The Power of Sound: How I Used a Vacuum Cleaner Sound to Help My Baby Sleep

My little boy needs help to fall asleep and sometimes we have to use different things to calm him down. These include driving in the car, pushing him in the pram and something that surprised me but worked: the sound of a vacuum cleaner.

The latter works very well, but after a while I have to turn it down manually as I don't want it to become less audible in the future.

This muting is a particular problem when we are about to go to bed, or if it happens to be in the middle of the night and I am already quite tired. And of course, automation is everything! :D

Being a good Linux administrator, I had to come up with something.

To get started, I created two videos (one 15 minutes long and one 60 minutes long) in which the sound of the vacuum cleaner gets quieter and quieter as the video comes to an end. This way, the fading is practically self-implementing. If you want to turn it up again, just rewind the video.

The YouTube mobile app doesn't support closed-screen playback by default, so I tend to leave the phone upside down on my bedside table. When the video is over, the phone locks automatically and doesn't drain the battery unnecessarily.

Here are the two videos I mentioned:

15 mins long:

1 hour long:

I used the Audacity software to fading out the original sound, then the OpenShot Video Editor to make a video. Both of them are free.