Any parent with a baby and deep pockets– or friends with deep pockets– will probably sing the praises of the BabyBjorn rocking sling chair. A simple spring-loaded sling seat allows you to rock a child to sleep like magic– but you do have to rock the child. In the tradition of fathers everywhere since the stone age, [Ceyhun Karataş] saw that as something to tinker around, creating his Automatic BabyBjorn Bouncer/Rocker with a servo, an Arduino, and some 3D printed parts.
You still can’t leave your child unattended with this hack, [Ceyhun] takes pains to point out, but it will free a hand so you can keep junior happy while tinkering up other toys for him or her. Music players are a popular staple, for example.
You should have plenty of time for such projects, because it won’t take long for you to replicate [Ceyhun]’s invention– it’s only as complicated as it needs to be, which is not very. The servo, a Futaba S3003 which is mounted to the bottom of the rocker in a 3D printed case, reels the baby in with a string tied to the bouncing seat portion. The BabyBjorn’s built-in spring bounces junior back up. As stated, Arduino Nano controls the servo, with two potentiometers in the build allowing you to control the speed and amplitude of the bounce independently to get the perfect naptime ratio. Everything you need to get started — aside from the hardware and the child– is available at the link above. You can see it in action in the video below, which in spite what you may fear from the Turkish thumbnail, does have authentic English audio, not AI auto-dubbing.
If you’ve got the baby but not the bouncy chair, have a gander at this mechatronic crib that does something similar on a much larger budget.
Thanks to [Ceyhun] for overcoming the new-parent sleep deprivation to document this project and send in a tip.
I didn’t know about these rocking baby chairs, but a short car journey worked wonders! (18 years ago now)
Better
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/lr1boU-3Tmg
Im all for modifying things instead of buying something else but im a little confused about taking a $200 bouncing chair and turining it into a automatic bouncer when numerous examples can be bought for half (or less) the price of the base item.
Excellent work. We had one of these hand-me-down. We called it the “baby catapult” and they really did love it. There’s a natural resonant frequency, I wonder if a small actuator with a mass coupled to it could be utilized to eliminate the strings?
Did the same thing with some technic Lego when the first child was small and we needed some rest!
These days they even sell them with built in motors.
I haven’t watched the video, but the guy in the thumbnail looks like he’s pointing to a baby, while himself being penetrated by a red hot control rod freshly ejected from the Chernobyl reactor.
Clearly you’ve never experienced the sleep deprivation of raising an infant 😂
I won’t watch a video with that “halo” line laid over a photo over the video frame and a mouth awaiting some other dudes gratification.
Use a feedback sensor and send motion to take advantage of natural frequency. Those two knobs must be hard adjust to find the resonance. Like an e-bow this should resonate, you’d need only intensity. The wind-up baby swings are similar, escapement and spring power like a pendulum clock.
Reminds me of an old Mathias Wandel Vid:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-PWnXhpo4YQ
He also experimented with a selv walking straller, with little success
Bought a motorized baby rocker for like 50 bucks brand new
yeah that’s what i was thinking…someone gave us some sort of motorized baby rocker as a baby shower gift.
fwiw we did not use it. i learned a whole slew of techniques to soothe or sleep my babies at any time, with or without consent (“you will sleep.” haha). my friend once told me the point of the baby stage is to give the parents confidence because it’s relatively easy to know what to do, it’s just a lot of work. unlike later stages of parenting where it’s the stress of constant second-guessing even as the amount of labor diminishes substantially. i would urge parents not to skip that stage, though i arguably haven’t healed yet from it, and you should do whatever it takes to maintain sanity lol.
You know an anti-natalist wrote this nonsense:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-parents-stroller-overuse-injury.html
Because every baby just loves the Richard Widmark treatment
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9DkySy18p0U&pp=ygUoUmljaGFyZCB3aWRtYXJrIHdoZWVsY2hhaXIga2lzcyBvZiBkZWF0aA%3D%3D
I shared this article with an Indian friend and he said “Oh, we just use Mama laps, and hand it down for generations”. It seems there is a nice and inexpensive solution on the market, but it does not appear to be in the US or EU. It appears all Indian family’s import this model :
https://m.indiamart.com/proddetail/mamalaps-automatic-baby-swings-cradle-kit-turn-your-baby-cradle-into-auto-swing-23756057812.html
Happy sleeping !
You can buy baby rocker from Aldi for 20quids