It’s easy to spot recent parents, they are the people who look as though they haven’t slept in months. Sometimes the little bundle of joy responsible isn’t even a babe in arms but a toddler; old enough to wake up and find their parents for some solace but not old enough to understand that not everyone is up for being woken at 3 am. [Eyal] approached this problem in some style, by modifying a rabbit night light to indicate the time by changing colour, reminding the youngster when it’s a bit early to be rousing the grown-ups.
The bunny in question is a plastic moulding, sold with a white LED providing illumination, This was removed, and replaced with a rather nice custom PCB sporting a ring of addressable LEDs surrounding a Wemos ESP8266 board. In the darkest hours of the night, it is lit as a soft red to indicate sleep time. When an appropriate wake-up point is reached it bursts into a vibrant light show of many colours. Thus the recalcitrant early-riser can be taught to give Mum & Dad a little rest through the medium of light and colour.
This isn’t the first kids night light we’ve seen, indeed some of them have been rather elegant.
The ‘trick’ to making babies sleep is to take them outside for a short time in the early evening to see the sky, and sun setting. This helps with their circadian rythms and they sleep better. I serendipitously heard about this simple but interesting observation in time so I could try it myself and I can say, it worked for us very well, no technology required.
Try that in Sweden, let’s see how much fun you’ll have! :o
Some people take the babies on a tour in the car. Works great for them. There are plenty of ways that works different on different children.
Good that it worked for you. But Cicadian are not that common in Sweden during the winter. :-)
You could nail the nursery door shut. Then you won’t be disturbed until you decide to open it again.
Either you don’t have kids or yours don’t have a very good set of lungs :LOL:
Two words: Ear Muffs.
Why my kids were that young they would come in and ask me, “Is it morning yet.” I used to ask them, “What’s the first number on the clock?” They would answer, “3” or “4” sometimes, but usually “5” or “6”. I would tell them that it wasn’t morning until the first number on the clock was “6”. The oldest was in kindergarten and they kept up this routine. They never did get that the first number had to be a “6”.
One other thing is to make sure you are nice to your parents or aunt/uncle who baby sit. Cross them and the next time they will return your perfect child stuffed full of sugary treats to bounce off your walls all night. 😈
A comparable commercial product is the Gro Clock (https://gro.co.uk/product/gro-clock/), which changes colour from blue to yellow – and displays a picture of the sun – at a preprogrammed time.
We use a second-hand model of the above, with moderate success. Though it’s always fun to make your own, and to be able to fully customise its functionality…
Another is the hatch rest. It’s basically this same thing but with built in audio. I was going to make my own but when my kids weren’t sleeping I didn’t have the energy or the mental capacity to peel an orange, let alone design a board and make an app to run it. I couldn’t make an app as nice as the hatch one anyways.
I gave my niece one of those when she was having trouble with sleeping through the night. It really did seem to help her.
I do a similar thing. I have a dim light connected th a smart outlet controlled by an echo dot. It has given me days of extra sleep. Well worth it for every parent in my opinion.
Without tentacles, how will it control the human grub?
“The PCB external diameter is 9cm, or 0.69 bananas in imperial units.”
:-)
Me like!