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FDA approves Owlet’s baby-monitoring sock two years after halting sales
Owlet, a baby monitoring device manufacturer, has received a nod from the FDA for its latest pulse-oximeter device BabySat. The approval comes after the FDA previously took the technology off consumer shelves.
Owlet’s latest smart sock is designed to keep tabs on older kids too
Owlet's new Smart Sock Plus tracks kids up to five years old and costs $359.
The best white noise machines for babies
Engadget editors test out four smart white noise machines intended for the nursery.
Filo’s Tata prevents parents from forgetting kids in car seats
Tata is an alarm system that keeps kids safe in cars.
Bosch's electric stroller tech helps carry your baby uphill
It's not just grown-ups that might appreciate electrified transport. Bosch has unveiled an "eStroller" system that uses dual electric motors and sensors to not only reduce the effort involved in carting your young one around, but prevent the stroller from going in unexpected directions. It'll automatically study the road surface to help you push uphill, brake on the descent and keep it on track during lateral slopes. The technology will also bring the stroller to a halt if you lose control or battle fierce winds.
The parents of Engadget on the big (and often gimmicky) world of baby tech
Here at Engadget, we don't do Mother's Day gift guides. Nor Father's Day either. But as the site has grown up over the past 15 years, so has our staff. Whereas we used to just have one or two token parents on the team, we now have around half a dozen, each of whom has some strong opinions about where tech does (and doesn't) belong in child-rearing. In our not-Mother's Day guide launching today, our resident moms and dads sift through the sometimes-gimmicky world of parenting tech -- a growing class of products that promise to make kids safer, healthier and in some cases smarter. Throughout, the parents of Engadget weigh in on what to buy, and what to skip, and along the way make recommendations on things like kids' streaming services, STEM kits, techie sleep aids, tools for managing screen time and tips on how to raise a good internet citizen. And for those of you who don't have kids of your own but still know a few, we'll tell you how to buy tech toys for someone else's children without making enemies of their parents (nothing like a loud gadget to ruin a friendship!). Find our series here -- and yes, you should probably call your mom this weekend.
How to digitally track everything your baby does
There are plenty of ways to be a data-conscious parent today, including gadgets, apps and some decidedly old-school methods.
The best baby gadgets for new parents
The road to parenthood is paved with endless anxiety and preparation. You have countless choices to make, and in the heat of the moment, they all seem like life-and-death decisions. That makes would-be parents an easy target for the baby-gear industry, which is expected to surpass $100 billion by 2025. If you thought buying a new phone or laptop was hard, just wait until you're confronted with countless "smart" baby gadgets that promise to prevent SIDs, track every bowel movement and make sure your child isn't screwed up for life. That's basically the life I've been living for the past year. But now that my daughter Sophia is nearly six months old, I have a better sense of the gear she actually wants to use and what's a waste of money.
What we're buying: A terrible replacement baby monitor
This week's IRL tale has nothing to do with new year's resolutions. Thankfully. Instead, Senior Editor Dan Cooper tries to replace his decent (but broken) baby monitor, and finds that cheaper models no longer cut it.
Health and beauty tech continues to fail pregnant women
There's a thread on Fitbit's Feature Suggestion forum titled, "Add Pregnancy/Nursing mode for more accurate calorie estimates," with the first comment logged in December 2013. It was locked at 328 comments and 1,388 upvotes. In the comments, hundreds of women chimed in to agree and add their own requests, including tweaks to Fitbit's menstruation-tracking features, nursing settings, weight-gain monitoring and other pregnancy-specific notifications. A moderator lurked, editing labels and updating the status of the request. At 4:41PM on May 6th, 2014, a moderator updated the pregnancy-feature thread to "New." By February 14th, 2015, the status had shifted to, "Not currently planned."
The Owlet Band monitors your unborn baby while you sleep
Owlet is known for making connected baby monitors and teeny tiny smart socks (yes, really), but its latest innovation is built to use before baby is actually born. The Owlet Band is a soft, thin circle of fabric that wraps around an expectant mother's abdomen and lower back, and it has a small plastic sensor front-and-center. Using passive ECG technology, the Band is able to read and record the baby's heart rate, count its kicks, identify contractions and track the mother's sleeping position. Essentially, it's a sleepy-time peace-of-mind machine for anxious parents-to-be.
Babeyes is a ridiculous first-person camera for babies
For the past few years at least, it hasn't been terribly hard to get video from a child's perspective. Polaroid of all companies tried this once, and it's not like you couldn't slap a GoPro on a child if you really wanted to. The difference with Babeyes, the product of a French startup tucked away in a dimly lit corner of CES Unveiled, is that the camera is only half of the equation.
Honda’s Sound Sitter lulls fussy children with engine noises
Plenty of parents have turned to car rides in order to calm fussy babies and Honda has now developed a gadget based on that concept. But instead of bringing the baby to the car, Honda's Sound Sitter brings the car to the baby. The company tried out the sounds of 37 different car engines, including various Civic models, Accords and Integras, ultimately determining that the sound of the NSX engine was most effective when it came to soothing babies. And when researchers tried it out on newborns -- aged six months to 1.5 years old -- 11 out of 12 seemed to experience comfort while seven showed reduced heart rates.
The first ‘blockchain baby’ is here
When you read the news that they put a baby on the blockchain, your reaction makes you one of two types of people. Either you think, Mon dieu, is there anything the magical fairy dust known as blockchain can't solve? Or you think: Surely, this is child abuse. For the past few years, techies have frothed and proselytized over the potential salvation of blockchain, the tech behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. So it's hard to even know what babies and blockchain could even have to do with each other. Typically, outside of grifter circles, blockchain is associated with vaporware, shady fraudulent ICOs or solving things that aren't suited at all for blockchain's "distributed ledger" system. Oh, and largely solving things that aren't even problems.
Fisher-Price’s wearable baby monitor is an unreliable rash machine
Spoiler alert: This does not end well for Fisher-Price. For several months now I've been using the company's Sproutling wearable "baby monitor." And you'll notice that's in scarequotes, because it is definitely not a baby monitor. In fact, it's really just a sleep tracker for your child (read: half a Fitbit), and a bad one at that. Even at half the price, the Sproutling wouldn't be worth it. At the full $250 retail, it's an insult.
Lussya is a $300 baby lotion dispenser disguised as modern art
Massage is good for adults and great for babies, who use the stimulation to bond with their parents, calm down and work out their gas. It's why French startup Caressa is building My Lussya One, a massage oil heater and automatic dispenser that's designed to ensure that rubbing sessions are always a pleasure.
Nanit the AI nanny tries to unravel the mysteries of a restless baby
When my wife and I became parents, the most important weapon in our childcare arsenal was an A5-size notebook. In this mighty tome we wrote out every single data point relating to our new baby, from the quantity of milk she drank and duration of sleep through to the volume of excreta. It was, after all, only with this information that we were able, in our sleep-deprived and confused state, to coordinate how to meet her needs.
Ford's baby crib isn't a car, but it feels like one
When it comes to getting a baby to fall asleep, sometimes a car ride is the only thing that will do the trick. I know that all too well because that's the tactic my parents used when I was a tyke. Of course, cranking up the car driving around just to get your child to nap burns fuel, so Ford designers in Spain developed a baby crib that simulates the experience of a ride in the backseat.
AI can predict autism through babies' brain scans
Scientists know that the first signs of autism can appear in early childhood, but reliably predicting that at very young ages is difficult. A behavior questionnaire is a crapshoot at 12 months. However, artificial intelligence might just be the key to making an accurate call. University of North Carolina researchers have developed a deep learning algorithm that can predict autism in babies with a relatively high 81 percent accuracy and 88 percent sensitivity. The team trained the algorithm to recognize early hints of autism by feeding it brain scans and asking it to watch for three common factors: the brain's surface area, its volume and the child's gender (as boys are more likely to have autism). In tests, the AI could spot the telltale increase in surface area as early as 6 months, and a matching increase in volume as soon as 12 months -- it wasn't a surprise that most of these babies were formally diagnosed with autism at 2 years old.
Nintendo's '1-2 Switch' has 28 ridiculous minigames
Weird Nintendo is the best Nintendo. We now know there are a total 28 minigames in Nintendo's upcoming party game 1-2 Switch, according to the official Japanese website. One eagle-eyed Reddit user also spotted unlisted trailers for the bite-sized activities on the company's Japanese YouTube channel. We already knew about the simulated cow milking and sandwich eating; Nintendo revealed them weeks ago during a Switch presentation. But that was apparently just the tip of the quirky iceberg.
