Tracking Babies using Baby Buddy

It is tough to keep track of newborns' daily routines, mainly because you are generally busy performing those tasks rather than making a note of them. Even then, I have seen people keeping diaries. That can happen only because of lots of dedication and hard work. I wanted to make it easy for us.

There are lots of apps available online now to do just that. But as usual, I wanted FOSS. I found Baby Buddy, a self-hostable, simple and yet very useful web app.

A 👶 buddy to help caregivers track sleep, feedings, diaper changes, and tummy time to learn about and predict baby's needs without (as much) guesswork.

BabyBuddy

It has an excellent mobile interface that can be used on mobile browsers. It can run as part of Home Assistant as a Custom Home Assistant integration. Since I use the Docker Version of Home Assistant, I can't install the custom integrations. I installed Baby Buddy as a web app on a separate docker. I mapped a volume to save the SQLite database, so I get to use it instead of setting up a DB server.

Baby Buddy also has a good catalog of APIs that are easy to use. I used Restful sensors in Home Assistant to bring some of the statuses from Baby Buddy into Home Assistant as sensors. I could write alerts or other things in Home Assistant if required. Also, Baby Buddy is a standard Django application. Something that I have used before. I can add the features easily if needed.

We have been using it for two weeks now. Not only to track the routine actions but also to make some notes. It's been easy to use, rock solid, and has reduced the mental load of remembering things.

I plan to set up some reminders and NFC-based logging in the upcoming weeks. That should take the overall experience to the next level.

Also, on a side note, one could quickly develop this kind of application after MAD-1 and MAD-2. Though there is DjangoFraework in that course, Flask is equally capable.