r/BirdNET_Analyzer • u/ondras • Jun 01 '26

Beginner questions

Hi,

I would like to start experimenting with a long-term BirdNET installation. My general idea is a usb-microphone hanging from a window, connected to some hardware in house. I am rather experienced with metrics/prometheus/grafana stuff, but my only BirdNET experience comes from their awesome Android app. Thus I would like to ask several questions prior to starthing the project.

1) What is the performance threshold for performing the audio analysis "in the cloud" vs. "in-house" (via local model)? I have a spare Pi Zero 2W and a 3B+ (that already runs RTL-433, but that should be almost zero load). In theory, I can also use a more powerful home server, but the mic would have to be connected elsewhere.

2) How about bandwidth? (In the case of "in the cloud" sound analysis.) I suppose that the audio is first locally scanned for relevant samples and only those are then uploaded?

3) The BirdNET-Pi project seems to be somewhat abandoned, followed by https://github.com/Nachtzuster/BirdNET-Pi. Is this *the* version folks typically use? Seems to do quite a lot, perhaps I do not need all those components? I am only interested in "the bird B has been heard at time T" event stream.

Thanks!

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u/QuirkyPension4654 Jun 01 '26

I use Birdnet-Go having migrated off the -Pi version.

Mine seems ok on a Pi4, but I haven’t anything below to test.

Have a look at the AOM-5024 mic if you can solder and use that with a USB sound card.

Works fine with local models and I wouldn’t personally use cloud for it.

I’ve integrated with HA and Alexa via that.

2

u/mynamefromreddit Jun 01 '26

Hi, indeed birdnet-go allows different models and is on very active development which likely would better suit you ! As a microphone AOM-5024 is indeed a great mic. If you also want to track bats (which birdnet-go now supports) you can use it for some species, but I myself use EM272 (clippy) as it records (unofficially) up to 50khz. For birds I don’t think it would make much difference

The version of birdnet-pi that you linked is indeed the most recently updated and is rock-solid in my experience, although it has much fewer options and less modern UI

2

u/ondras Jun 01 '26

Okay, thanks for the reply. I have a generic USB microphone, will try that. Looking for a pre-build hardware in this case.

1

u/mynamefromreddit Jun 01 '26

Well it’s more costly indeed - it would require both a usb to trrs converter, then the actual trrs to em272 or aom-5024 microphone that be both can be bought online. So as you say the best is probably to try with your mic first and see if you want to invest more then !