[HN Gopher] BirdNET-Pi: Automated, locally run bird sound identi...
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BirdNET-Pi: Automated, locally run bird sound identification and
tracking
Author : superkuh
Score : 260 points
Date : 2022-04-18 16:00 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (birdnetpi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (birdnetpi.com)
| mickhead23 wrote:
| Cool. I can get behind a data gathering tool like this project.
| My problem with Merlin and Merlin-style apps is they attempt to
| do everything related to identification which shortchanges users
| because they don't teach fundamental skills.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| I don't think I agree, I was just on holiday in a new country
| and am not a birder, but with birdnet and Merlin I learned to
| identify birds by song quite quickly. If not for the apps how
| would you even find out what bird you hear if you never see it,
| as happens often in dense forest?
| mickhead23 wrote:
| A really specific scenario that might illustrate my point!
| App or no app, I would accept at the outset it may not be
| possible, or even advisable, to attempt positive
| identifications (by ear) of unfamiliar species in a country
| I've never visited, unless I were in the company of an
| experienced local friend or guide. Otherwise, I would
| concentrate on getting good quality field recordings to share
| when I got home. Same thing goes for birding at home..Merlin
| and other apps simply cannot approximate that kind of
| experience building, at this time.
| codingdave wrote:
| This looks terrific - I live next to a forest and have so many
| birds here, I was thinking of building such a tool myself. I'm
| definitely going to set some time aside in the next week or so to
| try this out.
| mongol wrote:
| Birdwatching is so rewarding, I can really recommend it. It feels
| Real (TM) to go out and watch what happens in nature, live, with
| your own eyes. You get out, visit new places, practise your
| senses in ways you don't do otherwise, and are rewarded with new
| experiences.
| kingsloi wrote:
| Awesome! I've been eyeing up a Vizycam (https://vizycam.com) to
| do bird identification but via visual recognition. Sounds like
| this would be a great addition and would pair nicely with the
| Vizycam, both run on Pis, too!
| gadders wrote:
| BirdNet is a great app.
| [deleted]
| sandgiant wrote:
| This is so great! I feel like most ML ("AI") products are just
| linear regressions with fancy packaging, but this actually looks
| super cool! I want to set this up in my summer house ASAP. Thanks
| for sharing.
| shon wrote:
| Thank you, super cool.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Cool. I live next to a park in Somerset, UK. The birdsong in the
| morning is currently near deafening. The summer house at the
| bottom of our garden happens to have mains power, a PoE switch
| and an AP. It sounds like it needs a second Pi (the other runs a
| TV)
| smackay wrote:
| It would be very cool to have network of these listening to calls
| while birds are migrating at night. With a large enough network
| you'd get an amazing way to visualise large scale movements which
| are generally completely invisible. Wiring up the eastern
| seaboard around Massachusetts, southern Spain, the vast steppes
| around the Caspian Sea or pretty much anywhere else would be
| incredible.
| ses4j wrote:
| BirdNET isn't tuned particularly for nocturnal flight calls
| (NFCs). But a network of listening stations with automated
| identification exists and is improving rapidly. Vesper
| (https://github.com/HaroldMills/Vesper) is one open-source
| project. Terra (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theterrapr
| oject/listen-...) is also related.
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| Believe it or not, we already have a technology for nighttime
| bird migration monitoring: weather radar.
|
| https://birdcast.info/migration-tools/live-migration-maps/
| closedloop129 wrote:
| Radar for Europe: https://eurobirdportal.org/
|
| This is made to compare two birds and their migration pattern
| over the last year.
|
| Birds seem to have different radar signatures so that there
| is a different pattern for each bird.
| mycowerk wrote:
| Very cool! I wonder how unique the signatures are and
| whether this can scale to smaller flocks.
| lesgobrandon wrote:
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| Does anyone know if it can detect when someone is using a
| birdsong app? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
| dorset-22863383
|
| Serious question because some birds mimic sounds like mobile ring
| tones so I didnt know if some birds also pick human accents?
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-16154490
| low_tech_love wrote:
| That is, assuming birds are real...?
| rolobio wrote:
| Am I the only one who has gotten very tired of this meme? I
| laughed at a few of them, but now its just everywhere it seems.
| millzlane wrote:
| Why do you think Cornell invested so much money in this
| program?
| UberFly wrote:
| It's a five-year old meme at this point and yea they all get
| old almost immediately.
| kej wrote:
| As an aside, there was interesting piece with the Birds
| Aren't Real creator recently, where he steps out of character
| and talks about his accidental satire fits into the wider
| field of conspiracy theories: https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2022/apr/14/the-lunacy-i...
| nullc wrote:
| Clearly this software is actually for tracking the varrious
| surveillance drones that are disguised as "birds", it's just
| easier to distribute if they play along with the ruse. Checkout
| the logo of the software-- they're clearly saying that birds
| are mechanical. :P
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Ooh! I have a mockingbird in my yard that I can try this on! I
| counted 20 different songs the other night, and it was probably a
| lot more, I just stopped being able to distinguish. They can have
| a repertoire of over 200! I was actually wondering if something
| like this project existed, or maybe just an app really, but then
| hadn't thought about it since (I'm just an insomniac, not a bird
| watcher). Very cool.
|
| If you don't know about the North American mockingbird, they fly
| up to a high perch at night and claim a yard sized area of
| territory by reciting all the songs it knows, as loud as it can.
| Over and over again, until it is exhausted. The little psychos.
| Thus impressing all the lady mockingbirds in the area. Apparently
| they do a little dance as well, but given it's usually the middle
| of the night when this happens, I haven't seen it.
|
| They used to drive me nuts until I read up on them. Now I try to
| count how many songs they know.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| You should try the app. it's great!
| ctoth wrote:
| Now I am convinced that Mockingbirds are merely bird repeaters
| helping move messages through a bird network.
| ses4j wrote:
| Merlin is the most widely-used audio recognition app. It's
| amazing, try it out. BirdNET is another project (also
| affiliated with Cornell) that works in a similar way. This
| project is about locally installing BirdNET.
| martini333 wrote:
| Ahh yes, let me just run curl ... | bash
| scubbo wrote:
| If you're savvy enough to know why that's potentially
| dangerous, you're savvy enough to pipe to an intermediate
| executable file to inspect the code.
| noja wrote:
| If you're technical enough to answer that, then you're
| technical enough to know that security by default is better.
| gotaquestion wrote:
| This is so awesome. I tried to write something like this in 2007
| (I called it "Tweeter") but the state of embedded hardware for
| makers back then was a bit more challenging so it was all PC
| based. I tried simple spectrogram correlation by sliding a window
| and comparing low-precision spectra, but I don't know enough
| about DSP so it never worked. Glad to see it is finally a
| reality.
| jancsika wrote:
| Is this limited to detecting sounds emanating from the cheapo
| DACs installed in all extant birds?
|
| If so, it would be nice if they'd add a flag to analyze songs
| from the legacy birds heard in old recordings.
| modzu wrote:
| when are they going to add translation?
| techterrier wrote:
| BirdNET is ace, looking foward to building it into our
| app...Birda[0] (Strava for birdwatching). We are hiring too if
| any nature loving engineers want to work in conservation -
| dom@birda.org (need to be able to get to London once a fortnight)
|
| https://birda.org/
| chrisweekly wrote:
| App Store says Birda isn't available in my country or region.
| (USA). Hmm.
| techterrier wrote:
| yes, we have only soft launched in the UK and South Africa,
| US folks wanting a preview can email me dom@birda.org for a
| beta invite
| nathancahill wrote:
| Cool. Do you integrate with eBird at all? I've done quite a bit
| of work in this field and would love to chat with you guys.
| Email in my profile.
| techterrier wrote:
| not yet, but will do soon!
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| I love hackernews because I come here to procrastinate and end
| in rabbit holes (was looking at getting a raspberry pi for this
| project), and now I found about this app!
|
| I use strava all the time so that's a great description
| rlf_dev wrote:
| Hey, you guys are looking to implement BirdNET into iOS ? If so
| I have no problem sharing the code I'm using in a small app I
| made using BirdNET-Lite (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bird-
| sound-identifier/id154189...)
| techterrier wrote:
| that's great! I'll drop you an email
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Is this really capable of live 24/7 local bird sound
| identification? That sounds like it could have a huuuuuuge effect
| on all kinds of things world-wide. Imagine real-time tracking of
| whether bird sounds are getting fewer and fewer, or tracking real
| time changes in bird song around the world due to climate change,
| or just specific species disappearing due to environmental
| factors. Or being able to push back on new development that harms
| local bird populations by measuring a reduction in song. The
| possibilities are endless!
| beamatronic wrote:
| Looks incredible and can't wait to try it. By the way there is a
| broken link, I got an error when trying to go to caddyserver.com
| mholt wrote:
| Indeed, the link should not include "www.". (We've never used
| that subdomain.)
| jcpst wrote:
| Loving these turn-key Pi projects showing up on HN today.
| [deleted]
| murphyslab wrote:
| Does anyone have experience with how this deals with background
| noise? It appears to be analyzing audio spectra, but can it
| detect a birdsong against the background of a busy road or a
| railway nearby? I've seen and heard so many birds near where I
| live (red-tailed hawks, northern flickers, european starlings,
| magpies, finches, ...), but audio recordings of them have always
| been hampered by the sounds of human activity.
| rmnclmnt wrote:
| The original paper [1] me tions data augmentation in the
| training dataset such as background noise addition, so it seems
| to be part of the initial design.
|
| As always with non-stationary noisy signal, any estimator will
| reach its limit to a certain point.
|
| [1]
| https://monarch.qucosa.de/api/qucosa%3A36986/attachment/ATT-...
| frodprefect wrote:
| Similar to AudioMoth
|
| https://www.openacousticdevices.info/
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| So cool. I just joined the Arizona Audubon Society a month ago
| and I go out with birding groups a couple of times a week, really
| fun activity!
| krick wrote:
| I wonder in which environment this is used. Does it handle all
| the noises of a typical human-populated environment well enough?
| Or do people only successfully use it in very remote areas?
| Digory wrote:
| Fun! What kind of microphone are they using on these
| installations?
|
| In most of the US, I presume you could get a 6-12W solar panel to
| run a Raspberry Pi Zero basically uninterrupted in your yard.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| I'm also interested in what microphone would work best for this
| project, which I absolutely will install on an unused Pi :)
| SpikedCola wrote:
| There are some mic suggestions discussed on the github page[0].
|
| [0] https://github.com/mcguirepr89/BirdNET-Pi/discussions/39
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| Now if ever I wanted to spy on the neighbours whilst not
| spying on the neighbours, this is it! LOL
| mankyd wrote:
| Weird caveat, but I wonder about the legality of this in various
| jurisdictions. In my own state in the US, it is generally illegal
| to record audio without consent. There are various
| interpretations of this, and probably putting a sign up saying
| "audio recording in progress" is enough, but it's worth
| considering.
|
| To be clear, even private, indoor security cameras are not
| allowed to record audio in my state, though few people realize
| this. Security camera websites and software do nothing to make
| this obvious.
| nullc wrote:
| Even then, you'd still need someone to bring an action. No one
| is going to bring an action over a private bird monitor.
|
| It might be nice though if the "live audio" detected human
| voices and auto-muted them. If you're making a live audio feed
| available you should post a notice for sure.
| mankyd wrote:
| Yup. I myself get along fine with my neighbors and wouldn't
| be concerned, per se. I simply think folks should be aware.
| There's plenty of lawsuits in my state regarding "illegal
| wiretapping" and not everyone has good relationships with
| their neighbors.
| mycowerk wrote:
| BirdNET and Pl@ntNet have to be my favorite uses of AI to date. A
| true use of technology for the greater good.
|
| I've actually been thinking about automated bird recognition for
| a while now, I live underneath a flight corridor for migrating
| common cranes (near Berlin). I'd love to be able to one day track
| their migration across the continent in real time using data from
| crowdsourced base stations.
|
| I wonder if migrating birds could be identified in flight using
| optical/radar/audio. If anybody else has had similar ideas I'd
| really love to chat on this topic.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| The iNaturalist app is also quite amazing for identification of
| all kinds of organisms by image. The also have the "Seek" app
| which identifies species even offline.
| gkfasdfasdf wrote:
| 10s of dollars idea: add as a feature to outdoor nest cams.
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