Control your children's Internet with Bedtime software

[bartjsmit]

I have written software called Bedtime to allow parents control over their children's bedtimes by automatically disconnecting their devices from the Internet when it is time to sleep. The software is free and open source.

It installs on a spare computer, or a Raspberry Pi and is targeted at parents with little technical expertise. You control Bedtime through a web browser on your computer, iPhone or iPad.

I'm hoping this will be of use to fellow parents. Please try it to see if it fits in your parenting toolkit. Any feedback is welcome.

Bart...

I don't think I am brave enough to download software onto my computer from a random link!

This is the kind of thing we are always trying to dissuade our children from; randomly trusting strangers on the internet.

I have already bought a commerical package.

As an open source project I think its a brilliant idea. There are lots of pieces of software that mumsnetters use everyday which started off life as an open source project.

We use a comerical package, but I am sure that there is demand for a freeware package. What devices are you planning to include. How do you hope to generate income for this project.

If you send me a personal message I can suggest ways of improving your website. I think that some of the language is far too technical for the average parent.

@dexter73/cory- the link does not download any software to your computer. The idea behind open source software is that you, or a geek you trust, can check the program's source code to make sure that it does not do anything nasty.

Free software is not inherently less trustworthy than paid for software. I'm sure you have heard news reports on phone apps and paid applications that collect rather more information than you may have wanted to. Google 'sony rootkit' for a prime example.

@ReallyTired - I'm not looking for any income. I work in IT as a cloud architect and the project started as a quick hack for my own children. Since it works very well, I thought I could share. The target platform is 'any spare computer'. Since I know that not many parents will have those, I am targeting Raspberry Pi.