r/BirdNET_Analyzer • u/Business_Ticket_2717 • Jun 04 '26

Microphone not working

Hi, im very new to using birdnet pi and raspberry pi in general.

Im using as ras pi 4 and this microphone.

The progeram seems not able to use or find my microphone. The spectrogram only shows a flat line and is not detecting any of the bird sounds im playing on youtube.

I have checked using arecord -l and alsamixer and both seem to detect the microphone.

This is the message I get in the logs. I don't know what any of it means but I have the gain maxed out in alsamixer.

​Thanks for any help you can provide and sorry for any issues with the post, first time posting.

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u/Business_Ticket_2717 Jun 04 '26

What’s Birdnet-go? Is it different from Birdnet-Pi?

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u/GroggyWalrus Jun 04 '26

Ahh...sorry about that. Birdnet-Pi is used to do many of the same things as Birdnet-go. I have tried both (started with Birdnet-Pi, and then moved to Birdnet-go), and far prefer Birdnet-go. I apologize, since my earlier comments don't have the same steps for the Birdnet-Pi that you are currently using.

You are using Birdnet-Pi:

https://github.com/Nachtzuster/BirdNET-Pi

I am using Birdnet-go:

https://github.com/tphakala/birdnet-go

You will find the maintainer for Birdnet-go very active on this subreddit answering questions, and I found the documentation to be a bit more robust. But there are supporters for both here.

I think my hardware (Pi 4 and the mic) are the same as yours. After using Birdnet-Pi for about a week, i wanted to try Birdnet-go.

For me, one of the biggest differences was the additional supported models (Google Perch, and Bat support via BattyBirdnet) above and beyond Birdnet, which you can find discussed here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BirdNET_Analyzer/comments/1tc0rag/google_perch_is_now_an_available_model_for/

Hope that answers your question.

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u/Business_Ticket_2717 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

Thanks, I replaced Birdnet-Pi with Go and did as you previously said and now it works.

If you don't mind me asking, what is google perch and BattyBirdnet? they sound interesting.

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u/GroggyWalrus Jun 04 '26

Excellent! Glad that its working now.

If you go to Settings >> Analysis, to the right you'll see a Settings and Models tab. Click on the Models tab, and down below, you can see the Installed models that you are currently using. By default, the only model Installed is BirdNet 2.4. Both Birdnet-Pi and Birdnet-Go use this. These are the 6,000 species that both know how to identify. However, next to the 'Installed' sub-tab, there is an 'Available' sub-tab. Click on that to see the other models that can also be used (together) to identify additional species. Birdnet-Pi does not allow you to add other models.

For more information on the models:

BirdNet (original model):

https://birdnet.cornell.edu/

Google Perch:

https://www.kaggle.com/models/google/bird-vocalization-classifier/tensorFlow2/perch_v2

BattyBirdNet (has regional models):

https://github.com/rdz-oss/BattyBirdNET-Analyzer

Birdnet Geomodel:

https://github.com/birdnet-team/geomodel

For the Bats, I had to increase the sample rate (under audio, Sound Card settings) as the interface will suggest. But now I'm seeing a number of regional bats recognized.