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Angelcare AC1100 Baby Monitor Review

// February 8th, 2012 // No Comments » // Family, technology

Now that I’ve had a few months to actually use all this stuff, I’ve decided to go ahead and start reviewing some of the baby stuff we accumulated in preparation for little Reese to hit the scene. The first thing is the Angelcare AC1100 Video – Movement – Sound baby monitor.

The system is quite simple – there’s a monitor that you position in sight of your baby’s bed and a portable monitor with a charging station that you can use to monitor your kiddo. The real important part, though, is the pad that slides underneath the mattress and connects to the monitor part.

The monitor looks kinda like a futuristic angel with a row of LEDs down the front, a circular ‘halo’ at the top, and two ‘paddles’ on either side that look kinda like wings (bonus points for making the product fit the brand name). One of these paddles is the power button, the other makes the halo glow a similar greenish color as Timex Indiglo backlights – nice, but not too bright or anything. The LEDs along the front house different things – one is a power indicator, another is the camera (with infrared for night-vision). There is also a microphone and speaker on this base unit, and the bottom has a standard mounting screw so you can attach it to a tripod if you want.

Due to the position of the camera, we ended up attaching it to a Gorillapod tripod and then wrapping that around the railing of the crib and it worked great. This also helped us since there is no other furniture around the crib. Just make sure the wires and monitor are out of reach of your kid or you could have problems.

The portable monitor looks like….a portable monitor. There’s a small resistive touchscreen (resistive means you have to apply pressure to press a button) on the front, with a huge speaker/microphone beneath. There’s a small stub antenna at the top and a belt clip if you want to be one of ‘those’ parents. Along the sides are the power button, volume up/down buttons, and a microphone button. This is kind of handy as the system supports a walkie-talkie mode (so not only can you hear your baby, but you can press a button and talk and the baby can hear you, too).

The software on this thing is REALLY rudimentary, but actually offers quite a few options. The display is really informative, with a top status bar that shows the current temperature in the baby’s room, a visual indicator of the baby’s breathing, wireless connection strength, and battery level. You can set alarms for several things, including a specific temperature range (alarm sounds if it gets too hot/cold), timer (if you only want baby to nap for 30 minutes, for instance), and of course, the Angelcare pad.

The pad is the ‘Angelcare’ part and it monitors for your baby’s breathing pattern. As long as it detects baby’s breathing, all’s good. If it stops detecting this small movement, it waits about 10 seconds to make sure, and then it sounds the alarm. This specific system is designed to help prevent infant death from SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). It’s a bit pricey, but I lost a nephew to SIDS when I was younger, so it’s an important subject for me.

The pad itself is pretty sensitive, but not too bad. As she gets older, Reese has started rolling around quite a bit in her sleep, and on a few occasions, has set off the alarm by rolling too far to the side of the crib. We’ve also set it off a few times by picking her up before pressing the PAUSE button on the portable monitor. The alarm is loud enough to wake at least one of us up in the middle of the night, and the screen also flashes red and black, so you have audible and visual alerts (the same alarm is used for any alarm feature, including temperature or time).

The video quality is good enough for us to see what Reese is doing and whether or not her eyes are closed, but that’s about it. The ‘night mode’ kicks on automatically, and offers a surprisingly good view,  even in complete darkness.

The only two complaints that I have with the system are both related to the portable monitor. When the system is on ‘PAUSE’, there’s an audible beep every few seconds, I suppose just to remind you that it’s there. It’s really annoying, though, and I can’t find a way to turn it off. The other big issue is the display itself – it’s insanely bright. While you can press the power button once to turn off the display (but keep the audio going), there’s no option to adjust the brightness – it’s either all or nothing.

Aside from that, this has been a solid purchase for us. Admittedly, $250 is pretty expensive, and it does have some features that are probably more of a ‘nice-to-have’, but I would still buy it again if I had to.

Angelcare AC1100 Video – Movement – Sound baby monitor

Xbox Upgrade Is One Step Closer To The Future

// February 2nd, 2012 // No Comments » // Family, technology

I’m firmly convinced that when my daughter is old enough to play video games, I’ll hand her a controller and she’ll look back at me, baffled, asking ‘What’s this, Dad?’ The controller – with buttons and joysticks and the like, will be relegated to nostalgia, similar to Nintendo’s ‘Virtual Boy’ or the trackballs of yore. To further this, Microsoft recently released an upgrade to the Xbox 360 dashboard that redesigned the whole thing to be Kinect-enabled. Kinect, as you’ll recall, is Microsoft’s controller-free control system for the Xbox – it includes motion-tracking, such as gestures, as well as a microphone and voice recognition, for speech control.

The motion-tracking portion of Kinect is OK – it’s not superbly accurate, which makes the games more of an entertainment piece than something that serious gamers would be interested in. The system needs to get much more accurate to be able to take on real gaming. However, the voice control is phenomenally cool. I kid you not – the following situation actually happened. Aside from pressing the button to turn my Xbox on, I was able to talk the system all the way through from the main dashboard to watching an episode of Modern Family, entirely from the couch without ever touching a remote control. 100% voice. That’s amazing.

The news that Microsoft is now requiring its partners to make their apps ‘Kinect-enabled’ is no surprise. The improvement in experience is so significant that I wouldn’t expect anything less. In fact, the few apps, such as Last.FM, that weren’t updated, are now noticeably painful to use – even though they’re the same as they were a few weeks ago.

Now, imagine that when you buy your next Xbox gaming system (entertainment system, really these days), it doesn’t come with a controller. You simply plug it in and talk your way through the rest of the setup. Now, imagine that for a family, it recognizes not only commands, but VOICES. It would know that Reese (at age 10 or so) was the one who gave the ‘turn on’ command, so it would present a kid-friendly version of the dashboard. None of that scary Modern Warfare 10 business, just all butterflies and sunshine. The possibilities are endless.

Just plain crazy.

Dating My Wife

// December 29th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Family

Back in the fall of 2006 I met my wife – it’s a fun story, actually – we sort of met on MySpace, even though we went to high school together. I’ll only tell the full version of it in person, so you’ll have to ask the next time we hang out. In any case, we ‘dated’ for a while, then eventually got engaged and married. We’re coming up on our anniversary, but today I’m reminded of one of the founding things of our relationship by my friend James Whatley (if you don’t subscribe to his blog, you’re missing out on one of the best out there).

This was us walking to the spot where I would propose to my wife

At the earliest stages of our relationship, when we had just gotten engaged, Christina and I agreed that having a ‘date night’ every single month is of the utmost importance. I actually posted about this on Jaiku (kinda like Facebook or Twitter, only better, sadly) 4 years ago, as seen on my old Jaiku profile.

The basic definition is this: Date Night is a key to any relationship we decided. It’s every month for the rest of our lives, whether we can afford it or not. Nothing fancy, just a night out, just the two of us, for dinner and a movie or walking around downtown or whatever.

Four years, new jobs, new cities, a new house, and even a new baby later, I’m proud to say that we still do this. Sure, we’ve missed a month here and there, and our date nights have ranged from dinner at Simply Fondue to simply walking around downtown, but we’ve done it. And that has made all the difference.

The Convergence Of Print And Digital – Life Essentials Study Bible

// December 22nd, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Family, technology

With the rise of digital and increased portability of small displays with computers behind them, the print industry is looking at quite the bleak future. Indeed, while I do have a physical subscription to Wired magazine, the hard copy usually goes straight from the mailbox to the back of our toilet. By the time the physical magazine arrives, I’ve typically already downloaded and read the digital version on my iPad.

I prefer the digital copy, too – it has videos embedded, live links, and is simply more engaging to me. However, that’s purely an entertainment example. What about something a bit more difficult to ‘digitize’, like a Study Bible? Study Bibles are meant to be used as spiritual research tools, and somewhat like a diary. I know my personal bible is now covered in duct tape, since I’ve had it for so long that the cover has worn off. I can’t replace it though, because during its use, I’ve scribbled notes here and there in the margins. Notes that, at one point, helped me see a verse more clearly or offered up some insight that I hadn’t seen before. It’s not as easy – yet – to scribble those notes in the margin on a digital copy. Sure, the Kindle lets you highlight and make notes, but you have to type them out and you lose the passion that scrawling affords you.

Recently, though, we picked up a new Bible for Christina that offers an interesting balance between my iPad-based Wired magazine and my duct tape-bound study Bible - the Life Essentials Study Bible. It was put together by Gene Getz, and in addition to the normal extra definitions and side-notes that a Study Bible normally includes, he’s put together over 250 hours of video content, hosted it online, and then inserted QR codes throughout the chapters. You can scan the codes to get directly to the appropriate video for that passage, to get some additional video insights that you wouldn’t get by simply reading the words.

Personally, I think this is really brilliant for a few reasons:

1. It’s a unique approach to bridging the digital and the analog. You have a print book with direct links (easy ones, no less) to digital content. Brilliant.

2. Over 250 hours of video is a TON. Realistically speaking, it likely took at least an entire year JUST to determine where the videos should be inserted in the text, script the videos, shoot them, process them, upload them, and then generate QR codes for them, and insert those QR codes in the text in the correct place. That’s in addition to whatever time it took to add the other notes and extras here and there.

3. The use of QR code is fascinating. Why not short URLs? QR codes are easier, especially for an older generation – simply hold your phone up to the page and boom. Done.

I know Christina is excited to start using her new Study Bible, and I’ll be teaching her how to use these ‘fancy’ codes with her smartphone this evening. What a great way to bring the Scriptures alive.

In The Driver’s Seat – #KloutChevySonic

// December 13th, 2011 // No Comments » // Family

I’ve already had to return the Chevy Sonic that I had on loan for a weekend through Klout, but I did manage to shoot another video of the interior of the car, this time with my 6-foot frame stuffed inside. The Chevy Sonic is definitely a compact car, but it was actually quite nice for a few days. Here’s a peek at the inside:

We had a great time cruising through the backroads of Texas in the Chevy Sonic. It performed great on the highway, streets, and even dirt/gravel roads winding up the hills of Texas. It rained/drizzled the entire trip – from the time we left our driveway to the time we returned, so we were really grateful for the wipers on the front windshield, but also the rear wiper, so I could see what was coming up behind me.

The Chevy Sonic came with several music options, including XM Radio and inputs for my iPod. The XM Radio was awesome – hundreds of stations, mostly commercial-free, and they worked everywhere, without having to re-tune when we came in or out of range. It was beautiful. The controls on the steering wheel of the Sonic also made it easy for me to adjust the music without taking my eyes off the road.

The iPod hookups weren’t as easy. There are 2 standard 3.5mm audio-in plugs on the Sonic – one in the front dashboard and one in a small compartment above the glovebox (shown in the video above). These work as expected, and were how we used the iPod. There is a USB input in that small compartment, and when I plugged my iPod’s USB cable in there, it was a more robust connection, showing the currently playing song on the radio display and allowing me to browse the current playlist with the steering wheel controls. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to figure out how to browse through the rest of the iPod this way – if I wanted to load up a different playlist, for instance. I did not read the manual, and it’s entirely likely that I just missed a button somewhere, but it wasn’t obvious, so I didn’t use that option.

How do you listen to music in your car?