Children are great at creating adorable photo opportunities, but can struggle to warn you of a problem. We often say “use your words,” but what toddler can reliably explain what causes discomfort or identify danger? We live in a world where an ever-increasing number of technological tools allow us to avert safety disasters, ensure the comfort of our children, and help over-worked, exhausted parents provide the best care for their children.
IoT has radically enhanced our ability to monitor the safety and environment of loved ones. Every day, some new product either stretches the current limits of possibility or completely bypasses them, giving us better access to connectivity and control of our homes, work places, and persons. Parents and caretakers are especially poised to enjoy unprecedented levels of information about the well being of loved ones outside of our immediate presence.
The greater freedom and confidence IoT products provide come with a caveat. Privacy is always a concern. We shudder to think of streaming video showing our child asleep. Are you 100% confident that your Cloud service provider is a good steward of your family’s privacy? Is monitoring your child’s environment a fair trade for that privacy?
For my family, we don’t want information about our child or our child’s environment accessible outside of our home. We only want products that have the ability to work locally – whether that’s a custom solution, an off-the shelf product that supports open source firmware, or, best of all, a full functional product that can work without any connection that I don’t personally control. For almost two years now, we’ve used Shelly products to monitor our son’s environment and ensure his safety.
One way IoT makes our child safer – The Shelly HT is a great sensor that monitors temperature and humidity. I prefer to use it with the USB power adapter – when powered by a lithium battery, the sensor reports every 12 hours or when temperature/humidity changes exceed a pre-set threshold. When using the USB power adapter, that changes to reporting every 10 minutes, as well as when Temp/Humidity thresholds are exceeded.
Why does this matter? The problem is that even for the few thermostats that work with external temperature sensors, they normally have pre-set time ranges, like “evening,” “morning,” and so on. Our two year old doesn’t sleep based on some engineer’s idea of an appropriate time frame, so more customization is in order, especially when we need HVAC control without depending on an outside server.
A second way IoT makes our child safer – The Shelly Door/Window 2 sensor is truly a Jack of All Trades – it has the expected reed switch, to determine when a door or window is opened, but also includes a lux sensor to measure a room’s light level and a temperature sensor. We use one on our baby’s window for home security, one on the baby’s door to notify us if someone manages to sneak out to party at night. We also use them on other doors in the house, like patio doors – we don’t want him going to the pool. The lux sensor is great, because we use it with any one of Shelly’s Wi-Fi light switch/relay combinations to control lighting.
A third way that IoT makes our child safer – Now that our son has learned how to pry child proof outlet covers away using toys and toddler utensils, Shelly relays are a brilliant solution. Any relay he can access is turned off unless we need to use it, then with an auto-off timer appropriate for what we use that outlet to do.
All of these products work well for us because they support MQTT out of the box. While Shelly’s Cloud service is fully compliant with the EU’s GDPR rules, Shelly relays can’t use MQTT and Cloud service at the same time. That’s not a concern for our family, since, even for the sensors. We prefer to disable Cloud access and use local control. With Hubitat, Home Assistant, Node Red, or my own custom app (experimental), we’re able to get regular notifications thanks to data transmitted via MQTT, as well as enjoying full control of the relays when we want access to outlets that we’ve disabled for child safety.
With a little research into the best products for your needs, you can have the best of both worlds – safety and environmental monitoring of your child AND privacy.