Comments on: Shush Little Baby

By: Mathew Patterson

Mathew Patterson — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:11:24 +0000

Phillip asked “So what happens when it puts your baby to sleep, with the volume up for the shushing, then in comes a loud call?”

–

I was using (I think) the aSleep app for exactly this purpose, and I had finally got my son off to sleep when my wife called to ask “is he asleep”?

NOT ANY MORE!

By: Mike Jalkut

Mike Jalkut — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 04:25:30 +0000

Very nice.

By: Emanuele

Emanuele — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:21:46 +0000

Very cool idea Daniel! Priceless!

By: britt

britt — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:28:44 +0000

Hmm… digging waaayyy back into my memory archives… when I was but a wee lil’ coder… well, OK, before even that… I seem to recall finding riding in a car to be quite relaxing; and realising at the time that it was the road noise and vibration that was doing it. (yes, I was rather precocious; my parents once made the mistake of leaving me briefly in a locked room — they checked in on me very often and sound went straight thru that door like it wasn’t even there, so they weren’t being abusive or anything like that, they just didn’t want me to get out and run into the street or something — with (unknown to them) a screwdriver in the room… well, I informed them that that was a dumb idea by walking out and handing my mom the parts of the lock mechanism!)

Anyway, it occurs to me, that a reasonably handy geek could rig up something with a suitable noise generator, a small amp, and either one of those “bass shakers” that you can sometimes find for cheap at surplus electronics stores, or a small, cheap subwoofer modified with a weight on the cone for reaction mass, mounted to the underside of the crib: instant car trip, without the annoying gas bill!

By: Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:51:54 +0000

Phillip: I don’t believe it’s possible for iPhone apps to disable the incoming calls. This could be a problem if you use the app in the “unattended” mode that some people have been rightly skeptical about.

But also keep in mind that the volume slider on the app is for the app itself. So if you have high volume static in the app, it won’t affect the system-wide volume of calls.

By: TheBoyKen

TheBoyKen — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:13:24 +0000

I agree with Ian, it’s not right that this app is being targeted at parents wanting to pacify their children with technology instead of actual human interaction.

Instead it should be targeted at men wanting to pacify their girlfriends / wives etc. with technology instead of actual human interaction.

And in other news, Daniel if you can get this working on women, you’re way underpricing your app – with the money you’re leaving on the table, you’d be able to afford a 24/7 angelic choir going “shush” to your nipper. I for one would happily trade everything I own for it.

By: Phillip Ryu

Phillip Ryu — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:35:45 +0000

So what happens when it puts your baby to sleep, with the volume up for the shushing, then in comes a loud call? Does it suppress incoming calls / notifications?

By: Konstantin

Konstantin — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:08:22 +0000

Cool idea. But why not using mic instead of start/stop button? Just start to “shushing” as baby starts to cry :-)

By: Timothy Wood

Timothy Wood — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:08:06 +0000

Cool idea and would have been very useful a couple years ago…

Another thing you might try if your baby builds up immunity to white noise is the Electric Sheep screen saver though this doesn’t so much put babies to sleep as stun them in amazement.

By: Lee Falin

Lee Falin — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:50:42 +0000

Daniel,

Maybe for 1.1 you could work on preventing another baby quieting problem. As time goes on you’ll start to develop the baby-calf-bounce syndrom (BCB).

BCB first begins as you hold your child and try to help him fall asleep, you’ll start to get in the habit of bouncing with your calf muscles while swaying slightly back and forth. This condition will eventually progress to phase two (BCB^2) where you’ll keep bouncing slightly even after you put your son down in bed. The final stage (BCB^3) occurs when you are so conditioned to bounce that just seeing someone else holding a baby will make you start bouncing.

So to combat this, if you could add functionality to trigger the vibrate function on the iPhone in a way to simulate this bouncing, you could save yourself from all of the above.