Baby twitters via kicks

[Corey Menscher] built the Kickbee while attending ITP this Fall. It monitors his pregnant wife’s belly and updates Twitter, a microblogging service, every time the baby kicks. The device makes everyone aware of the baby’s movement, not just the expectant mother. It can also log the baby’s activity to monitor development. The sensors are piezos held in place with an elastic band. They’re connected to an Arduino Mini which connects to a host computer using a BlueSMIRF bluetooth module. The host Mac does the logging and twittering.

This is one of the many projects on display at the ITP Winter Show.

[Thanks, @readiness via Boing Boing]

Comments [25]

tagged: arduino, baby, bluesmirf, bluetooth, boingboing, fetus, itp, piezo, pregnancy, pregnant, twitter, twittering

Reader Comments

nice….lets irradiate our kids before they’re born…

Posted at 4:04 am on Dec 12th, 2008 by dr.lure

Worst

Idea
Article
Concept
Idea
Idea

Ever

I….Don’t….Care

Posted at 5:22 am on Dec 12th, 2008 by Morden

Do you have proof that irradiating our unborn children is a bad idea?

Anyway, I love hearing of nerds having children… It gives me hope for the human race, that the future generation may actually have brains in it…

Posted at 5:45 am on Dec 12th, 2008 by joseph

Irradiating unborn children would lead to a higher rate of mutation which should eventually lead to SUPER POWERS!!!

Posted at 5:58 am on Dec 12th, 2008 by TJ

super powers!!!!111!!

sign my decedents up!!!eleven!!

Posted at 6:47 am on Dec 12th, 2008 by mat

I am also worried about radiation.

It’s best not to overload babies with too much radiation. There’s a reason why x-ray photos should be avoided, too.

Posted at 6:51 am on Dec 12th, 2008 by JohnZero

I wish they provided more detail. I would like to see a graph of the output of a piezo after a kick. At the very least, it seems like you would get a lot of false positives (e.g., mom stepping on a hard surface). I wonder if they did any research to control for that sort of thing.

Posted at 8:20 am on Dec 12th, 2008 by Andrew

i agree with [morden].

Posted at 9:35 am on Dec 12th, 2008 by andrew

this has to be the dumbest idea ever. what’s next, a device that updates a counter on your myspace page every time you take a piss?? i am completely at loss for words. seriously.

Posted at 9:54 am on Dec 12th, 2008 by ryan

I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of guys with wives or children that post comments on this blog.

Posted at 10:40 am on Dec 12th, 2008 by ezg

@joseph, theres a saying, gold parents can produce bronze children and bronze parents can produce gold children. The same is true for for intelligence, so it’s not really fair favor nerd reproduction, when stupid parents can produce nerdy children as well.

Posted at 11:27 am on Dec 12th, 2008 by bountyx

Wow. As if pregnancy isn’t uncomfortable enough, this guy feels the need to strap a bunch of extra crap to his wife. i’m sure she’s *really* happy about that concept.

Posted at 12:43 pm on Dec 12th, 2008 by Adam

Wow. Wow. WTF.

That’s just plain weird.

Posted at 12:46 pm on Dec 12th, 2008 by Creepy...

Proving once again that Twitter has no legitimate reason to exist.

Posted at 12:48 pm on Dec 12th, 2008 by VonSkippy

@bountyx

that is true, but here’s the catch when nerds have children:
they know the type of education their children should be getting and generally push their children more towards being nerdy.

@ryan
i would personally have a website dedicated to these kind of things…
times baby kicked total: 312
times peed today: 2
times computer has been restarted in 30 days: 2
times someone laughed when they saw how nerdy i am in 30 days: 18

etc etc…

Posted at 1:21 pm on Dec 12th, 2008 by _matt

I heard from a couple of places that mothers that use ultrasound a lot tend to have left handed kids. I don’t know how accurate that study is but I wonder if this thing would effect that.

Anyway about the whole twitter thing, so we are getting our unborn to participate in “social networking” (i.e. I love myself because I’m so unique like nobody else in teh whole widest world)?

Posted at 12:47 am on Dec 13th, 2008 by GJG

When I showed this to my wife, she thought it was the greatest thing ever. When she was pregnant with our daughter, they wanted her to log every time the baby kicked and how many times it kicked per session. When you are pregnant and have a bunch of other things to worry about, counting kicks isn’t exactly top priority. Plus, you can keep track while you sleep. if you’re worried about radiation, you can have it hold the info on an SD card, and upload the data every day or so. That way, you also eliminate the reliance on twitter.

Posted at 8:29 am on Dec 13th, 2008 by Ghrayfahx

Having babies able to communicate with the outside world is just not a good idea. Doesn’t this guy play Second Life?

Posted at 8:42 am on Dec 13th, 2008 by j-striker

How far will wifi transmit through salt water? I am not worried that even direct contact with cellphones is harmful, but if my head were in a bag of amniotic fluid, I’d worry even less.

As far as it being a stupid idea- so what? It’s neat. This is HackADay, not CureCancerAndPrevent WarADay. None of us who like to experiment are going to run ideas past any committee of know-it-alls, naysayers, and self-appointed technology appropriateness gurus. Many really good ideas see their first application in some stupid sphere, and no one need apologize for it. So bugger off.

And frankly, I think a database of lots of people twittering when they piss might actually be fascinating, especially if correlated with events going on. I wonder how many women pee during commercials when “Desperate Housewives” is running?

As any techocritics tell me how stupid that is, be aware that your opinion and your scorn are less interesting to me than your farting habits are more interesting than your opinions. Twitter that.

Posted at 12:02 pm on Dec 13th, 2008 by Dave Eaton

Do you think if somebody did a drive by falcon punch on this bitch that would register too?

Posted at 1:09 pm on Dec 13th, 2008 by Alcoholic

I am very discerning where on the Internet I participate. After the long September, the usenet became trash and I left, irc soon got taken over and I left. On Slashdot you’re already outnumbered by non-thinkers. Youtube comments are among the dumbest (http://xkcd.com/202/).
–
And now, finally, the idiots have arrived at hackaday. Why do they find it so gratifying to demonstrate their complete lack of social skills on the internet?
I hope, you’re 16 and not 26.

Posted at 6:39 pm on Dec 13th, 2008 by tantris

@Dave Eaton, I could not possibly agree more.

@Alcoholic lulz, but a think a shoryuken would be better.

@tantris… sigh, I wholeheartedly agree with you as well… and yet I still wander aimlessly across the net, in hopes of one day finding my dream community.

Posted at 9:44 pm on Dec 13th, 2008 by Zypher

Man, pregnant women are just, ugh. This obsessive baby shit gets old with me.

Posted at 9:07 pm on Feb 16th, 2009 by Frostbitten

Just one question, do you think it’s important to pay for a good brand name monitor or will a cheap one do the same job?

Posted at 6:27 pm on May 24th, 2009 by Paul Cranley

Well i would like to pay for an expensive one, but then again will it be better? Probaly no!

Posted at 4:48 pm on Jun 9th, 2009 by activity mats

Baby twitters via kicks

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