Tried quite a few, Annie is the best

I bought a Piper nv thinking it would handle all my baby monitoring needs. Turns out the piper doesnt have adjustable noise sensitivity (though it was promised a couple years ago) so we would get an insane number of "noise detected" and movement detected notices that arent helpful at all. So I turned my attention to trying some apps that claimed adjustable noise control for baby monitoring. All of them, except Annie, made it sound like you were listening through a "just off" AM signal or over crowded Walkie Talkie channel.

I tried Annie and was shocked at the clarity and quality of the audio signal that comes through. The ability to set the "dB" level is a god send as our baby sleeps on the top floor off a busy street so buses and trucks that drive through set it off at the default value, but raising it to 61 dB reduced almost all false positives. When there is a sound that hits that level that is not the baby, the audio is pipes through to your listening/parent device. If your location is like our environment, it is a very low noise so it doesnt come through and wake us.

Conversely, the baby does not need to make a loud noise at all as her sounds are captured and sent to the parent device and it comes through crystal clear. Its like shes in the same room!

In addition the app has a night mode for both parent and baby that turns down your brightness or your screen off.

My devices are a iPhone 4s as the "baby" monitor and a iPad 4 as the parent/listening device.

My only complaint is the quality of the video stream is quite poor. I imagine thats a limitation on the CPU on the 4s as Im not sure it is using the H.264 hardware to do encoding. You can make out things fairly easily at a acceptable frame rate (~5-10 fps) and maybe newer devices would do better, but the point of this app is to reuse your existing devices. The quality is like a JPEG at 15-30. As well, Annie doesnt do night vision as its not an option on the iPhone so I wish it offered a cheap, supplemental accessory.

In the end, I gave Annie 5 stars because I use my Piper nv for checking on the baby at night and during the day after Annie reports a noise. The video, though the quality is not the best, works in a pinch and on your existing devices. The audio is superb and sold me immediately after trying it. The adjustable volume levels and night modes and good and easy to configure. It fit perfectly into what I needed.

Trentent about Annie Baby Monitor: Nanny Cam, v2.1.5