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BirdNET-Pi Acoustic Bird ID Station


birdnet pi overview.jpg

The BirdNET-Pi overview page with a heat map of the day's detections

Description

BirdNET-Pi is an acoustic bird identification station running on Raspberry Pi. It listens 24/7, identifies and logs the birds it hears using Cornell Lab of Ornithology's BirdNET neural analysis model.

The detections are logged in the system and are submitted to BirdWeather.com. My station is configured to send Discord notifications when a new species is detected for the day.


History

My BirdNET-Pi station was launched in December 2022. As of March 2023, it is currently at 70,000 detections and counting.


Technical details

The BirdNET-Pi station is running on a Raspberry Pi 3B+. I built an outdoor enclosure for it and mounted it on the back of my house in the backyard.

Computing hardware Raspberry Pi 3B+, 4, or Le Potato
Cooling Heatsink + fan
Outdoor enclosure QILIPSU Hinged Cover
I/O ports (x2) CNLINKO USB 3.0 Connector
Microphone option #1 (USB) USB Microphone
Microphone option #2 (3.5mm + sound card dongle) Sound card + 3.5mm lavaliere mic
Installation method Installation guide

User interface

Current design

Homepage

Because Birds currently leverages a Full Site Editing (FSE), open source, block-based theme from GeneratePress. This lightweight theme allows for a focus on the content with extremely-high PageSpeed scores across mobile and desktop.

becausebirds.com current homepage.jpg

Single post

The GeneratePress theme shines on single posts with a bold hero title section.

becausebirds.com single post current design.jpg

Previous design

Homepage

The initial theme for Because Birds was called Divi by Elegant Themes. Divi is one of the most common WordPress themes out there and the website used Divi's specific magazine-like Extra theme. Divi is less of a theme and more of a WYSIWYG platform with its own themes. It looks pretty, but it came at the expense of slow, bloated code and performance.

becausebirds.com launch homepage.jpg

The initial design of becausebirds.com. Pretty, but it had a large variety of visible categorires to keep fresh.

Single post

becausebirds.com single post previous design.jpg

The Hooded Merganser pixel art logo was designed by the talented pixel artist alurasheans.

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