I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system • Hacker News Board

Re: I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system

#91

Post by sib » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 9:44 PM UTC

phainopepla2 wrote: post #40

comboy wrote: post #22

Btw, Merlin Bird ID app by Cornell University is so good that I got some people interested that weren't into that topic at all.

But a warning for novice birders: Merlin's sound ID feature produces a lot of false positives.

Cornell / Merlin / eBird publishes a global species frequency DB indexed by location and date (so, how likely is a species to appear in a place, on a day of the year)... In a project that I was working on, this helped a lot when used to influence the "raw" identification based on appearance alone.

Re: I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system

#92

Post by gverrilla » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 9:55 PM UTC

I got a little bit into birds when I met the Merlin app. And I have thought about making a bird identification station, but I'm under the impression mostly the same species of birds visit where I live. I may be wrong though.

Re: I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system

#93

Post by contingencies » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

deepvibrations wrote: post #34

contingencies wrote: post #15

110 detections over 7 days? Here in Sydney I would expect >110 detections per day!

You can adjust which detections are accepted based on confidence level, so it might be that the settings are very strict.

Two rainbow lorikeets just had sex 2m from my breakfast table. I think there's a substantive distinction in avian fauna density.

Re: I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system

#94

Post by mcapodici » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 10:18 PM UTC

gberger wrote: post #31

https://xkcd.com/1425/

Little did he know in 2026 you can feed that cartoon into AI and it will build you that app

Re: I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system

#95

Post by CobrastanJorji » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 10:19 PM UTC

comboy wrote: post #22

Btw, Merlin Bird ID app by Cornell University is so good that I got some people interested that weren't into that topic at all.

Merlin's story is very interesting: https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/the-magic-of-merlin/

The journey to a magical, free bird sound ID app involves some obvious steps (the NSF gave them money), but the amount of timeline offramps is really high. The NSF didn't think this app was educational ("it's just telling them the answer, they don't even have to work for it!"), the funding ran out so they were thinking of charging money, eBird happened to have five years of bird sound recordings they could use, a computer vision guy on the team happened to learn that spectrograms are basically the same as pictures...

And the result is tremendously useful! They get great signal on where birds are, and they're making people so much more interested in birds and nature and science. And I think charging $1 for the app or, shudder, some sort of subscription model might've ruined the whole thing.

Re: I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system

#96

Post by jasontucker » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 10:19 PM UTC

nautilus12 wrote: post #7

I get jealous of people that have the luxury of time to do things like this

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Re: I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system

#97

Post by maciejb » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 10:20 PM UTC

I tried that with my Aqara camera. The mic there has no windshield, though; wind noise was terrible. Also I couldn’t get Aqara support to enable higher sampling rates in the firmware than 16kHz; BirdNET expects 48kHz audio samples.

Ended up installing a better microphone attached to a RPi3A+ and using a RaspberyPi 4 which I already owned for hosting BirdNET-Go https://maciejb.me/posts/birdnet-go-setup/

Much better sound quality now!

Re: I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system

#98

Post by maciejb » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

nautilus12 wrote: post #7

I get jealous of people that have the luxury of time to do things like this

My setup took maybe ~4-8h of initial work. All with the help of Codex: code, configuration, even figuring out which equipment to buy.

Re: I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system

#99

Post by goldie_wilson » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 10:30 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Super cool, could be plugged into https://www.earthcam.com/ for global bird tracking. (i have a few https://www.birdweather.com/ devices strewn across North America and Europe because I am time poor and preferred a turnkey solution for those gifted to, but love the DIY efforts! no affiliation!)

Finally a good use for Flock cameras. They're even named appropriately.

Re: I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system

#100

Post by jasontucker » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 10:34 PM UTC

arm32 wrote: post #17

xattt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has your observation record reached a steady state, or are you regularly seeing unusual species?

I’m at a very steady state now years into running a BirdNET-GO instance. Disclaimer: I’m a contributor to the project. I’m a pretty unhinged sorta engineer, so I actually recently created a 24/7 weather TV channel that combines real-time bird alerts, weather radar, timelapses and a sky cam feed (just a UniFi camera mounted on my home’s roof PV). https://www.youtube.com/live/sAC3o6KW2N0 Watchable from every TV in the…

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