The Cubo AI Plus has baby-welfare bona fides that ought to take advantage of anxious new mother and father sleep simpler. The child monitor’s proprietary expertise was co-created by a mother and a pediatrician. As the brand story goes, the mom someday discovered her new child sleeping together with his face by accident lined. After a half-dozen child cameras didn’t ease her anxiousness—or her insomnia—she took issues into her personal arms and with pediatric steering, set about making a digital camera that will.
This digital camera’s marquee characteristic addresses the problem that gave its creator so many sleepless nights: Safety detection alerts that notify mother and father of a lined face, abdomen sleeping, and different sleep dangers. But it’s additionally chock stuffed with the wish-list gadgets that make trendy mother and father squee with pleasure, together with evening imaginative and prescient, temperature and humidity monitoring, sleep monitoring and analytics, and automated photograph seize.
This evaluation is a part of TechHive’s protection of the best video baby monitors, the place you’ll discover evaluations of competing merchandise, plus a purchaser’s information to the options it’s best to take into account when buying.
The Cubo digital camera earns cute factors proper out of the field. The enclosure has been sculpted right into a plump little fowl, one which tweets to let it’s detected noteworthy child exercise. Set into its stomach is a wide-angle Sony lens that captures video in 1080p decision. This is flanked by a light-weight sensor and a high-sensitivity microphone. The infrared mild set above the lens to allow evening imaginative and prescient doesn’t emit any seen crimson mild, so there’s little threat it is going to wake your child.
The digital camera pushes alerts to your telephone if the newborn rolls over on their abdomen or will get their head lined throughout sleep.
The digital camera enclosure additionally features a evening mild and a built-in speaker. A multi-purpose button on the fowl’s again is ringed with a standing mild that may be turned off in case you discover it’s disruptive.
Parents have some flexibility in organising the Cubo AI. The easiest is to connect the digital camera to its cell stand and set in on a shelf or dresser. If that’s not logistically doable, you’ll be able to mount the digital camera to a ground stand or connect it on to the newborn’s crib. All the required elements and detailed instructions are equipped with the digital camera; assembling both of those apparatuses is a two-person mission, although, so plan accordingly.
It’s additionally price noting that the ground stand requires you to insert a full plastic water bag (equipped) into the ground base to weigh it down. The digital camera must be repeatedly plugged into {an electrical} outlet and the ability twine threads by means of a cutaway behind that very same base. It all seems to be secure sufficient—the water bag’s lid is on the alternative facet from the twine, and the twine by no means is available in contact with the water bag—however I nonetheless wouldn’t be comfy with this setup in my little one’s nursery, and I’d guess plenty of nervous new guardian wouldn’t both. Might a bag crammed with sand be higher?
Cubo AI PlusYou can connect the digital camera to the crib or its stand or set it on a shelf.
I didn’t encounter any points connecting the digital camera to my community. You must obtain the Cubo app and register an account. From there, the app takes the reins and guides you thru pairing the machine and logging into your Wi-Fi.
Cubo has put configuration suggestions proper on the app’s launch web page, and that’s no small mercy for addled new mother and father. Rather than having to hunt by means of a cryptic menu, customers are directed to the suitable settings for enabling covered-face and rollover alerts and setting detection zones. Parents of infants shall be most within the crib-detection zones, which outline an space over the crib for the AI to watch for movement, and crying detection, which sends an alert when the AI acknowledges crying among the many child’s different sleep sounds.
A characteristic I don’t recall seeing on one other monitor, or a minimum of not offered as Cubo has, is a danger-zone setting. This works just like the crib-detection zone, besides you set this space exterior the crib to be alerted if somebody enters it. Though “danger zone” evokes photos of late-night intruders, this characteristic has a way more sensible utility: Ensuring a toddler or errant pet doesn’t disturb or harm the newborn whereas they’re sleeping. It can even come in useful when the newborn is cell, as you’ll be able to set zones round un-baby-proofed areas in your house.
Viewing your little one with Cubo AI Plus is very similar to utilizing a Wi-Fi residence safety digital camera. The app streams a reside feed to your telephone and presents you with controls for activating the microphone—nice for soothing a stirring toddler—and capturing video and screenshots on demand.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGSetting a crib detection zone permits the digital camera to watch your toddler’s actions.
The picture high quality is an order of magnitude higher than what you’d get with an old school VGA child monitor. The digital camera leverages that by routinely taking photographs when the AI acknowledges your child is smiling, sitting up, or doing one thing else notable. These photos are organized by age and saved in a digital scrapbook known as the Moments Wall.
Each morning, the app presents you with a sleep analytics report, an aggregation of the newborn’s nighttime exercise. The knowledge is offered in graph type together with highlights comparable to the whole quantity of sleep, variety of awakenings and caregiver visits, and the longest stretch of uninterrupted sleep.
The digital camera usually comes with someday of sleep monitoring and analytics, 10 days of Moments Wall historical past, and the power to view 18 hours of reside video footage and all alert-based movies. You would wish to buy a Premium account ($8 for one month, $45 for 6 months, and $80 for a yr) to have the ability to obtain video and get 30 days of analytics and Moments photographs. Cubo, nevertheless, is presently providing a yr of Premium service free with the acquisition of the Cubo AI Plus. That’s a reasonably candy deal for folks who will see a lot of their disposable revenue redirected towards myriad child wants throughout that first yr.
All informed, the Cubo AI Plus is a superb child monitor and it guarantees to get even higher—the corporate has mentioned that lullabies and sensible residence integration are coming later this yr. At $350, it’s priced comparably to different AI-enabled cameras, such because the Miku Smart Baby Monitor. Still, it’s a comparatively small value to pay for higher, safer sleep for the entire household.
Note: Cubo AI is providing a limited-time product launch low cost of $100 whether or not you buy the digital camera on Amazon (verify the coupon field) or at http://www.getcubo.com (enter the code CUBOPLUS).