My wife and I have just recently had our first child and I'm looking at getting a decent baby monitor (or security camera) setup.
Our place is not very big at all (think a studio with a separate bedroom/bathroom). I was given a cheap security camera to use for now but I want to start planning for when we move into a bigger apartment (security cameras) and a generally better system for monitoring our baby when we are in another room and cannot hear.
Should I invest in a baby monitor now or would it be better to invest in a decent security camera system instead?
I'm based in the EU and am quite tech-savvy so I don't have a problem setting things up myself if it means a better system.
Congrats on the baby, and I wish you both get some sleep in the near future!
I honestly preferred using a baby monitor that didn't have too many techy features. The one I've had the longest was from Infant Optics - just their baseline model worked fine. No wifi or phone connections. It's just a basic video/audio monitor.
I just took old android phone and used it as ipcam mounted on her crib.
The sound is easy to hear, but it was assuring to also see the camera view what she was doing
When our first child arrived I had a cheap IP cam lying around that I could flash with something I trusted and integrate into my other stuff (Homeassistant in this case). The camera didn't really support a wired connection, only 2.4 wifi. This has probably been my single complaint about the setup generally. We live in a somewhat dense neighborhood and the surrounding 2.4GHz noise affects the stream quality, making it somewhat less reliable.
I would say that if reliability and complexity are your biggest concerns go with one of the decent baby monitors. Very reliable, zero complexity. We didn't find the reliability to be an issue in practice and I didn't mind the complexity. I would say that if you go the IP cam route, do your best to go wired or at least 5GHz.
