Room: a baby monitor from a spare phone

Room is part of the Advanced plan. Everyone caring for your baby can look in.

Start the room

On the phone that will stay with your baby:

1. Open Little Bean and tap Start the room on the Room card on Today.
2. Tap This one stays with your baby.
3. Under Who can look in?, leave on everyone who should see this room. Tap Next.
4. Read Before you put it down and tap I understand.
5. Point the camera at the cot and tap Start room.

Starting the room also starts the sleep timer, so the nap is logged by itself. Only want to watch? Switch off This also starts the sleep timer before you tap Start room.

One phone per baby can be the room at a time.

Where to put it

• Plug it in. On battery expect three and a half to four hours, less on an older phone. Naps, not nights.
• Keep it out of reach. A charging cable in a cot is a strangulation risk. Put the phone on a shelf or a dresser, well back from the edge, and run the cable away from the cot.
• Leave Little Bean open. The screen dims by itself and keeps sending. On iPhone, locking the phone or switching apps stops the picture and only the sound carries on. On Android it keeps sending when locked, but don't switch to another app.

If you pick the phone up, it says so and keeps sending. Whoever is looking in sees wherever it points.

Look in

On your own phone, the Room card on Today shows the room is on. Tap Look in.

• Choose Picture or Sound only. Picture uses about 200 MB an hour, sound only about 15 MB.
• For the first minute it says Listening to the room… while it learns how quiet the room is. After that it tells you when there is Some sound in the room or when It's loud in the room.
• Connected or Weak connection is about the link between the two phones, measured on yours.
• Tap Stop looking in to leave. The room keeps running.

The room phone shows who is looking in by first name, and so does everyone else who is looking in.

Hold to talk

When the room phone and your phone are both iPhones, you can talk to the room.

1. Press and hold Hold to talk. Your voice comes out of the room phone's loudspeaker.
2. Let go to stop.

• While you talk you don't hear the room, so your voice can't echo back.
• It lets go by itself after one minute, or when you leave the app.
• Everyone else looking in sees who is talking. Your own voice doesn't set off a loud alert.
• The first time, allow Little Bean to use the microphone.

If either phone is an Android phone, the button doesn't show. Android can't switch the room phone to its loudspeaker for this, and through the earpiece nobody across the room would hear you.

Alerts

• Cries: anyone who looked in during this session is told when it gets loud. To be told every time a room runs, even without looking in, open Settings and turn on Room alerts without looking in under Room.
• Stopped sending: if the room phone stops sending, for example after losing wifi or running out of battery, everyone else caring for your baby is told.
• Low battery: everyone else caring for your baby is told when the room phone's battery runs low.

Alerts never go to the room phone itself. If nobody else cares for your baby yet, nobody is told when something goes wrong. Setup warns you when that is the case.

Stop the room

On the room phone, tap the screen to wake it and tap Stop the room. If a sleep is running, choose Stop and save the sleep or Stop without saving.

• Paused time is not counted.
• A sleep shorter than 10 minutes is not saved.
• If the room phone loses its connection for half an hour, the room closes by itself and saves the sleep up to the moment it stopped sending.

Who can look in

Everyone caring for your baby, unless you switch them off on the Who can look in? step. Someone switched off can't look in, gets no Room alerts and isn't told. If they open Room, they see Not shared with you.

The room phone remembers your choice for next time. To switch someone back on, stop the room and start it again.

To add someone, see Add a caregiver.