Baby Monitor Webcam

If I had to vote for all-time-best-designed gadget, this would be it: my wireless network cam. It’s got the usual benefits of a video baby monitor with the added bonus that we can turn it on (password-protected, of course) to the world, or more particularly, to Boobaby’s seven far-flung grandparents and other sundry relations and friends.

Since you asked, I researched quite a bit and got the Panasonic BL-C30. It works over WiFi (once it’s configured), so we can move it around the house pretty easily. It’s got a built-in Web server with account control, automatic capture, and a camera display page that works on IE and Firefox, as well as on the Macintosh. (For some reason, the packaging insisted you needed Windows and Internet Explorer, but that’s just not true.) It lets the user pan most of the room left to right and up and down, and it works pretty well in low-light situations (like naptime). There’s no sound in the model we got, but we’ve got a standard baby monitor, too, so that’s no drawback. All in all, a pretty impressive camera.

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