URI:
       [HN Gopher] Show HN: An e-ink frame that hears birds and draws t...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: An e-ink frame that hears birds and draws them as 1800s
       illustrations
        
       See also: _Avian Visitors_ -
       https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343424 - May 2026 (20
       comments)
        
       Author : arnemunthekaas
       Score  : 2270 points
       Date   : 2026-09-15 12:31 UTC (2 days ago)
        
  HTML web link (github.com)
  TEXT w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | arnemunthekaas wrote:
       | 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!
        
         | smeej wrote:
         | 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!
        
           | arnemunthekaas wrote:
           | Yeah, all art i attributed an linked in https://github.com/ar
           | negiacomo/fugleramme/tree/main/assets/a.... Check the
           | manifest for exact sources
        
         | onionisafruit wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | arnemunthekaas wrote:
           | 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.
        
       | firmretention wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | away0g wrote:
         | are you setting yourself up to record ideas as they happen?
        
       | mungoman2 wrote:
       | Now this is why I come here!
       | 
       | Amazing thing, will replicate.
        
       | jiwidi wrote:
       | 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
        
         | tencentshill wrote:
         | This one seems to be more North European focused
        
           | jiwidi wrote:
           | Its awful close with no attribution or mention of the
           | original project, which should be the minimum i feel like.
        
             | KaiserPro wrote:
             | true, but we are assuming that the author is aware of the
             | other repo
        
             | arnemunthekaas wrote:
             | 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://gi
             | thub.com/adamoberley/HABirdDashboard/tree/HABirdDa..., each
             | with their own spin.
        
               | jiwidi wrote:
               | 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.
        
               | arnemunthekaas wrote:
               | 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-...
        
               | hnbad wrote:
               | 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.
        
               | dotancohen wrote:
               | > 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.
        
               | cyphar wrote:
               | I think there is ample evidence that the Wright brothers
               | were (unlike many other inventors) uniquely suited to
               | solving the problem of heavier-than-air flight, as they
               | solved several open problems that nobody was making
               | progress on (the main ones being control authority,
               | propeller designs, the scientific basis for wing designs,
               | and the ability to test designs and practice without
               | dying) -- they even discovered and solved previously-
               | unknown problems (such as adverse yaw, something their
               | contemporaries should've independently discovered if they
               | were on the right track).
               | 
               | A full rundown would be too long but [1] is a pretty good
               | video going through the history of flight and how most of
               | the other candidates for "first flyers" people bring up
               | don't count and how it's difficult to argue that any of
               | their contemporaries were even close to the Wrights.
               | 
               | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpQAGQiv4Q
        
               | arnemunthekaas wrote:
               | Added, see README. Thanks for the feedback!
        
         | carb wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | jiwidi wrote:
           | 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
        
             | arnemunthekaas wrote:
             | 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.
        
               | delichon wrote:
               | I accuse you of having good taste.
        
             | martin- wrote:
             | 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.
        
         | wccrawford wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | jiwidi wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | arnemunthekaas wrote:
             | 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.
        
               | p1anecrazy wrote:
               | Please take my praise as well then :) what a wholesome
               | project!
        
           | jdiff wrote:
           | What is "the new one"? The old one used AI, and this one
           | seems to as well.
        
             | arnemunthekaas wrote:
             | Author here: It doesn't, well at least not art-wise. All
             | sources are attributed in https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fu
             | gleramme/blob/main/assets/a... and https://github.com/arneg
             | iacomo/fugleramme/blob/main/assets/a...
        
               | coinfused wrote:
               | This is much appreciated! Thanks for making this decision
        
             | stetrain wrote:
             | 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)."
        
               | xgulfie wrote:
               | Idk what "retouched with AI" means. Does it mean they
               | used a segmentation model to cut out the shapes, or were
               | they shoved through an imagegen and completely recreated?
        
               | dzhiurgis wrote:
               | At this point - does it even matter? AI photos are
               | indistinguishable.
        
               | xgulfie wrote:
               | It matters to me because it claims to be "real, hand-cut
               | 1800s bird illustrations" which is the whole appeal of
               | this to me
        
         | DavCreator wrote:
         | https://xxcancel.com/WarnerTeddy/status/2060018688645115964
        
         | bradly wrote:
         | Fwiw an eink display is fairly common tech in the birdiverse. I
         | also have a project that is the same thing.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Thanks! That one was discussed a few months ago:
         | 
         |  _Avian Visitors_ -
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343424 - May 2026 (20
         | comments)
         | 
         | I've put a link to the earlier project in the toptext above.
        
       | fnands wrote:
       | Very cool!
       | 
       | I wish E-ink displays were a bit more affordable. The 13 inch one
       | is PS229.50. Does anyone know why they are still so expensive, at
       | least at large sizes?
        
         | eckelhesten wrote:
         | Patents and greed in a combination.
        
         | pjerem wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | blacklion wrote:
           | They are used in book readers. Amazon Kindle Colorsoft, for
           | example. Or I have android phone with such screen (though,
           | not latest generation).
           | 
           | Rather opposite: I never seen consumer products with two-
           | layer displays.
        
         | whiskers wrote:
         | This project will work with a 7.3" display just as well - they
         | are PS79.50! https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-
         | impression?variant=5...
         | 
         | Disclaimer: I am the CEO of Pimoroni :-)
        
           | fnands wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | whiskers wrote:
             | Cost per area is pretty much what drives all display
             | pricing. :-)
        
           | tencentshill wrote:
           | For a product that is made for creators and DIY, AI generated
           | imagery on the product photos doesn't feel right.
        
           | koryk wrote:
           | I love the inky impression!
           | 
           | I am using my 13 inch inky display for my own birdnet - I
           | also posted this in another thread last week
           | https://i.imgur.com/5XbM6bb.png
           | 
           | I also bought 3 more 4 inch ones. Here is the first
           | deployment next to the fish tank -
           | https://i.imgur.com/nj8nKrS.png - I like this because I can
           | stuff an rtl sdr in that box too, so it picks up nearby radio
           | sensors in addition to BT. Real nice project screen!
           | 
           | I usually only refresh the image on the screen every few
           | hours. I love how the image stays even with no power.
        
         | shellfishgene wrote:
         | You can sometimes find old Nooks for cheap and they can be
         | rooted to display static images, but it's not elegant.
        
       | bronlund wrote:
       | Artig! :)
        
       | practicalsystem wrote:
       | oh I need to build this for my mom she would love it!
        
       | misetech wrote:
       | I would like to build something which can do the exact opposite.
       | Sounds from illustrations.
        
       | nsbk wrote:
       | Very cool, but IMO not mentioning
       | https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/ as an inspiration is
       | a very ugly move from the author
        
         | arnemunthekaas wrote:
         | Duly noted, I'll reference this, as well as other similar
         | projects in the readme. Thanks for the feedback
        
           | nsbk wrote:
           | 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 :)
        
             | arnemunthekaas wrote:
             | 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!
        
         | zubiaur wrote:
         | I thought it was the same person. That is how close this
         | project is. Inspiration may be too soft of a word.
        
           | dang wrote:
           | Maybe for fairness we'll link to it from the toptext as well.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Thanks! Discussed a few months ago:
         | 
         |  _Avian Visitors_ -
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343424 - May 2026 (20
         | comments)
        
       | RGS1811 wrote:
       | This is one of the most wonderful uses of AI I've seen in a
       | while.
        
         | telesilla wrote:
         | I agree. It's such a pity Cats don't recognize images, would
         | make for wonderful CatTV.
        
       | meteyor wrote:
       | I love this! I have a forest garden with lots of birds. I so want
       | to try this project asap!
        
       | lvl256 wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | bt1a wrote:
         | Something like fpcalc for soundbytes? Neat
        
       | scottndecker wrote:
       | Why isn't this a thing on Amazon I can buy?
        
       | qarl wrote:
       | I love this new era of AI powered creativity. I expect we're just
       | getting started.
        
       | bix6 wrote:
       | super stylin'
        
       | dmitrij wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | world2vec wrote:
         | I do recommend a decent pair of binoculars and the Merlin Bird
         | ID app.
        
         | RobinL wrote:
         | > 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).
        
         | stetrain wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | zabriel_goss wrote:
         | An app like this would be used as augmentation rather than
         | simulation.
        
         | stronglikedan wrote:
         | Or both. Why limit yourself?
        
         | bottled_poe wrote:
         | The next logical step is to have speakers for the backyard to
         | simulate the wildlife that no longer exists.
        
       | gigantino wrote:
       | Now could you make one for urban noises? (e.g. traffic, trash
       | truck, drunk guys at 3AM etc)
        
       | poutrathor wrote:
       | My granny is almost deaf and I will test the idea for her, for
       | she loves birds
        
         | lateatdesk wrote:
         | If you try it with her, I'd love to hear what she makes of it.
        
       | reedlaw wrote:
       | Frigate, the IP camera security system, also does bird
       | classification:
       | https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/bird_classification...
        
         | originalvichy wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | reedlaw wrote:
           | I have Bird Classification enabled in the settings, but so
           | far haven't seen any labelled (it's only been a few days).
           | Similarly with Face Recognition, I've only seen false
           | positives. It does reliably detect people though (300 tracked
           | so far). I'll have to experiment with settings such as
           | confidence score.
        
           | reedlaw wrote:
           | Turns out Frigate uses visual classification only. Hard to
           | trigger when birds are so small, unless they fly right up to
           | the camera perhaps.
        
       | gabzofar wrote:
       | That's a blatant copy of
       | https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/, please.
        
       | darvo31 wrote:
       | Love the aesthetic of 1800s illustrations combined with modern
       | tech. Wonder if it ever misidentifies a squirrel.
        
         | eichin wrote:
         | 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...)
        
       | joshstrange wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | buffet_overflow wrote:
         | Years on a wall mounted eink screen sounds super interesting.
         | What are you using for the power delivery/battery side of that
         | setup?
        
           | joshstrange wrote:
           | 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...
        
             | realcul wrote:
             | 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.
        
               | joshstrange wrote:
               | 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
        
         | tranceylc wrote:
         | When it does run out, are you able to replace the battery? Or
         | is it something way more painful than that?
        
           | joshstrange wrote:
           | It's a rechargeable battery, I just plug the board in (USB-C)
           | and it charges the battery.
        
         | mikepurvis wrote:
         | Thanks for speaking to the battery question; I'm very
         | interested in how to run this kind of thing (the display
         | portion at least) cordlessly too, especially when lipo pouches
         | in that range are so dirt cheap.
        
           | joshstrange wrote:
           | I might be misunderstanding your comment but the display is
           | run/powered by the board so all you need to do is provide
           | power to the board. For e-ink it uses no power to "hold" an
           | image, only to write/refresh (sorry if I'm telling you
           | something you already know!).
           | 
           | So reiterate, with a 2000mAh lipo battery I should be able to
           | drive the board _and_ the screen for over 3 years if I only
           | refresh it at most once every 4 hours (with "push"
           | capabilities, I don't have to deep-sleep the board to get
           | that battery life). At least, that's what the calculator
           | says, I _just_ got my hardware to play with and so I can't
           | speak from experience. Unfortunately my board is not charging
           | the battery so I need to get a replacement which will
           | probably take a week or two to get here.
        
             | mikepurvis wrote:
             | Yeah no we're aligned; I have some raspis that I'm
             | interested in doing long term battery stuff with (remote
             | sensing and the like) and it definitely does seem like
             | connectivity is the huge battery killer, like even if you
             | wake up only periodically to take a reading or update an
             | epaper display, the cost in battery just to negotiate a
             | wifi connection and do tcpip and http things is awful.
             | 
             | And then you're stuck with a device that can only be
             | communicated with when it chooses to wake up, whereas with
             | BLE it seems you can listen for a remote OTA wake _much_
             | more cheaply.
        
               | shaklee3 wrote:
               | It only can last a couple weeks, so isn't really
               | practical. Search for other e-ink calendar projects using
               | the rpi zero
        
         | wallst07 wrote:
         | For hanging as art, just found this
         | https://github.com/dmellok/el133-pico-driver
         | 
         | Uses a native C driver instead of python so you can run the
         | display off a battery as it's more efficient.
        
         | dzhiurgis wrote:
         | I want a Japanese woodprint inspired colour dashboard for my
         | Home Assistant. I don't need it at all, but I want it so badly.
         | Some sketches I did with chatgpt look amazing.
         | 
         | Colour e-ink are kinda small tho. Something like samsung frame
         | tv might be better option.
        
       | pnw wrote:
       | 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
        
       | its_ajseven wrote:
       | Cool Project!! I like it
        
       | Chuckles64 wrote:
       | What a cool idea. I might have to give this one a try. I've got
       | Raspberry's coming out the wazoo.
        
       | _somu_ wrote:
       | So cool, I'm going to try building one myself!
        
       | MiloLeo wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | jonplackett wrote:
         | I was thinking the exact same thing!
        
         | tencentshill wrote:
         | Another dev offers it as a full product. OOS at the moment
         | though.
         | 
         | https://theodore.net/store/avian-visitors/
        
         | InexSquirrel wrote:
         | Was thinking this too. My parents are both avid birders, and I
         | think it would make a fun addition to the house.
        
       | abletonlive wrote:
       | incredible creativity and inspiring. thanks for sharing this !
        
       | ninefathom wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | hirako2000 wrote:
         | Could be for the montage. Is that unfair to say no AI generated
         | the arts, but that AI put individual pieces together?
        
         | jrflo wrote:
         | What is the ethical concern in this use case?
        
         | arnemunthekaas wrote:
         | 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://git
         | hub.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.
        
       | jarek83 wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | originalvichy wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | jarek83 wrote:
           | 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!
        
             | originalvichy wrote:
             | 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 100EUR 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!
        
         | eichin wrote:
         | 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.)
        
       | rogerb wrote:
       | Super fun project!
        
       | thesurlydev wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | hugoj0s3 wrote:
       | intresting!
        
       | mandycult wrote:
       | This is the sweetest thing I've seen in a long time :')
        
       | pokerpatioteam wrote:
       | cool project!
        
       | sailfast wrote:
       | 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!
        
       | physhster wrote:
       | All I'd get is pigeons and seagulls...
        
       | hodder wrote:
       | Amazing. Best post I've seen on HN in ages.
        
       | theturtletalks wrote:
       | 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
        
         | bithammerthunde wrote:
         | Link missing?
        
           | radiorental wrote:
           | Complete guess but I wonder if it's the Merlin project?
           | 
           | https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/merlin/
        
           | shellfishgene wrote:
           | Probably BirdNet, but Google also has an equivalent model now
           | called Perch. https://birdnet.cornell.edu/
        
       | divbzero wrote:
       | _Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
       | magic._
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | What is the energy label of this frame?
        
         | andai wrote:
         | Chernobyl.
        
       | mrbombastic wrote:
       | this is so cool :) thinking about some remixes already with
       | maritime traffic and tides
        
       | agcat wrote:
       | Most whimsical application of local ai so far
        
       | divbzero wrote:
       | The underlying classifier, BirdNET, is a traditional neural
       | network and not an LLM:
       | 
       | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2021.101236
        
         | tuvix wrote:
         | 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
        
           | benob wrote:
           | https://github.com/earthspecies/NatureLM-audio
        
             | bix6 wrote:
             | More info please. Can I add this into birdnet go for more
             | species detection?
        
           | lambda wrote:
           | There are LLMs that support audio input, similar to those
           | with vision support.
           | 
           | From my testing of open weights LLMs with audio support, they
           | basically are only trained to recognize audio as an
           | alternative to text input, they treat audio as basically
           | equivalent to a transcript, and can't recognize or
           | distinguish things like music, accents, background sounds,
           | etc.
           | 
           | So they're only really good for transcribing or summarizing
           | or using audio input in place of text input for prompts, but
           | not anything that requires distinguishing any information
           | about the audio that would not be present in a transcript.
           | 
           | It can be tempting to try to use an LLM for a variety of
           | tasks; kind of the whole thing about an LLM is that you don't
           | have to do a separate complex training run for every task,
           | but can just provide instructions in natural language. But it
           | only works as far as what the training data covers, if the
           | training basically always treated audio and a text transcript
           | as equivalent, the model has nothing causing it to learn
           | other relevant features of the audio. If there's enough bird
           | call identification in the training data of an LLM, it might
           | be able to do that, but I think multimodal training data
           | tends to be much more limited than the text training corpus
        
             | sbrother wrote:
             | Have you had any luck fine tuning one with musical data for
             | classification or music-aware QA? I've been hacking on
             | https://trebel.la/ which I would like to be a music
             | practice companion, and the biggest missing feature is
             | actually useful audio-based feedback pipeline.
             | 
             | My current approach, not yet validated, is trying to
             | generate training data from masterclass recordings on
             | Youtube, and then fine tuning MOSS-audio on a bunch of
             | those. But I'm interested if there are better models, or
             | large training sets I don't know about.
        
               | MisterMunchkin wrote:
               | You're selling a music feedback app and it doesn't do the
               | music feedback part yet?
        
               | sbrother wrote:
               | I'm not selling anything; I'm developing it live and
               | there is a landing page, but there's no payment hooked up
               | since like you said, it's not functional yet.
        
               | elictronic wrote:
               | It's the first thing you see when opening the page.
        
           | radarsat1 wrote:
           | wav2vec or similar approaches are used a lot these days,
           | which is basically BERT with audio inputs. Whether that
           | counts as an LLM or not, I am not sure. It's a transformer
           | architecture in any case.
           | 
           | People _will_ often reach for  "easily trainable, cheap"
           | solutions when they can; the reason people reach for
           | Transformers and LLMs is because when you throw more data at
           | them, they get better.
        
           | ninjalanternshk wrote:
           | The harness that connects to a chatbot, API or voice
           | interaction is the place to route requests to different
           | systems. If you remember the early days of ChatGPT it
           | explicitly said it was routing image generation to Dall-E
           | after embellishing your request itself first.
           | 
           | Determining which tool to use _should_ be a lightweight
           | operation but I'm not expert enough to understand exactly how
           | much lighter than a full LLM call just to recognize it needs
           | a different tool or model.
        
             | tuvix wrote:
             | For sure, I just know it's tempting given the power of
             | large transformers to throw things at an existing model.
             | 
             | For instance, OCR is something that can be done locally
             | with no access to a GPU but people (including me) still
             | often use cloud hosted multi-modal large language models
             | for it.
        
           | antonvs wrote:
           | There's still plenty of commercial work on specialized
           | models, for the simple reason that they're typically much
           | cheaper to train and run.
           | 
           | Many systems now use LLMs in conjunction with specialized
           | models.
        
         | ada1981 wrote:
         | Curious if there is a similar project for dog barks.
        
           | lacunary wrote:
           | I wanted to say that seems like a stretch but then I often
           | find myself visualizing my best guess at the appearance,
           | including species, of an unknown dog. It seems like size of
           | dog and pitch of bark are negatively correlated
        
             | nozzlegear wrote:
             | I think it's because bigger dogs have larger throats and a
             | bigger "voice box," so to speak. They have more of the
             | vocal folds than a small dog, plus they have a bigger chest
             | and larger lungs to force more air through them.
             | 
             | That's my bro-science understanding of it, anyway.
        
           | pgreenwood wrote:
           | Yes, here's the classifier:
           | 
           | def get_species(): return 'Canis familiaris'
        
         | rexxars wrote:
         | Note that while the underlying birdnet-go project started as
         | BirdNET only, it can now use Google Perch v2, BattyBirdNET (for
         | bats!) and other models in the future. It's a really cool
         | project!
        
         | cosmojg wrote:
         | Why would anyone assume this uses an LLM? It classifies bird
         | sounds, not human language. I don't mean this as an attack, I'm
         | genuinely curious! This seemed obvious to me, and I want to
         | know what line of thinking might lead one to believe that an
         | LLM is the better (or more likely) tool for this job over a
         | purpose-built classifier.
        
           | WolfeReader wrote:
           | Most "Show HN" posts these days are vibe-coded garbage. It is
           | a pleasant surprise to see one that isn't!
        
       | thomasfl wrote:
       | As a fellow Norwegian I must say that this is pure art by the
       | developer Arne Munthe-Kaas.
        
       | CobrastanJorji wrote:
       | I love it.
        
       | albertgoeswoof wrote:
       | 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
        
         | the_real_cher wrote:
         | That sounds cool! Where did you get your color e-ink panel?
        
           | albertgoeswoof wrote:
           | I got https://www.waveshare.com/13.3inch-e-paper-hat-
           | plus-e.htm from Amazon, about 300 gbp
        
             | the_real_cher wrote:
             | Thats cool thanks!
        
       | zkmon wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | efavdb wrote:
         | Do you not like AI?
        
           | zkmon wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | iambenm wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | zkmon wrote:
           | The local inference is a product that came out of the data-
           | center-driven AI.
        
             | tossandthrow wrote:
             | What a shame that we get a bird ckassifier by the samle
             | technology we use to recognize cancer and other illnesses.
        
               | zkmon wrote:
               | What a shame that you use that excuse to offset all other
               | evils of AI, without even having a hint of how many
               | patients were saved by AI. Just like how oil salesmen and
               | nukes makers say that they solve some great problem of
               | the world.
        
             | zzzeek wrote:
             | > came out of the data-center-driven
             | 
             | should we tell them how hacker news gets onto their
             | computer?
        
               | zkmon wrote:
               | You assume that I assume that HN doesn't require data
               | centers?
        
             | dansitu wrote:
             | 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.
        
               | zkmon wrote:
               | Ok, so why didn't this small dense model come up, say, 10
               | years back? Oh it needed all the AI evolution and
               | concepts that were powered and evolved inside the data
               | centers. But we still want to claim that it has nothing
               | to do with the Big AI.
        
             | 40four wrote:
             | Incorrect. As others have pointed out, BirdNet is a
             | "traditional" neural network. The amount of compute needed
             | to train something like this is many orders of magnitude
             | less than an LLM. Something like this could be trained on
             | local hardware with enough juice, or by renting a handful
             | of GPU's
        
         | rcpt wrote:
         | Amazingly unhinged response to the automated bird picture
         | frame.
        
       | jadbox wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | pelican0 wrote:
         | _> This is the coolest thing on HN that I 've seen in a
         | minute._
         | 
         | Off-topic, but what is up with the increased use of the phrase
         | "in a minute", presumably to mean "in a long time", lately?
         | 
         | I've only started encountering it in the past year.
         | 
         | Did it get popularized by some celebrity, tv show, influencers,
         | etc?
        
           | seanwessmith wrote:
           | seems like you know what you're talking about 5k% increase
           | starting in July this year
           | 
           | https://trends.google.com/explore?q=I%27ve%20seen%20in%20a%2.
           | ..
        
             | bezmi wrote:
             | I think the trend is probably misleading. A popular
             | youtuber may have released a video in August with a title
             | containing "in a minute".
        
           | scheme271 wrote:
           | It's been around in slang for a few years with a few
           | variants, e.g. "I haven't seen her in a hot minute." I think
           | it's just filtered into wider cultural vernacular.
        
             | mrbombastic wrote:
             | people have been saying "it's been a minute" to mean a long
             | time since at least the 90s in NY
        
               | kulahan wrote:
               | Yeah, I've been saying hot minutes for decades myself!
        
           | palad1n wrote:
           | Scarlett Johansson says, "See you in a minute" in Avengers:
           | Endgame.
        
             | freehorse wrote:
             | I say "see you in a minute" to mean "see you in a bit".
             | What did Scarlett Johansson mean by that in that movie?
        
           | devindotcom wrote:
           | it's been around. I more commonly see it as "been a minute!"
           | when you see someone you haven't seen in a good while.
        
           | Carrok wrote:
           | This phrase has been around for years, I know because it has
           | always infuriated me.
           | 
           | They took a well-defined unit of time, which is relatively
           | short, and made it mean "some unknown but very long period of
           | time".
           | 
           | So frustrating. /oldmanyellsatcloud
        
           | freehorse wrote:
           | I had not heard it before (or if I did I did not interpret it
           | correctly, eg if one told me "see you in a minute" I would
           | interpret it as "see you in a bit".
           | 
           | But there is this podcast discussing it in 2021, and it comes
           | from black community slang from 70s (which is where most
           | slang I encounter comes from). And these terms take a while
           | to catch up usually, but it seems it was already circulating
           | more broadly since 2000s.
           | 
           | https://waywordradio.org/its-been-a-minute/
        
           | Larrikin wrote:
           | It's been a phrase for decades.
        
         | hmartin wrote:
         | Agree, this was really a beautiful thing to see!
        
         | fock wrote:
         | EDIT: no Ai for pictures - cool!
        
         | sydd wrote:
         | Really cool, except the price. Around 500 Euro for the full
         | thing... I miss the times you could make amazing things with a
         | Pi under 100 Euro.
        
           | puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
           | That's the e-ink monopoly for you. Though you could probably
           | use a slightly smaller b&w eink display with a second hand
           | raspberry 4 to shave a lot from that number.
        
           | thepoet wrote:
           | If you have a Kobo (~ US$ 120 or even less used) you can run
           | this using Cobalt
           | https://github.com/BandarLabs/Cobalt/tree/beta/apps/birds
        
         | mars-or_wars wrote:
         | The bird database seems only relevant for the UK and
         | surrounding area.
         | 
         | Probably would not show much in the U.S.
        
           | nozzlegear wrote:
           | BirdNET has great coverage for the US/North America. Part of
           | its main training set is the Macaulay Library, which is also
           | used by Merlin/e-bird.
           | 
           | https://birdnet.cornell.edu
        
       | lloydatkinson wrote:
       | This is amazing. I want to build this. Curious about the authors
       | "full garden" link, surely he doesn't get that many birds in such
       | a small space of time in his garden, unless he lives next to a
       | park I suppose?
        
       | torcete wrote:
       | People are so creative.
        
       | zero0529 wrote:
       | I was thinking about building this for a while and now i don't
       | have too, insane. Thanks!
        
       | TomJansen wrote:
       | This project is super cool! But the price of the e-ink board is
       | quite steep
        
       | andatki wrote:
       | Bryce Shivers and Lisa Eversman would definitely have this in
       | their boutique. Put a Bird on It!
        
       | bilsbie wrote:
       | This could totally be a commercial product. I picture it being
       | sold with a bird feeder. Maybe it uses a camera on the feeder.
       | 
       | Then have the screen look like a biologists notebook where he
       | sketches the bird and writes a few notes about the time and its
       | behavior.
        
         | herrherrmann wrote:
         | A similar product would be Birdbuddy (a birdfeeder with a
         | camera and logging functionality), albeit very commercial and
         | closed-source.
        
       | manuelisimo wrote:
       | I am buying an e-ink display just to try this!
        
       | thuruv wrote:
       | This is an excellent execution and refreshing to see the thought
       | process behind it. Kudos. the ideas such as these, gonna keep us
       | swim sane and specifically extending far beyond the 9-5 is no
       | longer sideProject category but refreshingly needed one.
        
       | smnplk wrote:
       | Needs to also have an alarm clock waking you with this
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4J1zyrW_VQ&list=RD-4J1zyrW_...
       | :)
        
       | catapart wrote:
       | Awesome! It's really cool that it uses public domain images as
       | the inspiration, too. And even cooler that you link to the places
       | where you got those public domain images.
        
       | worklifepanda wrote:
       | this is very creative, really cool idea!
        
       | simonjgreen wrote:
       | I've been leveraging Birdnet-2.4 as well, but also ultrasonic-
       | pass and activity-v1 to do broader detection with an ecological
       | targeted microphone. This means I can capture not just bird
       | sounds but also bats and some insects, and acoustic events such
       | as jets and cars.
       | 
       | Applying heterodyne transformations to the bat recordings makes
       | them audible which is fascinating, especially when you catch them
       | in a feeding frenzy.
       | 
       | Similar intent with an indoor display, although nowhere near as
       | beautiful as OPs eink display here. I'm more aiming for a real-
       | time ticker, but this design is wonderful. I'm quite inspired by
       | it!
       | 
       | I've been working on this in the background for a few months, if
       | anyone is interested repo with screenshots is here:
       | https://github.com/simonjgreen/OpenObservatory
        
         | swaraj wrote:
         | >I've been leveraging Birdnet-2.4 as well,
         | 
         | I love HN
        
           | eointierney wrote:
           | Yep, when it's humans nerding it's awesome
        
         | blacklion wrote:
         | Do you use AudioMoth embedded mic?
        
           | simonjgreen wrote:
           | That's the one, in their outdoor casing
        
       | base698 wrote:
       | You should partner with Cornell Ornithology.
        
       | westoque wrote:
       | ok. a similar idea, you should put a camera outside your door and
       | do the same for passing dogs.
        
         | ptoo wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
           | cluckindan wrote:
           | German engineering at its finest.
        
           | dang wrote:
           | Please don't do this here.
        
       | zzato wrote:
       | coolest implementation of ai application case that i ve seens
       | last months
        
       | yiro13 wrote:
       | Impressive, reminds me of this project
       | https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/ I guess the author
       | was inspired from there
        
       | chris_armstrong wrote:
       | breaking this by putting it in earshot of a lyrebird
        
       | forcemajeure wrote:
       | This is amazing, well done! It would be a great travel piece
        
       | staub wrote:
       | Any easy way to get started on your own version of this without
       | needing a mic would be to pull birds seen nearby using the eBird
       | API and pairing scientific names. Won't be as accurate as a
       | backyard mic, but will give you a direction to start.
       | 
       | Also if you have old e-ink device laying around, you can likely
       | setup BYOD with TRMNL (or just buy one https://trmnl.com/) and
       | send the bird images as a private plugin
        
         | throooooo wrote:
         | The e-ink screens linked by OP are much more interesting from a
         | color reproduction standpoint. TRMNL devices are either
         | grayscale or 2 colors.
        
       | water-drummer wrote:
       | Reminds me of Arthur's jounal
        
       | brenainn wrote:
       | I would love to build one as a gift but would need to get it
       | working for Australian birds.
        
         | apexalpha wrote:
         | Just release some imported European birds. What could go wrong?
        
       | redbell wrote:
       | That's indeed a cool project and it's this kind of stuff that
       | makes HN a unique corner in this digital world. I can classify
       | this project with [1](Ranked #3 as the most upvoted Show HN of
       | all time), [2](#4) and [3](#6) as non pure-software products that
       | happen to also integrates hardware as well.
       | 
       | The only thing I wish to be added is a short video showing the
       | actual frame in action to express motion and sound so I can
       | better feel it. While the provided image (hero.jpg) gives me a
       | sense of the product, I just can't smell it yet. I visited
       | https://fugleramme.arnegiacomo.dev/ hoping for a live feed but it
       | seems just a static image.
       | 
       | Kudos for the author and I hope we can see the next iteration!
       | 
       | _______________
       | 
       | 1. I made an open-source laptop from scratch
       | (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42797260)
       | 
       | 2. I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
       | (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48968606)
       | 
       | 3. A retro video game console I've been working on in my free
       | time (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19393279)
        
       | learner_yearner wrote:
       | Wow! Every human mind is wonderful in its own way. It can come up
       | with ideas that other minds can't even comprehend.
        
       | Lavanic wrote:
       | cool proj
        
       | kris-memoket wrote:
       | Really interesting!! Awesome work
        
       | mariusandra wrote:
       | This is a very cool project!
       | 
       | When I first heard of it (through a community member in discord),
       | I wanted to see if I could replicate it on FrameOS (my software
       | for running anything on an e-ink panel), and sure enough, I got
       | quite close: https://scenes.frameos.net/s/bird-field-journal
       | 
       | This is obviously nowhere as complicated as OP's project, but I
       | thought I'd just share that your project inspired me to build
       | something similar too.
        
       | drum998 wrote:
       | Awesome! I'm in the middle of setting up a birdnet system for
       | audio recognition, and this is the puzzle piece my project needs!
        
       | DylanMerigaud wrote:
       | Nice launch, good luck out there.
        
       | gadders wrote:
       | I'd buy this if I could.
        
       | techsystems wrote:
       | Seems like a nice adjacent project to the magic mirror!
        
       | asdojasdosadsa wrote:
       | This is amazing project, thanks for sharing
        
       | metchio wrote:
       | this is amazing. really awesome
        
       | rtvn83 wrote:
       | This is amazing. I wonder if this could be connected to an LLM
       | and render images of birds differently each time?
        
       | sigvef wrote:
       | Came across the Samsung The Frame variant last month too!
       | https://github.com/simenf/birdframe
        
       | simenf wrote:
       | Cool project!
       | 
       | For those of you that have a Samsung frame tv and no spare e ink
       | screens:
       | 
       | 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
        
       | edwardbonnett wrote:
       | what's the most unusual bird it's picked up so far?
        
       | bilaly wrote:
       | I am working on a voice-chat program and I implemented RNNoise
       | this week. Most of the noise cancellation tools filter for just
       | human voice. so bird noises that you want, may be gone when you
       | are trying to delete the wind noise or something. And without any
       | noise cancellation, It can be very hard to people who are living
       | next to road or very noisy place.
        
       | ryzvonusef wrote:
       | a bit of a noob in these field, so apologies for the question,
       | but why bird.net and not the more comprehensive cornell merlin
       | dataset?
        
       | jaackevans_ wrote:
       | damn this is one of best things I've seen in a while
        
       | pauleibye wrote:
       | I think this is a cool idea but I would never want ai generated
       | art on my wall.
        
         | coro_1 wrote:
         | Depends on the feel of the space you're working with, for me. A
         | 8 x 10 bird sketch generator could work.
        
         | arnemunthekaas wrote:
         | Author here: it's not AI-generated. All art is public domain
         | and made by real people. This project doesn't run generative AI
         | models.
         | 
         | See
         | https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme/blob/main/assets/a...
         | for all the sources
        
       | sma3in wrote:
       | well this is a AI put to great use! love it
        
       | TheGoodBarn wrote:
       | This is insane.
       | 
       | Going to google/search and stuff when I get home, but for my
       | current living space it would be awesome if I could get a
       | wireless mic to place outside and have this run on my Beelink
       | SER8, and then over local network sync to my Apple TV and display
       | the images kinda like a screensaver?
        
       | yipinwong wrote:
       | Here is another "I love it" comment.
       | 
       | Genuinely giving the OP props
        
       | jacksun788 wrote:
       | Cool project! Thanks
        
       | dirkc wrote:
       | I love an e-ink display project!
       | 
       | The one thing that always trips me up in projects like this is
       | power delivery in a way that I'm happy with. I always end up
       | having a USB cable looking awkward somewhere or being limited in
       | where I put my project
        
       | sahn44 wrote:
       | I'm also in the BirdTech scene. I detect birds and automatically
       | spray them with a sprinkler to keep away from our pool area.
       | 
       | code: https://github.com/mattsahn/bird-away
       | 
       | writeup: https://mattsahn.github.io/bird-away-blog/
        
         | nozzlegear wrote:
         | Ha, I've thought about doing something like this but to keep my
         | cats off the countertops in the kitchen!
        
       | sandworm101 wrote:
       | A neighbour of mine has five chickens... well HAD fier chickens.
       | A hawk did away with #5 and damaged two more.. I wonder what this
       | display would make of that series of frantic bird calls.
        
       | SirHackalot wrote:
       | Very cool idea, but I wanna be the one drawing. Why would I
       | outsource the fun part to the AI? Classification is useful, but
       | the paintings are the fun part...
        
       | Wolfmans55 wrote:
       | I love these super creative software + hardware project ideas you
       | don't see too much of anymore!
        
       | PigeonD wrote:
       | Love this so much, cant wait to try
        
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       (page generated 2026-09-17 22:02 UTC)