alt Hacker NewsI turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system
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I did exactly this with BirdNet-Go and my Unifi doorbell cam. Unifi exposes an RTSP feed for each camera so it was easy for the tool to just "listen" to the doorbell and start classifying.
I have a spare e-ink display and my next weekend project to follow onto this is to wire it up so it shows some faux "woodcut" images of birds detected, or something like that.
The documentary 'Listers ' (about two brothers who go all in on birding for a year) on YouTube is so hilarious and got me into birding (and using Merlin) this year. Highly recommend.
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.
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!
Heads up. I noticed the screenshot of your markdown card has an ASCII block that goes below the baseline. `U+2588` (Full block) tends to do that depending on a lot of things.
I made a change to the markdown card sometime ago that uses only `U+2581` through `U+ 2587` instead to avoid that issue.
It's under a collapsed block here:
https://www.kyleniewiada.org/blog/2025/05/backyard-bird-trac...
Nice! I never thought about using my security cameras but ended up building a regular Birdnet-Pi with a microphone. I took it one step further to make it portable so that I can use it when we hike or travel to new places. Added a little e-ink display to the front and it allows me to see Top 3 for the day, last detected, and total number for the day.
Case I used to make it portable and fit the display https://makerworld.com/en/models/1336154-portable-pi-sdr-cas...
I don't know how this possibly worked for the northern mockingbird. One full moon I stood and listened to one call continuously for an hour and I couldn't remember hearing the same call twice. Every bird I'd ever heard in person and more mimicked...several car alarms..sirens... Do they even have their own distinctive call?
Nice! I've tried to build something similar with Unifi cameras (https://github.com/dewey/birdhomie) and it worked pretty well, the species detection wasn't that accurate but I'll continue on that project in the winter.
I run BirdNET-Go as an app on my Home Assistant i7 M710q. I use the GPU-enabled BirdNET model and Perch V2, and it works swimmingly.
Input is three RTSP streams from various Reolink PoE cameras around our house, and it is pretty cool to be able to find and listen to the birds/frogs that come.
I just turned my PTZ security camera into a VAR booth for my kid. Lawn (soccer) / Driveway (Floorball) / End. Live view, step back 10s, slowmo, frame step, scrubbing.
GLM 5.3 helped to root my camera so I could get proper endpoints for PTZ and stream. Claude built the api and frontend, hosted on Home Assistant.
Cool project!
Inspired by AvianVisitors [1] I made a similar project [2] with an android app for bird detection using Perch, and then displays the birds detected during the last 24 hours with nice art on a samsung frame tv in "art mode".
If you dont want to repurpose an old android device, my app also supports bird detections from birdnet-go and birdweather. It should be plug and play with this project.
Have a look at [1] https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/ [2] https://github.com/simenf/birdframe
Thanks - this post reminded me to enter some sightings from yesterday into eBird (yes, another Cornell Lab birding app). A pair of rainbow bee eaters that I hadn't seen in the area before.
Came to say birdnet is fantastic but, at least in Australia, it regularly identifies calls with low probability (which are often wrong / skewed for location, but sometimes correct). Meaning you still need some wits about you. That said, it can correctly identify multiple birds in a single chorus which is cool. Just need to keep an eye out for those false positives.
I noticed the linked blog mentions birds and bats. I thought bat chirps required higher sample rates than the microphones normally use. I have an Audiomoth and to set it up for bats you need to use the highest sample rate for proper ID.
I like this project. I have been using security cams around my place to keep track of animals meandering across the property. It's the best use for an outdoor solar-powered webcam if you ask me. You can get a feel for which animal to expect based on time of day or other characteristics. You also recognize those who regularly visit. I have a one-eyed raccoon that has been showing up for almost two years now. It's a female and the last time she visited the monitored fountain she had 5 rambunctious raccoonlets.
Xeno, you are my hero https://xeno-canto.org/
Been working on a similar project for doing animal behavioral analysis on cameras setup in a barn. I got YOLO running in real-time on several streams on a RTX4070. Managing the training data and doing DINO->YOLO distillation has me writing my own data management suite that I plan on OSing soon.
Core use-case : push a message every time my dog is eating my shoes.
Relevant: https://www.spoor.ai/
I'm thinking of making one of these for my wife as a holiday present: https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/
I like the idea of doing something with the timestamp of the recording, or highlighting new (or recently unheard) visitors.
I have this too, I was looking to get more automated call recognition after we spotted a pheasant in my (suburban) back garden. I was going to buy a dedicated mike, but then realised that birdnet go works with any rtsp audio stream.
I do need to tune the false positives though.
Love this project, I did something similar. The next step is building a custom frontend for it that’s exactly how your wife wants!
https://alec.is/posts/building-a-solar-powered-bird-station/
Wild that I could read this article, give DeepSeek about 4 sentences of prompts and have it running on my own homelab and unifi cameras in about 10 minutes.
The future mostly sucks but some parts are pretty cool.
> No waiting. No manual recording.
> No cloud services. No API calls.
> No subscription fees. No terms of service changes. No company shutting down the service in two years.
how confident is it in the identification? i imagine sometimes the angle is or resolution is bad and it may detect a bird but not have a lot to go off of to say what kind. does it narrow the list down or just make a guess?
I am imagining a Gary Larson strip about a flock of birds who are so not fond of this.
Really cool! The fart detector was a hilarious bonus
Related: https://www.birdweather.com/birdnetpi
I really gotta set mine up!
Finally, ATC for my garden
Is it possible to run on macOS? I’m guessing docker
Incredible! I never realized these models are open, always used them via the app. Project is top also!
Really nice project! Expected a visual ID system, surprised it was using audio. "Flock" would be a great name for the project...oh well!
Brilliant idea and fantastic project. New use for security cameras. I love it.
What an interesting and fun project. Now I want something similar too.
I'm pretty sure you can do this with Frigate as well.
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!)
I’ve been working on a similar project for the last few weeks in spare time.
I’m using a AudioMoth USB mic so I can capture extremely high sample rate and also ultrasonic for bat detections.
https://github.com/simonjgreen/OpenObservatory
Disclaimer: I’m also using this to see how far I can push supervised pure AI coding before it turns to mega slop, so know that before you dive in with the disparaging comments :D
just don't use it to catch a congressman being murdered over a privacy bill.
I love this, much better than AngryBirds. Truly an amazing idea!
flock for family tracking and block for bird tracking may be !
can i turn this into a doorbell?
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.
Humans who hate being spied on by the government and FacebookSpyGlasses, now spy on birds. We begin to understand how Skynet won this war ...
This would be more interesting with video rather than audio, no? I guess it depends where your security cameras are. Are there options for that as well?
Alternative title: "My neighbour farted in my driveway, a technical overview"
110 detections over 7 days? Here in Sydney I would expect >110 detections per day!
Hell yeah a birdie over thirty, with a splash of tech!
(you either go the path of a burner or a birdie, I don't make the rules)
I love AI. Thank you for such great software, anybody can do it now! Just like making videos, songs, pictures, stories, etc. What a great time to be alive! Oh, and F China for trying to sabotage our data center buildouts by leveraging useful idiots.
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Eerie how easy it is to leverage these always on network connected sensors we keep putting everywhere to get precise data profiles