beelzerob
Senior Member
I've noticed a need for something for a while, and this last weekend it finally culminated in a big issue.
We have a steam shower that is fully enclosed. Once you close that door, you basically can't hear anything outside. The door is wavy glass, so you can kind of see things...but hear them? No.
We have an 8 month old still, who is sleeping in our room. And almost every night that I take a shower, I find myself thinking "Was that the baby?" So I turn off the water, or I crack open the door and listen....then find out it's not, so I continue. Finally, this last weekend, my wife and I were both in the shower (it was built for 2) and she heard or saw something, and it was our 3 and 5 year olds in tears because they couldn't find us. They'd been crying and shouting for us, but we couldn't hear them.
So this brings up the thought I'd had for a while. It would be nice if there was some way, in the shower, to be notified when something "noisy" is taking place outside. Whether it's the smoke alarm going off, or the babies crying, or the kids yelling, or whatever...it would be helpful to know.
I've thought of maybe 2 ways to accomplish this, but I'm interested in any other ideas out there. If I pull this off, there will be major WAF as a result....
1) Many baby monitors also include a little lighted scale on them to indicate magnitude of sound....so that you can turn the volume all the way down and still see that noise is happening. So, I could put the baby monitor receiver outside the glass door of the shower (on a shelf somewhere), and put the transmitter in our room, and if we see the lights flickering or maxing out, we know there's noise going on. I think we have a monitor in the house that does this, so I can test this out to see if the lights really are noticeable from inside the shower. There's no plug there it could use, so batteries would be an issue.
2) I can replace the dimmer control for our shower with an ALC controller, and control that via CQC. Then, I would need some means of detecting the noise and notifying CQC, which could then manipulate the shower dim level to inform us that some kind of event is taking place. The advantage is not having to worry about batteries or finding a place to put the monitor receiver where we can see it from inside the shower. And I can also setup the lights to dim for other emergencies that CQC knows about....whether smoke alarms going off, or maybe the doorbell ringing, etc.
That's all I've got for now. Any input is appreciated.
We have a steam shower that is fully enclosed. Once you close that door, you basically can't hear anything outside. The door is wavy glass, so you can kind of see things...but hear them? No.
We have an 8 month old still, who is sleeping in our room. And almost every night that I take a shower, I find myself thinking "Was that the baby?" So I turn off the water, or I crack open the door and listen....then find out it's not, so I continue. Finally, this last weekend, my wife and I were both in the shower (it was built for 2) and she heard or saw something, and it was our 3 and 5 year olds in tears because they couldn't find us. They'd been crying and shouting for us, but we couldn't hear them.
So this brings up the thought I'd had for a while. It would be nice if there was some way, in the shower, to be notified when something "noisy" is taking place outside. Whether it's the smoke alarm going off, or the babies crying, or the kids yelling, or whatever...it would be helpful to know.
I've thought of maybe 2 ways to accomplish this, but I'm interested in any other ideas out there. If I pull this off, there will be major WAF as a result....
1) Many baby monitors also include a little lighted scale on them to indicate magnitude of sound....so that you can turn the volume all the way down and still see that noise is happening. So, I could put the baby monitor receiver outside the glass door of the shower (on a shelf somewhere), and put the transmitter in our room, and if we see the lights flickering or maxing out, we know there's noise going on. I think we have a monitor in the house that does this, so I can test this out to see if the lights really are noticeable from inside the shower. There's no plug there it could use, so batteries would be an issue.
2) I can replace the dimmer control for our shower with an ALC controller, and control that via CQC. Then, I would need some means of detecting the noise and notifying CQC, which could then manipulate the shower dim level to inform us that some kind of event is taking place. The advantage is not having to worry about batteries or finding a place to put the monitor receiver where we can see it from inside the shower. And I can also setup the lights to dim for other emergencies that CQC knows about....whether smoke alarms going off, or maybe the doorbell ringing, etc.
That's all I've got for now. Any input is appreciated.
Of course now the older kids know to check the shower if they can't find you.
