This is the coolest thing on HN that I've seen in a minute. The whole thing is a perfect blend of ideas with the end result of something that feels... magical. Honestly this is the highest inspiration to me as a builder as I just want to create magical experiences, even if they are just small oddities.
Are there any LLMs being widely used for audio classification? I know VLMs are being used a lot in image stuff.
It always seems kind of silly to me to throw everything at an LLM. I know they’re huge and can automatically handle a huge number of tasks but something in me finds it wasteful when we could be creating easily trainable, cheap to run bespoke models for a lot of stuff
e-ink is so much fun, especially when combined with ESP32 or BTLE boards. I currently have 4 around my house displaying book quotes that I've highlighted in KOReader and they bring me joy each time I see them. They are simple and do one thing very well.
I just got and setup a BTLE e-ink driver the other day and according to my calculations it will last _years_ on a single charge (2000mAh) even with multiple refreshes per day (crazy compared to the Wifi ones). Year+ lifetime completely changes the calculus for where to put these IMHO.
I'm considering designing a multiple-screen "art" piece to hang on my wall and playing around with various ideas (on both content and design).
LLMs + 3D Printer + e-ink is my new favorite hobby.
Here are the parts I bought, I'm still getting it all setup (I have my pictures displaying, working on designing the 3D printed case now, and testing it all) but according to OpenDisplay's calculator [0] I can expect 3.4 years if I refresh the screen once every 4 hours (and currently I'm doing closer to once a day to mimic my ESP32s which need deep sleep and once-a-day refresh to get even month/months of battery on a charge).
The image rendered to the screen is coming from a little service I wrote that renders a book quote it pulls from BookOrbit which syncs with KOReader (annotations, progress, etc). My plan is to set up one of these one each bookshelf/series rotating quotes I highlighted from the series.
Here are 2 ESP32-based screens I have, the one on the left is a an all-in-one [1] and the one on the right I printed the case from the TRMNL DIY kit from SeeedStudio [2]: https://cs.joshstrange.com/knk4Ns2h
Right now only the BTLE one is running OpenDisplay (the other two are semi-managed by HomeAssistant ESPHome) and all the devices are in HA for controlling them, though the ESP32's all deep-sleep for saving battery so I can can't "push" stuff to them like I can the BTLE one.
If I want a wifi e-ink connected display - curious what would you recommend.
I want an e-ink display - that I can use as a sign/display board with wifi connectivity and remote administration.
If you want a simple e-ink wifi screen I'd point you at the reTerminal e1001 [0] if that size works for you. It's the easiest to get started with. You can either keep it on power or use the deep sleep to get more from the battery. It really comes down to how often you want to update it.
The BTLE boards have just crazy higher battery time with no need for deep sleep which is why I'm moving in that direction.
~7.5" is the size I've been buying so far, the larger e-ink screens get pricey but I can't wait for a calendar-sized one to come down in price such that I can frame it and hang it on the wall. Lastly I'd avoid the color e-ink screens unless you know you need color, won't need to refresh it often, and it's not in your eye line. Color refreshes take way longer (~30s in my experience for a 5-6 color screen) and the flashing it has to do is obnoxious. Monocolor displays take <2s normally and a single flash. I got a color screen first because "why not?" and I got color, but the refresh was too annoying so now it refreshes once a day in a place that I'm not when it refreshes so I don't have to see it.
My mistake for calling it "copy", should have said fork maybe (?)
They are awful close to still require a reference to the original project imo. They are achieving the same output (identify birds and display them in a frame display all hosted in a raspberry pi) with that twist to how to generate the art.
Author here: I'll take any feedback and critisism. I haven't based any of my work directly on his project, but will be referencing it as a similar one in the readme, as well as e.g. https://github.com/veteranbv/inky-bird-frame.
From the link: "Half the point of this project is showing off some amazing public-domain natural-history illustrations. Over 800 cut-outs covering more than 400 species, every one taken from a real plate and hand-curated for this project (no art is AI-generated, though some has been retouched with AI)."
I agree I would expect a reference. Another difference between this an AvianVisitors is the image sources. AvianVisitors is all AI generated with a consistent prompt, but OP's is using chiefly public domain images with retouching by AI as needed.
I understand OP is continuing the work and improving it as he sees fit, but that in my mind is a fork and should aknowledge the initial work that sparked it.
Maybe i'm wrong tho and this is completely parallel work! Waiting for OPs reply
Hi, yeah I'm not basing any of my coding or feature-work on that project. My biggest source of inspiration is actually just a paper poster I have hanging on my wall https://www.axelthorenfeldt.com/news/wwf-verdens-naturfonds-.... I wanted to make a version of that, showing the actual birds in my garden.
A fork implies that it builds upon code from another repository. I wouldn't use the word fork to mean "inspired by". I think it takes away from the effort that the author has put in. Anyone can create a fork of a project with the click of a button.
Original author here. Fair point, this project was one of my inspirations, but I chose to take a different approach. This uses public domain natural history art and builds on top of BirdNET-Go which is a popular way of self-hosting bird-detections. (This is really a BirdNET-Go companion, as it cannot run without).
That's fair, and I totally get wanting to give it your own spin.
I still think it would be good to acknowledge the original project that sparked the idea, especially now that you've mentioned it was one of the inspirations.
Definitely keep going with yours and evolve it further. That's how good projects grow. But for a healthy open source community, I think we should make a point of crediting the people whose work inspires us. Otherwise, over time, it can discourage people from sharing their projects publicly in the first place.
Contrary to the Great Man version of how we mostly talk about history, scientific discoveries, technological breakthroughs and such have historically often occurred multiple times in multiple places often in close proximity time-wise but otherwise completely unrelated to each other. This of course makes sense if you consider that history seems to be primarily driven by material conditions (e.g. steam engines were known to Ancient Greece but their usefulness for industry simply hadn't occurred to them because they lacked the prerequisites to make them useful and neither economic efficiency nor access to cheap labor were significant enough concerns - plus there was no patent system of course).
I'll leave it up to you to decide whether one should expect the demographic of this website to be especially invested in the Great Man narrative but trying to convince them that two people can independently have similar-sounding ideas involving similar-but-different technology is probably an uphill battle. Just be glad you're not composing music for a living because there's literally an entire industry built around the idea that it's impossible for two people to come up with similar melodies without knowingly or unknowingly copying eachother and that it's very important that one of them (or rather the company they had to sign a deal with in order to make any money off their music at all) 100% owns that exact melody and should be paid by anyone who wants to use it.
Next time you have an idea you should just file a patent tbh - the insistence on prior art invalidating the work seems to be quite similar but at least if you're granted a patent you can shake down "copycats" for money.
> Contrary to the Great Man version of how we mostly talk about history, scientific discoveries, technological breakthroughs and such have historically often occurred multiple times in multiple places often in close proximity time-wise but otherwise completely unrelated to each other.
My favourite example of this is calculus, followed closely by heavier-than-air flight.
I haven't tried with BirdNet, but Merlin doesn't seem to ever false-positive on chipmunks or squirrels (there's been a suggestion that it should explicitly recognize them, and maybe some frogs too, since they're "loud thing in the same register" and it frustrates people that haven't figured it out yet...)
I wish E-ink displays were a bit more affordable. The 13 inch one is £229.50.
Does anyone know why they are still so expensive, at least at large sizes?
You have to distinguish the fake color e-ink that are used in mass consumer products which are actually black&white e-ink plus an LCD layer and are expensive, and the real color e-ink where each micro capsule embeds 3 to 5 different inks of different colors.
The latest are pretty complex devices, very slow to refresh (hence why they are not used in your e-reader) and also very expensive. But the rendering is way much nicer because it’s real ink that is used to render the colors.
Thanks for sharing. Didn’t know about this project. Have you used it yourself? I’ve only experimented with Scrypted for fun, but Frigate sounds like I could operate birdsong analysis without a separate BirdNET container.
What would be cool is if you can put AI to identify individual birds. They all have different calls/voices, though largely indistinguishable to human ears. And you can name them and see when they come for a visit.
I just happen to have an extra Pi and an e-ink display sitting around and I LOVE this idea. Going to try it on my screened in porch - we typically get 10-20 Merlin detections on a decent day so this could be fun!
On a side note. How do people deal with all the ugly mess birds cause in such settings? I'd love to have such thing but seeing all the white stuff on glass door does not really feel fun to me overall.
What do you mean specifically? These birdsong analyzers are sensitive enough that they do not rely on setting up a feeder. It’s obviously dependent on where you live, but in the Nordics, living outside city centres is good enough for both background noise and birdsong from nearby trees/parks/forests. Privacy matters aside, setting a mic up on a balcony or window is enough. Another solution is feeding data from a cheap security camera with a mic through wifi. This way the camera can stay outside in different weather, it’s not super close to you actual living area and splitting audio from the RTSP stream should be relatively easy to be analyzed by BirdNET.
Well I specifically meant having a bird feeder on a window or glass door for a chance to watch them live closely. That's why I put it as a side note ;)
You gave me few ideas for the analyzer setup too - thanks!
Yeah that’s definitely going to be messy. Based on your region, there should hopefully be generic security cams that can even work with a batter and solar. That combined with wifi if it can reach your house can hopefully steer the blast zone way further :D There’s a few TP-Link cameras on discount around 100€ that have 2k res. Feels a lot easier this way rather than taping together a weatherproof box for various components like the Pi and a mic. So far I’ve only used a plug-powered one since I have a IP-rated socket outside and the TP-link cam has a magnet for my wall. Hope you find a nice solution!
Sounds like you've got birds crashing into the door? That's often something that can be improved (with stickers or hanging decorations) that make the glass more perceptible to the birds. (Another thing that sometimes helps is having bushes or shrubs, or even potted plants, in sight of the feeder - most small birds will use a "staging area" and fly somewhere nearby first, "check out the scene", and then fly to the feeder from there; it doesn't really control the activity, but it adds some options.)
I can't help wonder what this would look like for humans. Imagine, set one of these up at a party and it has the means to identify anyone on the invite list. When it hears the person it displays a photo, brief bio, and relationship status.
Author here. A mic listens to the sounds in my garden, BirdNET-Go (an open-source BirdNET classifier) detects birds by sound, and the e-ink frame draws a real 1800s natural-history illustration of each one as it hears them. Here’s a live web-demo from my garden in Bergen, Norway: https://fugleramme.arnegiacomo.dev
A few things that might be interesting:
- The screen only redraws when the set of birds changes, and dithers the collage down to six colours for the e-ink display.
- Bigger birds sit toward the centre, scaled by real body mass.
- 800+ cutouts across 400+ species, each cut from a real public domain plate. All art is historic and human-made. Coverage is currently best for the Nordics, Britain and Germany (but other parts of the world are in the works).
- Runs fully local on a Raspberry Pi or your homelab (yes, even the classifier runs great on a RPI)
The e-ink panel is optional and it can run web-only in a container against a BirdNET-Go you already have.
If I were to make one of these as a Christmas present for somebody in Texas, and I wanted to contribute work toward good coverage for the area, how big of a time commitment would that be? It sounds like the kind of hobby work I could get into for a few months.
Less than you'd think, because you likely wouldn't need full "Texas coverage", you mostly need the birds that actually show up. BirdNET filters by location, you'll likely need a couple of dozen. Over the summer I've had about 40 visitors where I live.
Right now the coverage of North America is relatively sparse, but the interest has been high and I'm hoping for some contributions.
Edit: For North America the most obvious source is Audubon's Birds of America, which is public domain and should provide a lot of coverage. This collection includes some beautiful plates.
Do you have your image source available somewhere? I'm not going to build this same thing, but I'd love to add some prints of birds to my shelves and, not knowing much about birds, it would help to have a set of pictures I could look through and go, "Ooh! This one!" and learn about them. It'd be a good jumping on point!
I'm actually currently working on implementing Iberian species, and added some yesterday. There's another user also contributing with some beautiful Spanish birds. Feel free to contribute if you have some cool visitors in your garden!
We could also leave fake images aside, go outside and try to watch the birds ourselves. Maybe even let the camera inside, just looking with our own eyes. Real nature. No intermediate.
> Half the point of this project is showing off some amazing public-domain natural-history illustrations. Over 800 cut-outs covering more than 400 species, every one taken from a real plate and hand-curated for this project (no art is AI-generated, though some has been retouched with AI).
You can in fact both have an interesting bird-based art display in your home and also go outside and watch birds yourself. Neither precludes the other.
While I love this idea generally, the scope of the use of generative AI for artwork is too vague for my comfort.
The README.md mentions that "no art is AI-generated, though some has been retouched with AI." Superficially, that sounds mild. Some of the other closely-related projects, however, use different verbiage, or none at all.
For those of us with ethical concerns around generative AI application to artwork, much more detail may be needed before we could decide if this was appropriate for us.
Nothing at runtime uses AI either, at least in the sense of LLMs or diffusion. The collage is Pillow and numpy, and detection is BirdNET, which is a classifier, not a generative model.
However I have used LLMs for code-related work, and for writing scripts for programatically editing the images, like cutting, contrast and colour corrections.
Finally, we solved the problem of converting bird sounds into their pictures without involving human cognition. The great problem and the need had to wait for the great, ultra expensive, data-center-driven AI technology to appear on the horizon. AI is such a good technology that continue to solve many such great problems that humans desperately needed for their survival and progress. All at the a minimal cost of some effect on the climate, which may only slightly quicken the human extinction.
Puzzlingly, no animal species requires AI, which is a mystery that need to be solved by AI.
Hmm. The project uses BirdNET-Go, which does inference locally on a Raspberry Pi. Then it looks up the species against a set of already existing illustrations. So in this case it seems like the "ultra expensive, data-center-driven AI" is not really involved in the core loop of this project.
This is incorrect; the local model is a small dense neural network called BirdNET that would not have been referred to "AI" when it was published in 2021. The model outputs a bird species probability distribution and the web application displays an existing image file of the most probable bird on the screen. This is a lovely example of simple, offline, and fun project using a straightforward machine learning model.
This is the coolest thing on HN that I've seen in a minute. The whole thing is a perfect blend of ideas with the end result of something that feels... magical. Honestly this is the highest inspiration to me as a builder as I just want to create magical experiences, even if they are just small oddities.
The underlying classifier, BirdNET, is a traditional neural network and not an LLM:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2021.101236
Are there any LLMs being widely used for audio classification? I know VLMs are being used a lot in image stuff.
It always seems kind of silly to me to throw everything at an LLM. I know they’re huge and can automatically handle a huge number of tasks but something in me finds it wasteful when we could be creating easily trainable, cheap to run bespoke models for a lot of stuff
https://github.com/earthspecies/NatureLM-audio
So many bird projects recently and I think it’s all thanks to this project[0]
It seems IP over Avian Carriers is finally within reach!
0. https://github.com/tphakala/birdnet-go
Link missing?
Probably BirdNet, but Google also has an equivalent model now called Perch. https://birdnet.cornell.edu/
Complete guess but I wonder if it's the Merlin project?
https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/merlin/
As a fellow Norwegian I must say that this is pure art by the developer Arne Munthe-Kaas.
e-ink is so much fun, especially when combined with ESP32 or BTLE boards. I currently have 4 around my house displaying book quotes that I've highlighted in KOReader and they bring me joy each time I see them. They are simple and do one thing very well.
I just got and setup a BTLE e-ink driver the other day and according to my calculations it will last _years_ on a single charge (2000mAh) even with multiple refreshes per day (crazy compared to the Wifi ones). Year+ lifetime completely changes the calculus for where to put these IMHO.
I'm considering designing a multiple-screen "art" piece to hang on my wall and playing around with various ideas (on both content and design).
LLMs + 3D Printer + e-ink is my new favorite hobby.
Years on a wall mounted eink screen sounds super interesting. What are you using for the power delivery/battery side of that setup?
Here are the parts I bought, I'm still getting it all setup (I have my pictures displaying, working on designing the 3D printed case now, and testing it all) but according to OpenDisplay's calculator [0] I can expect 3.4 years if I refresh the screen once every 4 hours (and currently I'm doing closer to once a day to mimic my ESP32s which need deep sleep and once-a-day refresh to get even month/months of battery on a charge).
Screen: 7.5" Monochrome eInk / ePaper Display with 800x480 Pixels (https://www.seeedstudio.com/7-5-Monochrome-ePaper-Display-wi...)
BTLE board: XIAO ePaper Display Board(nRF52840) - EN05 (https://www.seeedstudio.com/XIAO-ePaper-Display-Board-nRF528...)
Battery: 3.7V 2000mAh - (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FR9GH966)
Picture of it all assembled (no case yet): https://cs.joshstrange.com/zJFvGGPB
The image rendered to the screen is coming from a little service I wrote that renders a book quote it pulls from BookOrbit which syncs with KOReader (annotations, progress, etc). My plan is to set up one of these one each bookshelf/series rotating quotes I highlighted from the series.
Here are 2 ESP32-based screens I have, the one on the left is a an all-in-one [1] and the one on the right I printed the case from the TRMNL DIY kit from SeeedStudio [2]: https://cs.joshstrange.com/knk4Ns2h
Right now only the BTLE one is running OpenDisplay (the other two are semi-managed by HomeAssistant ESPHome) and all the devices are in HA for controlling them, though the ESP32's all deep-sleep for saving battery so I can can't "push" stuff to them like I can the BTLE one.
[0] https://opendisplay.org/index.html#battery
[1] https://www.seeedstudio.com/reTerminal-E1001-p-6534.html
[2] https://www.seeedstudio.com/TRMNL-7-5-Inch-OG-DIY-Kit-p-6481...
If I want a wifi e-ink connected display - curious what would you recommend. I want an e-ink display - that I can use as a sign/display board with wifi connectivity and remote administration.
If you want a simple e-ink wifi screen I'd point you at the reTerminal e1001 [0] if that size works for you. It's the easiest to get started with. You can either keep it on power or use the deep sleep to get more from the battery. It really comes down to how often you want to update it.
The BTLE boards have just crazy higher battery time with no need for deep sleep which is why I'm moving in that direction.
~7.5" is the size I've been buying so far, the larger e-ink screens get pricey but I can't wait for a calendar-sized one to come down in price such that I can frame it and hang it on the wall. Lastly I'd avoid the color e-ink screens unless you know you need color, won't need to refresh it often, and it's not in your eye line. Color refreshes take way longer (~30s in my experience for a 5-6 color screen) and the flashing it has to do is obnoxious. Monocolor displays take <2s normally and a single flash. I got a color screen first because "why not?" and I got color, but the refresh was too annoying so now it refreshes once a day in a place that I'm not when it refreshes so I don't have to see it.
I also recommend you check out OpenDisplay for what you will run on the device: https://opendisplay.org/index.html
[0] https://www.seeedstudio.com/reTerminal-E1001-p-6534.html
When it does run out, are you able to replace the battery? Or is it something way more painful than that?
It's a rechargeable battery, I just plug the board in (USB-C) and it charges the battery.
This is such a cool project. My mom would absolutely love this if I made it as a gift. This may be a good project.
Another dev offers it as a full product. OOS at the moment though.
https://theodore.net/store/avian-visitors/
I was thinking the exact same thing!
Isnt this a fork* of https://x.com/WarnerTeddy/status/2060018688645115964?
https://github.com/Twarner491/AvianVisitors
https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/
Or maybe im missing to see is the same author? It went viral a few months ago
The new one appears to use real art from real humans, instead of AI art that was fixed.
And just because 2 things do the same job doesn't make one a "copy" of the other.
My mistake for calling it "copy", should have said fork maybe (?)
They are awful close to still require a reference to the original project imo. They are achieving the same output (identify birds and display them in a frame display all hosted in a raspberry pi) with that twist to how to generate the art.
Author here: I'll take any feedback and critisism. I haven't based any of my work directly on his project, but will be referencing it as a similar one in the readme, as well as e.g. https://github.com/veteranbv/inky-bird-frame.
Please take my praise as well then :) what a wholesome project!
What is "the new one"? The old one used AI, and this one seems to as well.
Author here: It doesn't, well at least not art-wise. All sources are attributed in https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme/blob/main/assets/a... and https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme/blob/main/assets/a...
This is much appreciated! Thanks for making this decision
From the link: "Half the point of this project is showing off some amazing public-domain natural-history illustrations. Over 800 cut-outs covering more than 400 species, every one taken from a real plate and hand-curated for this project (no art is AI-generated, though some has been retouched with AI)."
I agree I would expect a reference. Another difference between this an AvianVisitors is the image sources. AvianVisitors is all AI generated with a consistent prompt, but OP's is using chiefly public domain images with retouching by AI as needed.
Yeah agree
I understand OP is continuing the work and improving it as he sees fit, but that in my mind is a fork and should aknowledge the initial work that sparked it.
Maybe i'm wrong tho and this is completely parallel work! Waiting for OPs reply
Hi, yeah I'm not basing any of my coding or feature-work on that project. My biggest source of inspiration is actually just a paper poster I have hanging on my wall https://www.axelthorenfeldt.com/news/wwf-verdens-naturfonds-.... I wanted to make a version of that, showing the actual birds in my garden.
I accuse you of having good taste.
A fork implies that it builds upon code from another repository. I wouldn't use the word fork to mean "inspired by". I think it takes away from the effort that the author has put in. Anyone can create a fork of a project with the click of a button.
Fwiw an eink display is fairly common tech in the birdiverse. I also have a project that is the same thing.
https://xxcancel.com/WarnerTeddy/status/2060018688645115964
This one seems to be more North European focused
Its awful close with no attribution or mention of the original project, which should be the minimum i feel like.
Original author here. Fair point, this project was one of my inspirations, but I chose to take a different approach. This uses public domain natural history art and builds on top of BirdNET-Go which is a popular way of self-hosting bird-detections. (This is really a BirdNET-Go companion, as it cannot run without).
I've seen other similar projects pop up like https://github.com/veteranbv/inky-bird-frame and https://github.com/adamoberley/HABirdDashboard/tree/HABirdDa..., each with their own spin.
That's fair, and I totally get wanting to give it your own spin.
I still think it would be good to acknowledge the original project that sparked the idea, especially now that you've mentioned it was one of the inspirations.
Definitely keep going with yours and evolve it further. That's how good projects grow. But for a healthy open source community, I think we should make a point of crediting the people whose work inspires us. Otherwise, over time, it can discourage people from sharing their projects publicly in the first place.
Thanks, I’ll do that, and ofc link to this beautiful poster I have that actually originally sparked the idea: https://www.axelthorenfeldt.com/news/wwf-verdens-naturfonds-...
Contrary to the Great Man version of how we mostly talk about history, scientific discoveries, technological breakthroughs and such have historically often occurred multiple times in multiple places often in close proximity time-wise but otherwise completely unrelated to each other. This of course makes sense if you consider that history seems to be primarily driven by material conditions (e.g. steam engines were known to Ancient Greece but their usefulness for industry simply hadn't occurred to them because they lacked the prerequisites to make them useful and neither economic efficiency nor access to cheap labor were significant enough concerns - plus there was no patent system of course).
I'll leave it up to you to decide whether one should expect the demographic of this website to be especially invested in the Great Man narrative but trying to convince them that two people can independently have similar-sounding ideas involving similar-but-different technology is probably an uphill battle. Just be glad you're not composing music for a living because there's literally an entire industry built around the idea that it's impossible for two people to come up with similar melodies without knowingly or unknowingly copying eachother and that it's very important that one of them (or rather the company they had to sign a deal with in order to make any money off their music at all) 100% owns that exact melody and should be paid by anyone who wants to use it.
Next time you have an idea you should just file a patent tbh - the insistence on prior art invalidating the work seems to be quite similar but at least if you're granted a patent you can shake down "copycats" for money.
Added, see README. Thanks for the feedback!
true, but we are assuming that the author is aware of the other repo
This is the sweetest thing I've seen in a long time :')
My granny is almost deaf and I will test the idea for her, for she loves birds
Love the aesthetic of 1800s illustrations combined with modern tech. Wonder if it ever misidentifies a squirrel.
I haven't tried with BirdNet, but Merlin doesn't seem to ever false-positive on chipmunks or squirrels (there's been a suggestion that it should explicitly recognize them, and maybe some frogs too, since they're "loud thing in the same register" and it frustrates people that haven't figured it out yet...)
Very cool!
I wish E-ink displays were a bit more affordable. The 13 inch one is £229.50. Does anyone know why they are still so expensive, at least at large sizes?
This project will work with a 7.3" display just as well - they are £79.50! https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression?variant=5...
Disclaimer: I am the CEO of Pimoroni :-)
Yeah, the 4 and 7.3" prices are not bad, the jump to 13 is just large. That being said, the cost per area goes down, so it is also probably fair.
For a product that is made for creators and DIY, AI generated imagery on the product photos doesn't feel right.
You have to distinguish the fake color e-ink that are used in mass consumer products which are actually black&white e-ink plus an LCD layer and are expensive, and the real color e-ink where each micro capsule embeds 3 to 5 different inks of different colors.
The latest are pretty complex devices, very slow to refresh (hence why they are not used in your e-reader) and also very expensive. But the rendering is way much nicer because it’s real ink that is used to render the colors.
You can sometimes find old Nooks for cheap and they can be rooted to display static images, but it's not elegant.
Patents and greed in a combination.
This is such a cool idea and I want to build one. I wish I had this kind of creativity. I can do the hardware/software side, but great ideas elude me.
are you setting yourself up to record ideas as they happen?
I built one of these that shows the hacker news front page, nyt front page, my most listened to album of the last 7 days etc.
Refreshes every hour
Battery lasts a few months
Esp32 and a colour eink panel, same as this one I think
That sounds cool! Where did you get your color e-ink panel?
I got https://www.waveshare.com/13.3inch-e-paper-hat-plus-e.htm from Amazon, about 300 gbp
Frigate, the IP camera security system, also does bird classification: https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/bird_classification...
Thanks for sharing. Didn’t know about this project. Have you used it yourself? I’ve only experimented with Scrypted for fun, but Frigate sounds like I could operate birdsong analysis without a separate BirdNET container.
this is so cool :) thinking about some remixes already with maritime traffic and tides
I would like to build something which can do the exact opposite. Sounds from illustrations.
What would be cool is if you can put AI to identify individual birds. They all have different calls/voices, though largely indistinguishable to human ears. And you can name them and see when they come for a visit.
Something like fpcalc for soundbytes? Neat
I just happen to have an extra Pi and an e-ink display sitting around and I LOVE this idea. Going to try it on my screened in porch - we typically get 10-20 Merlin detections on a decent day so this could be fun!
Cool project!
On a side note. How do people deal with all the ugly mess birds cause in such settings? I'd love to have such thing but seeing all the white stuff on glass door does not really feel fun to me overall.
What do you mean specifically? These birdsong analyzers are sensitive enough that they do not rely on setting up a feeder. It’s obviously dependent on where you live, but in the Nordics, living outside city centres is good enough for both background noise and birdsong from nearby trees/parks/forests. Privacy matters aside, setting a mic up on a balcony or window is enough. Another solution is feeding data from a cheap security camera with a mic through wifi. This way the camera can stay outside in different weather, it’s not super close to you actual living area and splitting audio from the RTSP stream should be relatively easy to be analyzed by BirdNET.
Well I specifically meant having a bird feeder on a window or glass door for a chance to watch them live closely. That's why I put it as a side note ;)
You gave me few ideas for the analyzer setup too - thanks!
Yeah that’s definitely going to be messy. Based on your region, there should hopefully be generic security cams that can even work with a batter and solar. That combined with wifi if it can reach your house can hopefully steer the blast zone way further :D There’s a few TP-Link cameras on discount around 100€ that have 2k res. Feels a lot easier this way rather than taping together a weatherproof box for various components like the Pi and a mic. So far I’ve only used a plug-powered one since I have a IP-rated socket outside and the TP-link cam has a magnet for my wall. Hope you find a nice solution!
Sounds like you've got birds crashing into the door? That's often something that can be improved (with stickers or hanging decorations) that make the glass more perceptible to the birds. (Another thing that sometimes helps is having bushes or shrubs, or even potted plants, in sight of the feeder - most small birds will use a "staging area" and fly somewhere nearby first, "check out the scene", and then fly to the feeder from there; it doesn't really control the activity, but it adds some options.)
Cool project! I set up an e-ink frame with this recently as a gift and it's been so much fun creating themed collections.
https://github.com/defl/hokku_epaper
What is the energy label of this frame?
Chernobyl.
All I'd get is pigeons and seagulls...
This is one of the most wonderful uses of AI I've seen in a while.
I agree. It's such a pity Cats don't recognize images, would make for wonderful CatTV.
Most whimsical application of local ai so far
Very cool!
I can't help wonder what this would look like for humans. Imagine, set one of these up at a party and it has the means to identify anyone on the invite list. When it hears the person it displays a photo, brief bio, and relationship status.
I love it.
Amazing. Best post I've seen on HN in ages.
I love this new era of AI powered creativity. I expect we're just getting started.
Super fun project!
Cool Project!! I like it
So cool, I'm going to try building one myself!
Why isn't this a thing on Amazon I can buy?
What a cool idea. I might have to give this one a try. I've got Raspberry's coming out the wazoo.
oh I need to build this for my mom she would love it!
Artig! :)
I love this! I have a forest garden with lots of birds. I so want to try this project asap!
intresting!
Now could you make one for urban noises? (e.g. traffic, trash truck, drunk guys at 3AM etc)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
cool project!
Now this is why I come here!
Amazing thing, will replicate.
super stylin’
incredible creativity and inspiring. thanks for sharing this !
Author here. A mic listens to the sounds in my garden, BirdNET-Go (an open-source BirdNET classifier) detects birds by sound, and the e-ink frame draws a real 1800s natural-history illustration of each one as it hears them. Here’s a live web-demo from my garden in Bergen, Norway: https://fugleramme.arnegiacomo.dev
A few things that might be interesting:
- The screen only redraws when the set of birds changes, and dithers the collage down to six colours for the e-ink display.
- Bigger birds sit toward the centre, scaled by real body mass.
- 800+ cutouts across 400+ species, each cut from a real public domain plate. All art is historic and human-made. Coverage is currently best for the Nordics, Britain and Germany (but other parts of the world are in the works).
- Runs fully local on a Raspberry Pi or your homelab (yes, even the classifier runs great on a RPI)
The e-ink panel is optional and it can run web-only in a container against a BirdNET-Go you already have.
Happy to answer any questions!
If I were to make one of these as a Christmas present for somebody in Texas, and I wanted to contribute work toward good coverage for the area, how big of a time commitment would that be? It sounds like the kind of hobby work I could get into for a few months.
Less than you'd think, because you likely wouldn't need full "Texas coverage", you mostly need the birds that actually show up. BirdNET filters by location, you'll likely need a couple of dozen. Over the summer I've had about 40 visitors where I live.
Right now the coverage of North America is relatively sparse, but the interest has been high and I'm hoping for some contributions.
Edit: For North America the most obvious source is Audubon's Birds of America, which is public domain and should provide a lot of coverage. This collection includes some beautiful plates.
Do you have your image source available somewhere? I'm not going to build this same thing, but I'd love to add some prints of birds to my shelves and, not knowing much about birds, it would help to have a set of pictures I could look through and go, "Ooh! This one!" and learn about them. It'd be a good jumping on point!
Yeah, all art i attributed an linked in https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme/tree/main/assets/a.... Check the manifest for exact sources
Very cool, but IMO not mentioning https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/ as an inspiration is a very ugly move from the author
Thanks! Discussed a few months ago:
Avian Visitors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343424 - May 2026 (20 comments)
Duly noted, I'll reference this, as well as other similar projects in the readme. Thanks for the feedback
Fair! Also, I would love to build this myself as I'm moving out of the city and to the countryside soon.
I'm based off Spain, so I'll be happy to contribute if I find missing Iberian and Mediterranean species, or if some cool feature idea comes up :)
I'm actually currently working on implementing Iberian species, and added some yesterday. There's another user also contributing with some beautiful Spanish birds. Feel free to contribute if you have some cool visitors in your garden!
I thought it was the same person. That is how close this project is. Inspiration may be too soft of a word.
Maybe for fairness we'll link to it from the toptext as well.
That's a blatant copy of https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/, please.
We could also leave fake images aside, go outside and try to watch the birds ourselves. Maybe even let the camera inside, just looking with our own eyes. Real nature. No intermediate.
> Half the point of this project is showing off some amazing public-domain natural-history illustrations. Over 800 cut-outs covering more than 400 species, every one taken from a real plate and hand-curated for this project (no art is AI-generated, though some has been retouched with AI).
You can in fact both have an interesting bird-based art display in your home and also go outside and watch birds yourself. Neither precludes the other.
An app like this would be used as augmentation rather than simulation.
I do recommend a decent pair of binoculars and the Merlin Bird ID app.
Or both. Why limit yourself?
While I love this idea generally, the scope of the use of generative AI for artwork is too vague for my comfort.
The README.md mentions that "no art is AI-generated, though some has been retouched with AI." Superficially, that sounds mild. Some of the other closely-related projects, however, use different verbiage, or none at all.
For those of us with ethical concerns around generative AI application to artwork, much more detail may be needed before we could decide if this was appropriate for us.
Author here: Fair, i could've been more explicit in my writing. Concretely:
Every bird is a cutout from a real scanned 1800s plate (Gould, the von Wright brothers, Dresser...). The manifest (https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme/blob/main/assets/a...) links to each source, so you can compare them to the original scans. No bird has been prompt/diffusion generated, although I did use diffusion-based tools to remove birds from the perches (https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme/tree/main/assets/a...).
Nothing at runtime uses AI either, at least in the sense of LLMs or diffusion. The collage is Pillow and numpy, and detection is BirdNET, which is a classifier, not a generative model.
However I have used LLMs for code-related work, and for writing scripts for programatically editing the images, like cutting, contrast and colour corrections.
What is the ethical concern in this use case?
Could be for the montage. Is that unfair to say no AI generated the arts, but that AI put individual pieces together?
Finally, we solved the problem of converting bird sounds into their pictures without involving human cognition. The great problem and the need had to wait for the great, ultra expensive, data-center-driven AI technology to appear on the horizon. AI is such a good technology that continue to solve many such great problems that humans desperately needed for their survival and progress. All at the a minimal cost of some effect on the climate, which may only slightly quicken the human extinction.
Puzzlingly, no animal species requires AI, which is a mystery that need to be solved by AI.
Hmm. The project uses BirdNET-Go, which does inference locally on a Raspberry Pi. Then it looks up the species against a set of already existing illustrations. So in this case it seems like the "ultra expensive, data-center-driven AI" is not really involved in the core loop of this project.
The local inference is a product that came out of the data-center-driven AI.
This is incorrect; the local model is a small dense neural network called BirdNET that would not have been referred to "AI" when it was published in 2021. The model outputs a bird species probability distribution and the web application displays an existing image file of the most probable bird on the screen. This is a lovely example of simple, offline, and fun project using a straightforward machine learning model.
What a shame that we get a bird ckassifier by the samle technology we use to recognize cancer and other illnesses.
> came out of the data-center-driven
should we tell them how hacker news gets onto their computer?
Do you not like AI?
Well, it's not a fruit or food that I can eat. It's not a shelter, It's not a fellow human or a pet. So, hard to say if I like it.