Cocoon Cam Plus - Baby Monitor With Breathing Monitoring - New 2018 Version Cocoon Cam

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Of import NOTE: Equally OF MAY 31 2020, COCOON CAM IS ENDING Support FOR THEIR MOBILE APP. So, probably time to choose another infant monitor, not this one—to bank check out our top picks for all-time baby monitor of 2020 here.
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The Cocoon Cam exists in a family of baby monitors that use a combination of wifi, your smartphone or tablet as the 'parent unit of measurement', and figurer vision to provide information nearly your child. Other examples include the Nanit (our review here) and the Arlo Baby (our review here). At $149, the Cocoon Cam is the most inexpensive of the agglomeration.

To find out how the Cocoon Cam stacks up against other options, we spent some time testing information technology ourselves and then shipped it off to a friend of Fathercraft who has a new infant, born prematurely, to examination its functioning every bit a monitor for very immature infants and premature babies. We'll be adding information to this review every bit part of that testing every bit it arrives. What follows now is a review based on our ain testing.

Please note: we received a free Cocoon Cam from the manufacturer as they noticed we reviewed baby monitors and were interested in our review. We exercise not guarantee positive reviews in exchange for gratuitous products, and e'er disclose complimentary products received. You lot tin can read more about our policies here. Also, we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Plan, an affiliate ad program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

A review of the Cocoon Cam Plus Baby Monitor

A few years ago, my brother and his wife came to babysit our girl Kenzie while we went to a concert. They stayed overnight at our apartment with Kenzie, who was around 18 months old at the time. When we got back and asked how it went, they both remarked on how tired they were. "Yeah, kids can do that to y'all," we said. "No, it wasn't that," my brother said, "Marian [his wife] was upward most of the night considering she kept thinking Kenzie might end animate. I was upwardly almost of the night too because she kept talking to me about it and making me go into Kenzie's room to check on her."

If you're a parent, you tin relate to this story. If you're about to be a parent and this sounds kinda ridiculous, we can nearly guarantee you'll have moments like this. I do information technology from time to time with our youngest girl, who'south 19 months sometime equally I'chiliad writing this. I did it with Kenzie (though not all night, every night!). I was talking to my dad the other twenty-four hour period and he said he used to do it when we were kids.

Making certain your child is however breathing is 1 of those nearly universal parenting things that but parents (or aunts and uncles who are babysitting a immature child) tin really relate to. It'south also non a completely unfounded concern – according to the CDC, iii,600 infants died of SUID (Sudden Unexplained Infant Death) and related causes in 2016. However, as we talk over in this article, none of the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendations for SIDS and SUID hazard reduction involve using a device to monitor your child.

This is exactly what the Cocoon Cam tries to solve. Using a combination of a directly over the crib mounting, an Hd photographic camera with night vision, and computer-vision technology with some algorithms designed to discover and analyze breathing rates & patterns, the Cocoon Cam (according to the company's site) purports to permit you lot to, "know your infant is sleeping safely so y'all can go the rest you lot deserve." And does this without the use of wearables (other baby monitors may include a component worn by your baby while she's sleeping).

This is quite a hope. Information technology also, for us, raised questions like: will this matter produce faux alarms that freak yous out? Does the human activity of measuring your kid'south breathing make youmore than worried, notless?

Permit'south dig in. We'll outset with how the Cocoon Cam works, how it'due south installed and fix, discuss the individual components of the Cocoon Cam, and then discuss the awesome, the wish it were dissimilar, and provide our final verdict.

What, exactly, is a Cocoon Cam?

The Cocoon Cam in a higher place Ruby'southward crib. Obligatory notation about why at that place are stuffed animals and a blanket in there – she was 19 months sometime at the time.

The company behind Cocoon Cam is based in Silicon Valley, and proud of it. They tout a team of PhDs & parents behind the product, working to utilise the top minds in tech to improve the baby monitor. (Interestingly, iBaby labs, another visitor whose monitors we've reviewed, uses nearly the exact aforementioned Silicon Valley marketing language.) Like about every baby monitor founding story we've read, theirs starts with a parent who was frustrated past the lack of skilful baby monitors out at that place. Having used many baby monitors ourselves, nosotros tin definitely relate – in that location are a lot of bad ones out there. (You can find all of our baby monitor reviews here.)

The Cocoon Cam Plus, like every video monitor, consists of the Kid Unit (camera + microphone + speaker), a Parent Unit of measurement (in this example, your smartphone or tablet + a gratis app), plus some mounting hardware for the Kid Unit.

Note: in 2018, the Cocoon Cam got an upgrade and is now called the Cocoon Cam Plus (or Cocoon Cam +). We reviewed this newer model.

Here's everything that came in the box:

Let'south discuss each of these pieces of equipment individually.

The camera (kid unit)

The Cocoon Cam's child unit features a 720p Hd camera, a microphone to detect crying or other noises from your kid, a speaker that allows you to communicate with your kid through the monitor, and the wifi gear necessary to transmit and receive signals from the parent unit via wifi.

Camera positioning

The Cocoon Cam is designed to exist mounted directly above your child's crib to provide a bird'southward eye view of what's going on in there. As nosotros discussed in our Nanit review, we've really come to appreciate this vs the traditional 'put information technology on a nearby table/dresser' view we were used to with older monitors. Information technology allows an unobstructed view of your child without crib bars in the manner and avoids the blind spots that've frustrated us with other monitors we've used. In addition to providing a improve view, this positioning is besides necessary for Cocoon Cam'south animate monitoring characteristic to part (the photographic camera volition still piece of work not mounted in this fashion, you just won't get animate monitoring).

Epitome quality

At 720p, the Cocoon Cam's camera isn't as high-resolution equally others nosotros've tested – you can notice 1080p on a number of different monitors these days, and we suspect it's only a matter of fourth dimension before someone comes out with a 4K monitor. The existent question is, does this matter? Do you really demand to see your kid in pixel-perfect perfection? And, perhaps virtually importantly in our experience – how'south the night vision? (Your kid will – and should – sleep in the dark a lot of the time, so dark vision quality can be more of import than how high-res a camera is.

So you can judge for yourself, hither are screenshots from the Cocoon Cam app.

Ruby, brushing her teeth with the lights on, and snoozing away with Mr. Puppy in near-complete darkness.

What practise we call back? We've seen meliorate. But, we wouldn't call Cocoon Cam'due south image quality or night vision bad, and we'd reiterate that we don't believe image quality to be the end-all in baby monitors.

Audio quality

Audio quality from the Cocoon Cam is just ok, based on our testing. It just sounds a bit off, and we experienced a bit of an echo. Once more, we've heard way ameliorate audio quality in other monitors we've tested like the Nanit. Audio sensitivity, on the other hand, was quite practiced – the microphone seemed able to choice up even serenity noises Ruddy made, even when a fan was on in her room for white noise. Like all wifi-based monitors, there was a half-second filibuster between actual sounds and sounds through the app, but this isn't plenty to be meaningful.

A note about background sound. Like all monitors that use a smartphone or tablet every bit a parent unit of measurement, the Cocoon Cam is reliant on your device to provide sound,fifty-fifty when the app isn't open. This can exist a problem if you lot forget to open up the app, or if a monitor doesn't have a skilful way to provide background audio. Fortunately, background audio seems to happen automatically and function well with the Cocoon Camas long as you think to turn on audio, which is off past default. Assuming you lot do, and bold your device is turned on, with the audio upward, no other apps are competing for background sound, and the device is kept nearby, y'all'll be able to hear your child's sounds.

Sound quality

The Cocoon Cam also has a speaker that allows you to talk to your child by un-muting the microphone on your app and speaking into your phone's microphone. In practice, both of usa hither at Fathercraft have found success in calming kids through a monitor this way. The Cocoon Cam'due south speaker & two-style advice works fine. If you lot sing to your child through it, you aren't going to audio like you're in a concert hall, but that's ok.

Real-time breathing monitoring

Breathing monitoring as displayed past the Cocoon Cam App.

As it'southward the primal characteristic of the Cocoon Cam, we were quite curious to run across how well the real-time breathing monitoring feature would perform. And, during our testing, it seemed to perform quite well.

We'd note a couple of things to start:

1. Data is limited (so far). We tested over several nights and naps, but are currently waiting on more than real-world testing data (which will be added to this review).
2. Y'all need to manually turn on the animate monitoring function. We'd causeless that breathing monitoring happened automatically whenever you lot stuck your child into her crib. In reality, you have to manually turn it on each time (though the app does prompt you to do so when it detects motion in the crib.
3. Breathing monitoring only works when your child is sleeping soundly. If your child is awake and moving, or sleeping restlessly, Cocoon Cam can't accurately measure breathing, as information technology needs your child to be still to hone in on her chest/abdomen and 'meet' the ascent and fall, and then the device doesn't attempt to monitor during these times, instead using motion detection to await until your kid is all the same.

Once Ruby was sleeping soundly, the breathing monitoring moving ridge (pictured above) began to display, and the royal circle gently contracted an expanded. The moving ridge indicates the rate of respiration, in real time. The purple circle indicates the location where Cocoon Cam is measuring respiration. During testing, her breathing ever looked normal and we didn't get any alerts that it wasn't working.

Since Carmine was older during testing (>18 months) and at present sleeps with a lightweight blanket, we got the opportunity to test whether breathing monitoring worked while she was covered by the coating – and it seemed to work just fine.

A final note on breathing monitoring – the Cocoon Cam does this monitoring solely based on analyzing the video feed from the camera – no wearable is required. Nosotros're personally a bit overnice about putting stuff on our kids, so we appreciated its ability to monitor with no wearable.

The Cocoon Cam App (parent unit)

Any monitor relying on a tertiary-political party device (probable your smartphone) to be the parent unit is only as good every bit its app. And this tin be the downfall of some monitors (we found the iBaby app to be frustratingly unintuitive). The Cocoon Cam App is quite adept. Inside the app you'll find:

The app home screen & monitor's live feed.When you lot open the Cocoon Cam App, you lot'll run across the app'south dwelling screen, which is where the live feed from the monitor is displayed. There'south a fair amount going on here, and so let's take a await at the individual features:

1. The carte icon allows yous to access other parts of the app.
2. The LIVE indicator reassures you that the app is, in fact, streaming a existent-fourth dimension view from your kid's crib.
3. The sound level indicates how loud the sounds being picked up by the monitor are. In the above screenshot, yous'll encounter there is some baseline sound, which is coming from the fan we were using for white noise. If your child were to first crying, you'd see the green bar spike up.
4. The live video feed is beneath everything else by default, but past tapping on it you'll brand all of the buttons disappear for an uninterrupted picture like in the screenshots above.
5. A note on why breathing monitoring isn't currently working. If your child is moving around, you lot'll see a message like this one, indicating that breathing monitoring isn't currently active and when it will return.
6. The 'talk to your baby' button. If you desire to talk to your infant, you'll need to tap on this get-go (it'due south muted by default to prevent y'all from accidentally waking your child by making some dissonance while looking at the monitor app.)
7. The activeness log shows contempo events (your baby waking up, going to sleep, crying, etc.
8. Toggle audio on/off past tapping on this button. Every bit noted to a higher place regarding background audio, turning audio on will crusade your monitor to play any sounds picked upwardly by the microphone in your child'southward room through your phone, even when the app is closed.
9. Plow breathing monitoring on/off by tapping this button (if breathing monitoring is on, information technology'll say, "Start Monitoring" instead).
10. Location of movement. These purple circles will jump around while your child is moving, once she settles down, they'll settle downwardly at the kid'south chest/abdomen (there may exist simply one circumvolve at this time) and abound larger and smaller to signal animate.

Swaddle Stories

Swaddle Stories are a time-lapse summary of your child's night, focusing on when your child is moving around. In practise with Ruby, this looked kinda like y'all'd expect – a fast motion version of her rolling around in her crib. Swaddle Stories are set to the same upbeat music each fourth dimension. Information technology's unclear to me how this is particularly helpful, especially after you've seen a few of them and get a feel for what your kid does throughout the night.

Activity Log

The Activity Log shows a summary of the time your child went to sleep, when they woke upwards, etc.

Mounting instructions, My invitations, & My Account

The Cocoon Cam app likewise features sections for mounting instructions (shows y'all how to mount the Cocoon Cam with drawings), My Invitations (if y'all've been invited to view other Cocoon Cams), My Business relationship (modify electronic mail, password, add a camera, invite another caregiver to your Cocoon Cam), and Settings (

Settings

Inside settings, yous can setup or modify your wifi, suit your notification settings, or turn on 'depression bandwidth mode', which decreases image quality to salve network bandwidth.

Notification settings let you to adjust the notifications your telephone gives you almost Cocoon Cam, including whether you encounter or hear notifications at all, whether you get notifications for Breathing Monitoring, crying, falling asleep, waking up, and swaddle stories.

Notifications

I found Cocoon Cam notifications on my phone to exist pretty good, and comparable to other top wifi baby monitors I've used. The "barbarous comatose" and "woke upwards" notifications seemed pretty authentic, and included a curt video of Red moving around when waking up.

Since, as noted above, I didn't find the Swaddle Stories that useful, I turned off this notification as otherwise, I got a notification at a random time in the morning that one was set to view.

Setting up the Cocoon Cam

To set up the Cocoon Cam, you lot need to be prepared to do three things you might not wait:

1. connect the monitor direct to your router with an ethernet cablevision (provided, and temporary)
2. adjust the security settings on your router (if you've had your router for a while)
3. drill into your wall backside your child'south crib with drywall screws (possible workaround below)

Different other monitors nosotros've tested here at Fathercraft, Cocoon Cam needs to be plugged directly into your router during setup. It's not clear to me why you demand to do this. While it wasn't all that difficult, for me it involved getting an extension string to plug the Cocoon Cam in, standing on an ottoman trying to meet the back of our router, which didn't want to come away from the wall (in other words, kind of a pain).

The network security thing surprised me, but we have had our router for about 2 years, so perchance this change was justified anyway. Cocoon Cam requires yous to be using WPA-2 security for your wifi network, ours was not. I assumed updating this would be some very painful process involving a 30-minute call to Comcast, just information technology was really pretty piece of cake – I just logged into our Comcast account, hunted around for some settings (Google was helpful), flipped some virtual switches, and had to update our wifi password (which involved updating passwords on every device we had.)

To install the Cocoon Cam, due to the birds-eye view discussed above, y'all're supposed to mount it exactly three anxiety above the mattress crib mattress, in the eye of the long side of the crib. Since most people have their cribs against the wall this manner, this isn't a problem … except for the fact that you're supposed to drill two holes in the wall, insert drywall anchors and screw the photographic camera in (screws and drywall anchors are provided.)

If you're handy, or the Cocoon Cam is going to be a long-term fixture in your child'due south room, this probably isn't a dealbreaker. And, to be fair, other birds-eye mount cameras like the Nanit practise require screws (just not anchors.) I wasn't overly cracking to put holes in our wall for testing, and then [EDITOR'S NOTE – We DON'T CONDONE THIS, TALK TO COCOON CAM Beginning] we used Command Strips (Amazon link) to put the camera up.

Mounting the Cocoon Cam, as described by the app. Notation toy/rattlesnake? on the left.

The crawly, the wish information technology were different, and a verdict

The awesome

Price.As nosotros mentioned at the beginning of this review, Coocoon Cam is just $149, making information technology the most reasonably priced of the wifi monitors we've reviewed.

Simple, intuitive app user experience. When your telephone is your parent unit, the app better be like shooting fish in a barrel to use. Compared to other monitors nosotros've reviewed, the Cocoon Cam app was nearly on par with the best (Nanit), and far ameliorate than the worst (iBaby).

Bird's eye view. Now that we've tried infant monitors with a bird'south center view mount, we're not sure we'd ever go back, at least with a young baby. The emptying of blind spots is just too useful.

Sleep/wake alerts. Sometimes, your baby wakes upwards and is pretty tranquillity. With a traditional video monitor, you might not know near it until you proactively check or your baby starts squawking or talking. With Cocoon Cam'south wake alerts, you'll know about it pretty much correct abroad. On the other side of the nap/night, it can exist helpful to know when your child actually falls asleep.

The wish it were dissimilar

Setup. Every bit described to a higher place, the ane-two-three dial of needing to connect straight to the router, the potential need to update network security options, and the need to apply drywall screws to mountain the photographic camera made the setup kinda frustrating.

Audio quality. While functional, audio quality wasn't great, and produced a tinny echo sometimes during testing.

Height from the crib (for older toddlers). Since Cocoon Cam is just positioned 3 feet from the mattress of the crib, older toddlers may go tall enough to reach upwards and grab it. Our daughter (xix months, xc+ percentile for meridian, grabbed information technology off the wall (once again, we were using Control Strips instead of the recommended setup).

The we're not sure even so

Since this was a quicker review of the Cocoon Cam (more than to be added when we have the data), there are a few things we didn't brand our mind up on yet.

Image quality. Above, we discussed the fact that Cocoon Cam's image isn't bad, merely it's outpaced past other monitors on the market place today. While nosotros don't think this is a huge deal, and nosotros may have just been biased considering we'd tried higher-res monitors first, we're non sure whether, over the long term, we might've craved meliorate resolution & dark vision.

Breathing Monitoring. Breathing Monitoring seemed to function well, only nosotros're non sure whether (again, over the long-term, this feature would prove valuable, or continue to provide the comforting feeling that the monitor was constantly watching over your child. Again, this might be different for very young babies, which is why we're currently testing the Cocoon Cam with friends of Fathercraft who take a brand new infant.

A verdict

Overall, Cocoon Cam is a very solid monitor at a very reasonable price, with a couple of features that could prove really useful. if y'all're not equally budget conscious and aren't all nearly the breathing monitoring feature, you might consider exploring other monitors in the same category, like the Nanit or the Arlo Baby.

But, if budget or breathing monitoring is at the top of your list, we think yous'll be happy with the Cocoon Cam, as long as you can look by the setup. Which, we suppose, if you're in it for the long haul with this monitor isn't the stop of the world.

Cocoon Cam + Pricing & Options

COCOON CAM IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. Check out our acme picks for baby monitors here.

How does it stack up against other monitors?

Cocoon Cam vs Nanit

Having now tested both the Cocoon Cam and the Nanit (y'all can find our full review here), there are a few important differences to notation.

Sleep assay – Nanit has far more than advanced sleep assay features than the Cocoon Cam.

Breathing monitoring – Nanit does non feature animate monitoring

Portability – the Nanit makes it easy to unclip your camera and take it with you when traveling, Cocoon Cam Plus literally gets screwed into the wall.

Image & sound quality – the Nanit'southward paradigm and sound quality are better than Cocoon Cam'southward.

Toll – Cocoon Cam is $149, Nanit starts at $279, only y'all tin can definitely spend more than than that, and there is a subscription service to unlock all of the sleep analysis features of the Nanit.

Cocoon Cam vs Owlet

In improver to the Cocoon Cam, we've spent a few days testing the Owlet (Amazon) (and currently are doing more testing). The Cocoon Cam and the Owlet are quite different in what they do. Here are a few fundamental differences.

Owlet is non a video or audio monitor – the Owlet merely monitors two things – eye charge per unit an oxygen levels. In that location's no video or audio component to it, which can leave many parents feeling like they need to purchase an additional video monitor.

Owlet doesn't mensurate respiration charge per unit – Cocoon Cam and Owlet both purport to monitor your infant is doing ok in the crib, they only use dissimilar methods.

Cocoon Cam doesn't measure pulse or oxygen levels – run into above.

Owlet is a wearable device, Cocoon Cam doesn't accept a wear component.

Whew! Ok, that was virtually iv,000 words nearly the Cocoon Cam. Hopefully, it was helpful. If somehow we didn't answer your question, we'd love to know – paul[at]fathercraft.com. If you're curious to hear what our friends testing both Cocoon Cam and Owlet have to say, head to the homepage (fathercraft.com), curlicue downwardly and subscribe to our updates – nosotros'll permit you know.

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Source: https://fathercraft.com/cocoon-cam-review/

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