Grannie-cam catches on
By M on Wednesday 14 February 2007, 10:46 - Journal - Permalink
A few days ago Redcedar mailed me a link to
In Elder Care, Signing on Becomes a Way to Drop By, a New York Times
article dealing with the systems that our generation is now using to stay in
touch with their old parents. Grannie-cams and other sensor systems in the
house are by no means unknown these days, and while the article covers the
care-supporting functions of new systems, both technological and social, it
didn't mention that a device like our Grannie-cam lets family in far-flung
places, like Moscow and deepest Derbyshire, regularly check in on what is
happening when there is nothing on the television (depressingly common problem
in Moscow, I've heard, and not unknown in Derbyshire either).
When I was young our relations were always in a different country. and were seen so rarely that we, the youngest children, never knew who we were visiting. These days you can check in on all your relations over coffee every morning. I recently experimented with video-conferencing to a cousin in England, you can't get much closer than that (actually, you can, with haptic devices - something I am sure the sex 'industry' is hard at work at).
Our grannie-cam usage has settled down to a regular level, much lower than at first. For several days recently the automatic IP updater had failed to respond to a change of IP address and of the admittedly small handful of users only Rachel reported the problem to me. Another drawback I ran into this month was forgetting that Grannie-cam was streaming to my desktop. I paid with 500 Mb of IP quota lost overnight for that little indiscretion.
I am still considering the idea of putting extra cameras in mum and dad's house. The software allows for up to ten but the radio band allows for only four channels. Four would therefore be the maximum - probably one in each bedroom and one covering the hall and doors, in addition to the one already installed. It is the substantial transmitter-receiver hardware investment and low anticipated usefulness that argue against this, rather than invasion of privacy.
So far, it has to be said, the grannie-cam has not been instrumental in any great improvement to our parental care. We may have saved a trip occasionally, got a slightly clearer picture of what is happening, who is visiting, when, and so on, but overall things would be much as they are now if we had had to make do without it.
Perhaps Moscow TV is not so bad after all.
When I was young our relations were always in a different country. and were seen so rarely that we, the youngest children, never knew who we were visiting. These days you can check in on all your relations over coffee every morning. I recently experimented with video-conferencing to a cousin in England, you can't get much closer than that (actually, you can, with haptic devices - something I am sure the sex 'industry' is hard at work at).
Our grannie-cam usage has settled down to a regular level, much lower than at first. For several days recently the automatic IP updater had failed to respond to a change of IP address and of the admittedly small handful of users only Rachel reported the problem to me. Another drawback I ran into this month was forgetting that Grannie-cam was streaming to my desktop. I paid with 500 Mb of IP quota lost overnight for that little indiscretion.
I am still considering the idea of putting extra cameras in mum and dad's house. The software allows for up to ten but the radio band allows for only four channels. Four would therefore be the maximum - probably one in each bedroom and one covering the hall and doors, in addition to the one already installed. It is the substantial transmitter-receiver hardware investment and low anticipated usefulness that argue against this, rather than invasion of privacy.
So far, it has to be said, the grannie-cam has not been instrumental in any great improvement to our parental care. We may have saved a trip occasionally, got a slightly clearer picture of what is happening, who is visiting, when, and so on, but overall things would be much as they are now if we had had to make do without it.
Perhaps Moscow TV is not so bad after all.
Comments
Interesting and surprising...about the widespread use of Grannie-and-other cams. I probably should have guessed, except that I tend to exist in an untechnological hole (of my own making, admittedly).
I also find it thought provoking that you don't feel you can credit your Grannie-cam with much in the way of increasing your facility as you care for your parents.
For some reason, I am thinking of Marshall McLuhan, at the moment...
I have webcams which I use to monitor a business interest in another country. At times, I have seen things going wrong and managed to correct them by a phone call; at other times I have seen things which I perceived to be wrong but in fact, were fine. Visual input alone, can confuse the truth and even allow your mind to creatively fill in the blanks. Perhaps there is a danger that the webcams only serve to increase your stress levels.