Baby Radio

Technically, it's not a radio. No radio waves are involved as such. It's a Micro SD Card Player like the cassette tape players we used to have. The name Baby Radio is apt only because it only plays what a baby needs to hear, is controlled by RJ, aka me, and has the surprise factor of a Radio.

Uma loves music. She has been carrying around the Bluetooth speaker like a boombox all around the house. That solution had multiple problems. She keeps losing the Bluetooth connection to player Ruizu when she walks around the house; she drops the speaker often, charging two devices and making sure both have enough power all the time is tough. Invariable one of them won't have power. Managing playlists was becoming problematic as well. She currently has a playlist for the night with white noise, soothing music, etc., and a playlist for the day with rhymes. She might have more in the future.

Requirements

So, I was looking for

1. Sturdy speaker
2. A long battery life
3. Can play out of USB or SD card
4. Affordable
5. Smaller, lighter, and gripper for greasy baby hands
6. It allows me to manage content easily

I would have loved to have something like hörbert, but unfortunately, it's not available in India, and it's not affordable either. There are other baby radios that seemed very expensive for what they provide, and also, most didn't suit my content requirements.

Solution

So finally, I went for a simple speaker AmazonBasics 5W Bluetooth 5.3 Speaker, which meets all my requirements except for being pretty. It's not bad; Uma likes it. But we will see what we can do to make it look great in the next post. I have ideas.

I had a couple of old slow Micro SD Cards and USB drives. Now I have found a use for them. Each of those physical drives represents a playlist. I have one with night music and one with day music. I plug the required one and click play. And it plays. That's it. That's all there is to it. It currently seems to have good battery life, especially when the volume is less than 50%. I paid Rs.600 for it. Which I think is a very good price.

It's small enough for Uma to carry it everywhere. It is rugged enough that I am not worried about her dropping it. We can easily switch between the playlists by switching cards or USB drives. It's not dependent on our music player or the phone. All in all, it seems to be working well.

But there are things that I do not like

1. It's a molded plastic container. There is no way to open it to fix it. I wish it were more repair-friendly
2. MicroUSB for charging. I would have loved the USB C interface, even if it was a low-wattage charging.
3. It doesn't remember the volume levels between multiple boots. For now, I don't switch it off. I pause/play generally unless I am switching the cards. It is usually louder than I expected. It's a bit annoying than anything else. I plan to play around with the volume levels of the mp3 I load. That way, I can control it.
4. Similarly, the bootup beep sound is high. I can't do much about it. But not switching it off helps.

Content

All this would have been useless without good content. I spent a lot of time finding good audio content. This was also my biggest issue with existing products. They come with lot of random stuff which I din't like.

Here are my current sources.

1. I have been looking for DRM-free content to buy. Saregama has been one of my primary sources. I bought quite a few kids MP3s from Saregama. There are some good ones, but you need to spend time sifting through their kid's catalog.
2. I downloaded the Nursery Rhymes provided by the library of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka for downloading. They sound great.
3. I got some old rhymes from Archive.org. There are many old ones. You will have to go through them to find good ones. I liked these baby rhyme cassettes.
4. There are a variety of CDs on Amazon and Flipkart in multiple languages. I don't know how good they are. I am looking for suggestions here.
5. BBC Teach has a section on Nursery Rhymes, but they are only for online viewing. They are also videos. Maybe they will sell CDs that I can buy?

For now, I have enough rhymes to play for two hours. But to be frank, Uma likes a dozen or two at max and keeps repeating them. So, we don't see the need for more. Maybe once she graduates to stories; variety, and quantity will be helpful. Send me your content suggestions. I am especially looking for Kannada and Malayalam ones. English is welcome, too.

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