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Since my original post about mounting a baby monitor to a stand to make it portable, we’ve updated some of the equipment we use. We no longer use the Motorola MBP36 Remote Wireless Video Baby Monitor. While we were happy with it in our old residence, our new home presented some issues. The extensive masonry and the large footprint of our new home caused the monitor to have reception issues. A WiFi camera works much better for us, like the Foscam FI8910W Pan & Tilt IP/Network Camera with Two-Way Audio and Night Vision. I first mounted the camera to a portable stand. This speaker stand from Atlantic Satellite worked nicely.
After using that setup for some time, we found that it was difficult to find an outlet for all the places our toddler and new baby daughter might be playing. For those times, I figured a battery pack would work well. Interestingly, it was quite hard to find a battery powered WiFi Camera.
Since the Foscam FI8910W takes the same 5 volts as most tablet and phone chargers, I thought a portable charger might work. To my delight, it works perfectly. Just hook a portable power bank to the camera, like this one from Anker. To hook it all up, I used this 5V USB Charger Power Supply Cable. We get a few hours of battery life with this setup. If we’re near an outlet, we simply use the standard power adapter that came with the camera for unlimited streaming.
2024 Update
We still use this setup even though the kids are way older! There are times with we need to monitor the kids fish tank, etc. and this setup is very helpful. My current recommended WiFi camera is the REOLINK 4MP Indoor Security Camera, E1 Pro. Luckily the Reolink also used 5 volts of power so the setup still can work on battery power.
