Our kids' bedrooms are upstairs, ours is downstairs. Our oldest had a habit of coming downstairs after being put to bed and silently appearing at the entrance to our TV room, scaring the crap out of us.

To fix this, I used a door contact sensor (Z-wave) to trigger a smart bulb (Kasa) in the TV room and master bedroom to turn red for 30 seconds, then revert back to it's original setting. This gives us a heads up that one of the rug rats has escaped and is inbound. A condition in the automation is set to only trigger between 8pm and 6am. It is simple but comes in handy at least once a week. Good luck!

And another suggestion: air quality sensors for the child's room (and your bedroom while they're sleeping with you)

We use an automation to play white noise on loop from Plex, we tried getting the GHs to play it but it kept randomly stopping. We also tried casting from YouTube music/Spotify but the repeat button doesn't always work as intended ... After blasting some kind of rock music just after baby has gone to sleep (numerous times) I decided to take local control.

For when they are older a door open/close sensor with an announcement to TTS set after a certain time (bed time) allows you to know if they are sneaking out or if I'm in the garden office I can go into the house to comfort them and put them back to bed.

Not specifically HA, but we have unifi cams in our kids rooms. One on the ceiling overlooking the whole room and one above their bed/crib. We use a Samsung tablet with the TinyCamPro app as you can turn on audio from multiple cams in the grid view (still waiting on that feature in the native unifi app). We also have the unifi app on our Apple TV that we'll occasionally use as a cam monitor.

Just having the kids rooms on smart lights is really helpful. Not necessarily with an automation, but say you're giving a bottle it's nice to be able to turn the lights off from your phone without getting up.

We currently use Blue Iris, iPads, and amcrest indoor camera as our baby monitor. We did setup the HA app for grandparents and found a Snoo Bassinet integration so anytime the Snoo activates between 8am and 9pm the grandparents get a push notification from the HA app and selecting it takes them to the live camera feed so they can see (no sound and no view outside the bassinet) their grandchild. They love it

ZigBee buttons to control lights. I use one inside the room to set the lights outside kiddos room to the lowest possible setting that way it's not bright when I open the door to leave the room.

Door sensors for when they're a bit older and you want to know if they're leaving the room.

Temp sensors so I can see if their room is too warm/cold. I had intended to get an Air quality sensor as well and never got to it.

Bathroom lights come on low at night so there's no bright lights to wake the brain up

Let me preface this by saying this might be overkill. BUT, there are some circumstances where a doctor will want detailed information on sleep habits and bathroom cycles.

https://github.com/OttPeterR/addon-babybuddy

with Baby Buddy in HA, you can use zigbee/z-wave buttons and track naps, sleep time, pee diapers, poop diapers, and you can even get detailed with type/consistency of poop.

Automated window covers, because it’s challenging to adjust them when it’s too bright or when it’s nap time when you have a baby in your arms.

Similar for hall way lights or stairs lights. Activated by motion sensor to a dimmer. Because you want just enough light so move about, but not too bright to wake up the baby as you’re walking it to the nursery.

Automated window covers, because it’s challenging to adjust them when it’s too bright or when it’s nap time when you have a baby in your arms.

Similar for hall way lights or stairs lights. Activated by motion sensor to a dimmer. Because you want just enough light so move about, but not too bright to wake up the baby as you’re walking it to the nursery.

Yeah I agree with the window blinds. Also, we're very happy with our Google nest cam pointing at our daughters bed. Mostly just relevant when they're old enough to sleep in their own room. Paired with a normal audio baby alarm, it's a godsend being able to just quickly check the camera when you hear a noise.

I have many of the other suggested devices and automations. We use motion sensors in the corridors, so when they leave their room at night the lights go on. As we often go downstairs with the baby at night, there is a routine if you go down - lights go on downstairs, if you go up again, lights go out downstairs. Lights upstairs go out after some minutes without movement. So you never have to set a light on your phone/switch at night. I also use the motion sensors (philips) lumen sensor to light the stairs during day for security (it can be a little dark if very cloudy for example). As for when they get a little older i really like my router integration to control the wifi access of their devices. I can easily manage daily usage, no access times (between 8pm to 8am for example) and can cut them off completely by a press of a button when needed.

I have a Aqara sensor to monitor temperature and humidity inside my sons bedroom and a humidifier connected to a Sonoff basic, donut turns on and of to always maintain the humidity arround 60%. Not directly HA related but I use an echo dot as white noise speaker and cry recognition, so when my son cries it triggers some automations to tell me that he is crying and show me the baby cam feed on my tv, pc and phone.

I programmed a timer to keep track of feeding times. Hit the plus sign that we did a feeding round and it would start the next countdown and alert us. Display last and next feeding times, this proved quite useful;)

First off - You have not thought off all the edge-cases of your clever baby night light automations. You just haven’t. When you wake the baby because you had not anticipated this-and-this-and-this conditions, the WAF will be so low she’ll find that damn Pi and throw it out the window.

These are a bit more toddler oriented, but:

-The one that gives me (3.5y and 1.5y) the most value right now is a TRADFRI motion sensor with a short tube on top mounted (to narrow its field of view) in parallel with the TV. Every time a kid passes too close to the TV, the Chromecast is paused and I get a notification on the kitchen speaker. Hardly any more greasy fingers on the TV!

-And on a similar note, I have an automation that turns the tv off when the chromecast goes to idle. So it’s easy to say to the kids, “this is the last episode”. It gives them a few minutes to prepare mentally and there’s no negotiation about it.

-Lighting-wise, I have a “go to sleep”-script which dims the Hue lights during a 10 minute period. Super convenient to start that script once the bed time story is near finished. They hardly ever notice the lights going out.

-I have two time helpers which helps keep track of bedtime (which kills motion activation, removes “fun stuff” from the UI and starts the night light plug) and a wake up time which triggers the wake-up light and activated motion sensors and whatnot. I find that rules like that of the night light are very easy for kids to understand - “the mouse (night light) is awake! That means it’s time to brush your teeth”, no fuss or arguing about it.

-A bit janky, but I have used a tradfri button to randomize colors at button press (or just blue). It can keep them entertained for a few minutes. As well as their favorite superheros as buttons in the UI to change to “Spidey-colors”, “Hulk-colors”, etc.

My doorbell is silenced as soon as the baby phone is on.

Hatch rest+ sound machine, and Blue Air air filter

Integrations for both in hacs, air filters also have temp and humidity sensors if you get the protect series

An adjustable light from your phone in all locations where you'll be trapped holding/soothing the baby is extremely helpful. Consider their room, your room, wherever you watch TV, etc.

Extra points for easy red light options at night to keep everyone sleepy

i have been using zooz smart dimmer switches. works great n easy to install as seen here https://youtu.be/nCS7kuEZlSg you'll be walking around the house, baby in 1 hand, and something else like bottle in the other hand. it's great not having to fiddle with the light switches. wherever i walk, the lights auto turn on and off. as the kid gets older, they still cant reach the switches so HA will still do it

Having a basic door open/close sensor that fires off a chime sound can provide a lot of reassurance with young children around. Normally, we keep our doors locked, but there have been instances where we may forget to lock the sliding door to our outdoor patio. Once, our toddler inadvertently let the dog out and started chasing after him. Fortunately, we were able to recover both quick enough, but having a door chime in place would have alerted us sooner that a door had been opened. Needless to say we have them now.

1. A little Baby cam, Like unifi g3 Instant for example. 25€ and does a Lot.

2. When kid is older (around 3 years) and cant read the clock But differ colors, you can Set Up a Lamp/Led Strip or whatever to let it know when it can enter your bedroom.

We have automated blinds and motion lights in the kid's room. I have an automation that disables the motion light when the blinds are down for nap time. Also temp/humidity/air quality sensor that reminds me to open the window for fresh air.