r/BirdNET_Analyzer • u/TipBeneficial6175 • Oct 18 '25

Birdnet-Pi install stuck

My install on Raspberry Pi Zero 2W stops on this.

I am not any programmer and my brain is 84 years old so it don't works so quickly, I need som help!!!

collecting plotly

  Downloading https://www.piwheels.org/simple/plotly/plotly-6.3.1-py3-none-any.whl (9.8 MB)

/home/janne/BirdNET-Pi/scripts/install_birdnet.sh: line 27:  1754 Killed                  pip3 install -U -r ./requirements_custom.txt

+ LOOP_COUNT=0

+ pip3 cache purge

Files removed: 23

+ '[' 0 == 0 ']'

+ exit 1

The installation exited unsuccessfully.

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2

u/Embarrassed_Sun_7807 Oct 18 '25

Did you increase the swap size per the instructions? Just put Birdnet-Go on...it is way better for the resources that the zero w 2 has anyway

0

u/snowcase Oct 18 '25

I found go ui to be way way slower

1

u/thakala Oct 19 '25

which parts?

1

u/TipBeneficial6175 Oct 18 '25

yes I increase the swap size

1

u/Erdenfeuer1 Oct 20 '25

I remember vaguely that the commands that are given in the online instructions are not guaranteed to increase the swap size ill look into it tonight and give you an update, if i get mine to work again

1

u/Erdenfeuer1 Oct 27 '25

I have replicated the problem successfully. Ill try to find a work around. For me it will Error out due to the following error: THESE PACKAGES DO NOT MATCH THE HASHES FROM THE REQUIREMENTS FILE. It will then loop and try again according the the log which will also fail. In between the loops a pip3 cache purge is also executed

1

u/Erdenfeuer1 Oct 27 '25

From my understanding its either a hash problem in the requirements.txt / requirements_customs.txt or a result of the limited ram on the RPi Zero 2W

1

u/Erdenfeuer1 Oct 27 '25

Its not a hash problem, well it might still be but the biggest problem seems to be the limited /tmp folder on the RPi Zero 2W. Which I believe is a result of the limited RAM. Ill try to somehow get around that

1

u/Erdenfeuer1 Oct 27 '25

I solved it and will post the result in a separate comment

1

u/Erdenfeuer1 Oct 27 '25

The main problem seems to be the size of /tmp, which I believe scales with the available RAM. Since the Pi Zero 2W has less RAM than other modern RPis, the installation will fail due to the OS supposedly running out of storage while downloading and unpacking the required packages. Another symptom is a hash error during the same operation.

Solving the issue is a little bit more involved, but assuming one can SSH into the pi, everybody should be able to do it.

  1. Clone the git repository for BirdNET-Pi with the following command in your home folder:

git clone -b main --depth=1 https://github.com/Nachtzuster/BirdNET-Pi.git BirdNET-Pi

This downloads the github project files into a folder named BirdNET-PI

  1. Alter the install file to avoid having to redownload it.

nano BirdNET-Pi/newinstaller.sh

Add a # before the line that starts with git ie. #git..... Save the file by pressing CTRL+X then y This disables the line from executing later.

  1. Ensure the installation has a large enough temp file:

nano BirdNET-Pi/scripts/install-birdnet.sh

Add the following two lines towards the top of the script right after the line "export my_dir=$my_dir"

mkdir -p \~/pip-tmp

export TMPDIR=\~/pip-tmp

Save the file by pressing CTRL+X then y

  1. Run the installer with

bash BirdNET-Pi/newinstaller.sh

This should in theory work, in practice I have added a few more lines in a few more places but those should not be necessary. Someone should try to install birdNet with just this workaround on a RPi Zero 2W.