BirdNet-Pi
After upgrading my homelab from a raspberry pi 4B to a beelink SER5 MAX, my rpi collected dust in the corner.. until I discovered BirdNet Pi! Now, my rpi is working hard to catalog passing avian visitors:
As the community is in flux, I wanted to share my setup.
Audio
I found several long discussions about microphones and acoustics; as a newbie I chose a sub-$20 USB microphone on amazon: CMTECK USB Computer Microphone G009. It's only been a day, but I'm already getting solid results with multiple 80-90% confidence ratings. The key points for me were the price, and the compatibility: USB-A means no dongle or adapter necessary.
For more advanced suggestions, check out this discussion on github.
Software
The original BirdNet-Pi repo has been archived; there is an active fork, which I decided to use. The setup guide is straightforward; plus, the new raspberry pi imager software supports configuring the wifi connection, meaning the rpi can connect via wifi on first boot. The longest part of the process was the BirdNet-Pi installer script, which seemed to install hundreds of packages.. hair-raising, for sure, but it installed without issue.
The software ecosystem is growing: there's also Birdnet-Go, a complete re-write that's under active development. Under the hood, it's all powered by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, via their trained models: see the birdnet team github.
That's it
Everything worked out of the box! Loading up BirdNet in my browser streamed my microphone audio; after an hour or so the first bird ids started coming in. Next up, notifications when visitors stop by :)
One-month update
Ah, but my rpi ran into some issues and I took birdnet down for the time being. Here's a screenshot of the data collected over the month:
