Baby monitors are a must in the home office, especially if the office and the nursery are on separate floors. Babies and toddlers take regular naps, which are an ideal time to make any phone calls necessary during the workday schedule. While home offices have become quite common, clients and in-office co-workers seem to frown on hearing the noises of small children in the background as you discuss project deadlines.
Children have their own unique nap time temperaments. Some sleep peacefully making it easy to monitor with an audio system until they wake up. I live with a child who talks in his sleep quite often, which makes an audio monitor somewhat distracting. A child with a loud voice can be a rather abrupt interruption to a phone call when a sudden outburst erupts from the monitor speaker.
To avoid anomalies in sleeping habits, use a video monitoring system instead of the traditional audio setup. Most video monitors support both audio and video, with some of the better ones remaining silent, only kicking the audio into gear when the baby’s starts making sounds. Using the video monitor provides you with a visual cue to monitor nap times for smaller children. Older children who still take naps can also be monitored, letting you know when they are no longer sleeping and have started to resume a more active play mode too.
Webcams as Baby Monitors
For solid integration into the home office, a variety of Webcams are available in wireless models, making it possible to tie baby monitoring directly into your home network. The Webcams generally come with wall mounting brackets, allowing you to position the camera out of a small child’s reach while placing it in a convenient location for watching the bed. The Webcam will have onboard serving software which allows you to configure viewing over your wireless home network. While this certainly doesn’t replace tucking loved ones in, it provides peace of mind in a practical solution for the home office workplace.
Standalone Monitors
As prices for electronic devices continue to drop, companies have expanded from audio-only baby monitors into the world of video. Standalone monitoring systems generally have two things in common. They provide a small screen to watch the visual output from the camera and they provide an audio monitoring system so you can hear children too. Depending on your budget, the standalone video monitors provide either color or black and white images, in addition to either always on audio or voice-activated audio that only activates when the child makes noise.
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