Hey all!

I’ve seen a lot of posts here over the last month or so about getting burned by a smart item provider, I thought I would share a positive experience to counterbalance things a little :)

I got an owlet smart sock as a baby shower gift from a good friend of mine. It’s got a lot of features; I would say the top two are its ability to give vitals in real time, and its ability to predict our baby’s sleep patterns. We were a little skeptical of it at first, since we weren’t sure how accurate its sensors are, it would go off because we put it on wrong (not a your baby is dieing alert, a you’re-dumb alert). We got used to it, though, and I can honestly say it’s so useful and reassuring. It’s useful because it can help us recognize when baby is becoming overtired, and reassuring because it has alerts programmed for low heartrate, blood oxygen, etc – all without the need for an internet connection.

Super cool! Now when I’m traveling, I can boot up their app or my home assistant dashboard, and see whether baby is asleep or awake moment to moment, watch his little heart rate, and otherwise assure myself that all is well :) The product also hit a big milestone recently – it was given FDA clearance, meaning the sensors on it have been found to be as accurate as hospital standard! That’s a pretty big deal to me. Even though SIDS is rare, it just makes it really easy for me to go to sleep at night knowing an alarm will sound if he’s not getting enough oxygen, or his heartrate reaches an unhealthy level. Super cool product, friendly API, with local control. Gotta hand it to a company that offers a great product while keeping power over the device it in the hands of their consumers.

If you have a VPN router, your router literally has remote access built in as a feature. The VPN can be connected to remotely, and allow you to access locally hosted services. I use mine for such a purpose. When configured correctly, your VPN connection makes your device get treated like it’s on the local network.