDS rate in the nation dropped by HALF.
What about the studies suggesting SIDS is actually sleep apnea in newborns? Back sleeping is just as dangerous. Let’s put it this way, my infant had NO toys, NO blankets in his bed. He had his crib sheet and a receiving blanket tucked around the middle of the mattress to be warm, but I always dressed him comfortably and on his side. Occasionally, I would use the side-sleeper props to keep him on his side.
Back and tummy sleep scared me too much to allow. I won’t even go into the lengths I went to to keep my son 1,000% safe.
It’s strange because he’s trying to prevent something that is caused by all the bedding, blankets and bumpers in that crib as well as the sleep position of that baby. It’s amazing how little some new parents know about such simple precautions. – http://www.sidscanada.org/reducetherisk.html
He is not a genius. As mentioned above, the baby is sleeping on soft bedding with a blanket over him and a pillow near his face while laying on his side or stomach – hard to tell which but it isn’t on his back as AAP recommends in decreasing chances of SIDS.