With the recent fitness tracker boom, it was inevitable there would a spate of wearables for babies. Thanks to a pair of ex-Apple and Google employees, we now have the Sproutling baby monitor, a Nest-like device in terms of design and simplicity. It's meant to be worn around your baby's ankle and monitors heart rate, skin temperature and body movements, while also tracking the room's temperature, humidity and light levels. (By comparison, the Mimo Baby is a full onesie with a clip worn on the body.) All that information is sent to a smartphone app, which crunches the data to create simple notifications. For instance, it can tell you whether her heart rate is higher than normal, if she's sleeping on her back, if it's warmer than ideal in the room or whether she's now awake and not in a good mood.
On top of that, the system can learn a baby's habits over time and predict things like when she's ready to wake up or if the room's too warm to sleep. Sproutling said it worked with parents, engineers and pediatric specialists to develop those features while keeping the app user-friendly. It's also built from hypoallergenic silicon, and can be tossed in a washing machine thanks to the removable sensor.
The Sproutling uses a wireless charger that assumes most parents are kinda busy: to power it up, you just place it on a charging "bowl" which doubles as the environmental sensor. The company said it tried to make notifications simple for busy parents so as not to overwhelm them with information. (Avoiding any "What does this mean? Call the doctor!") The Sproutling is now up for pre-order at an early-bird price of $249 (it'll run $299 at retail), and will ship early next year provided the company meets its $50,000 sales goal.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables
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