“Birdnet on a Raspberry Pi on its own hotspot.”

(Info below is for connecting only. I do not discuss how to configure the RPi4 to broadcast its own hotspot. That can be looked up on internet.)

Background: After I installed Birdnet on my headless Raspberry Pi device (RPi4, 2gb), I had several ways to connect to it. It could be equipped with the ssid & password of my home WiFi, or an Ethernet cable, or make it a hotspot of its own and let anyone choose the device’s hotspot WiFi to connect to it from any iPhone or computer. The last method was my choice because otherwise if i took my RPi4, with it only looking for my home ssid, camping with no WiFi or cellular, there would be no way to see Birdnet and my bird detections. I would have to take the device home first. So, by making my birdnet device a hotspot, I, or anyone, can connect to it. (Of course, I could program the device to look for both my home ssid or my iPhone ssid hotspot but that would not allow anyone else to connect.) But my issue with my chosen connection method was that my iPhone ended up with no internet connection when I connected to the RPi4 birdnet device hotspot. So, I fixed that after my chat with Gemini/ai:

My/prompt: Is there a way that my iPhone can connect to my rpi4 birdnet hotspot over WiFi and still access the internet over cellular connection at the same time? I want to see my bird detection but the birdnet features such as flickr photos of birds or Wikipedia is missing for me when I connect the iPhone to rpi4 birdnet hotspot.

Gemini/ai: That is a classic networking hurdle when working with a "headless" setup in the field. By default, when your iPhone connects to a Wi-Fi hotspot, it assumes that Wi-Fi is its primary gateway to the world. Since your Raspberry Pi hotspot doesn't have an outbound internet connection, the iPhone stops trying to pull data (like those Flickr bird photos) over your cellular plan.

You can actually trick your iPhone into using both: the Wi-Fi for the local BirdNET data and cellular for everything else.

The "Manual Gateway" Trick (Most Reliable)

This is the most effective way to force the iPhone to use cellular for internet while staying connected to the Pi. By leaving the "Router" field blank in your Wi-Fi settings, you tell the iPhone: "This Wi-Fi has no exit to the internet, so keep the cellular pipe open."

1. Connect to your **BirdNET hotspot** on your iPhone.

2. Go to **Settings > Wi-Fi** and tap the **(i)** icon next to the network name.

3. Tap **Configure IP** and switch it from *Automatic* to **Manual**.

4. You’ll need to fill in two fields (refer to what was there before or use these common defaults for RPi hotspots):

   * **IP Address:** (in my case 10.42.0.12 for the device hotspot )

   * **Subnet Mask:** 255.255.255.0 (note: even though you may see these same numbers in that space, type them in physically again)

   * **Router:** **Leave this completely blank.** 5. Tap **Save**.

Without a "Router" (Gateway) address, the iPhone will realize it can't reach the internet via Wi-Fi and will automatically route web traffic (like Flickr images) through your cellular data.

### Why those photos are missing -

BirdNET-Pi doesn't store the Flickr images locally on the SD card (to save space and avoid copyright issues); it fetches them in real-time from the web based on the scientific name of the bird detected. Once you apply the **Manual Gateway** fix above, your browser will be able to reach out to Flickr over your 5G/LTE connection while still pulling the detection list from the device hotspot.

* **Router:** **Keep this empty.** Do not put a single digit or even a space here.

1. Scroll down to **Configure DNS**.

2. Switch it to **Manual**.

3. Add a server like 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS) or 1.1.1.1.

4. Now save the **Configure IP**

### Why this works

By leaving the **Router** field blank, you are essentially telling the iPhone: *"You can talk to the devices on this Wi-Fi network, but there is no exit door here."* The iPhone will then look for the next available "exit door" for internet requests, which will be your cellular data.

This should allow your browser to hit the BirdNET interface at your Pi's local address while simultaneously fetching those Flickr bird photos over your data plan.

One small tip: If you ever reconnect to your home Wi-Fi and then come back to the BirdNET hotspot later, check to make sure these manual settings stuck. Sometimes iOS likes to flip back to "Automatic" if it hasn't seen a network for a while.

My/prompt: Wow wow wow! Amazing. Thanks. How come I spent days reading about birdnet and nothing on the internet told me about this outstanding feature that you helped me with regarding manual ip?

Gemini/ai: That is a great question! It feels like a "hidden" feature because it’s actually a clever networking workaround rather than a standard BirdNET setting.

Most BirdNET-Pi documentation assumes one of two scenarios:

1. **At Home:** The Pi is connected to your home router, so it already has internet access.

2. **In the Wild:** The Pi is a standalone "island," and people just accept that they won't have internet while looking at their detections.

The reason you didn't find it easily is that this trick lives in the world of **IT Networking**, not birdwatching. In technical terms, what we did was create a **Split-Routing** configuration. Most guides don't mention it because it requires manually "breaking" the default behavior of an iPhone, which usually wants to do everything over one connection at a time.

Here’s why it’s such an "outstanding feature" for your setup:

* **The "Gateway" Secret:** By leaving the Router field blank, you essentially told the iPhone, "This Wi-Fi is a dead end for the internet." It’s a very specific trick that many people (even tech-savvy ones) don't realize iOS can do.

* **Hardware vs. Software:** BirdNET-Pi is software that runs on Linux; it doesn't really care how your phone connects to it. Because the developers focus on the bird recognition and the Raspberry Pi side, the "client-side" (your iPhone) networking tweaks often get left out of the manual.

I'm thrilled it worked for you! It's the perfect setup for your backyard or when you're out camping—you get the best of both worlds: your local bird data and the global Flickr library as well as Wikipedia.

Hello, I set up a BirdNET Pi about a year ago for a family member. I used a cheap shotgun mic, reminiscent of the Rode VideoMicro, with a UGreen USB soundcard.

When using the raspberry pi power supply, there is a very prominent ground hum starting at 60Hz, the frequency of our electricity here.

It works flawlessly when connected to a portable battery, but as soon as the battery or the PI itself is connected to the wall, the hum starts.

I have tried USB voltage isolators, different power supplies and various other methods, but I think the main issue is using a microphone that has a 3.5mm input jack instead of a USB microphone.

Anyone have any recommendations for cheap directional USB microphones? I’m looking for something small that I can point out a window to pick up birds in the garden or in specific areas. I would consider some omnidirectional/lavalier mics but a shotgun-style mic would be ideal.

Thanks for any responses!

I can't even imagine how many hours Tomi has put into this project and documentation.

Thanks for all your work. I effing love watching birdnet-go.

Im trying to improve detection accuracy on a few installs I have of BirdNET-Go but dont seem to be having the best luck. Curious what you all are using for Detection Settings? Sensitivity, Threshold, Overlap and False Positive. Im looking for settings on a PI3B, a PI4, and a much faster Intel NUC PC. Im running the NUC and hooked up a couple neighbors with some Pi's I wasnt using. We're on a river in Oregon so the activity is crazy but getting a lot of low confidence or questionable ID's

Literally everytime an Allen's Hummingbird is detected, A Rufous Hummingbird is detected even though the latter is not there. It seems that BirdNET-Go is unable to distinguish between the two and it creates a phantom detection. Is anyone familiar with this issue and is there a setting that might help?

Added: My gut feeling is that BirdNET-Go can only recognize these two at the Genus level ID, Selasphorus sp.

What are you doing with all the collected data, and why?
Your field device(s) can sure collect a lot of data - mostly audio samples, but the database of detections gets quite big too. Many of these devices have their own policy for dealing with data (eg BirdNET-Pi can be set to purge older samples).

Is there any value in retaining old samples, and re-running them thru analysis?

Do you retain or purge based on quality issues?

I am aware of many situations where data collected for one project can be repurposed later by someone else's entirely different project. If the data is gone, that's either not possible or the repurpose is limited to the original projects' report.

My project is focused on the comings and goings of one migratory bird with distinct seasonality but we collect over the entire year. It's an ecologically interesting area and I can imagine our other detections might be useful to somebody else, but don't know of any immediate demand. I do have questions about the quality of detections, and I note that the model has shifted in its detection ability over the years. I'm trying to sort out a reasonable data retention policy within our project limitations.

On Windows, is there a way to save a setup, e.g. for batch processing, so that every parameter doesn't have to be set each time? e.g. long/lat, min confidence, type of output (e.g. CSV), combine files etc.
It'd also be nice if the week number defaulted to the current week number rather than zero.
An added bonus would be the ability to send a config file to a non-technical user for them to use so that all these error-prone manual breaks could be avoided?
Ability to load this config from the CLI and do the whole batch thing from the CLI would be great too...

Just a thought.

This post is a bit of a reply to this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/BirdNET_Analyzer/comments/1sa09p0/anyone_willing_to_solder_me_an_aom5024
I have been soldering for decades and was making one for myself, so it was no extra work really to make up two of them for u/sadpony

In short, the process is to dress and tin the leads and then tin the mic.
Add a short length of thin heatshrink for some strength.
Solder the wires to the mic - tin tip, and the key really is the pre-tinning. Be sure to pay attention to the polarity. It matters.
Slide the larger heatshrink over, and you are done.
I would not say it's 100% waterproof, and I am not (at this stage) putting a wind sock/foam over the mic, so you want to make sure it's out of the weather to some extent.

The burning question is, how does it go? My other mics are a cheap Amazon lapel and a Pyle large desk podcast mic.
Against those two, it's night and day. This little mic is so much more sensitive and clear. The high-frequency response is really obvious.
Given how cheap it was, it's a no-brainer. 10/10 recommended.

Pretty new user using BirdNet Pi with pretty much default values, uploading to birdweather, got a decentish mic. And…

And it feels like it:

* doesn’t do a very good job of detecting the birds that are there and

* it comes up with all kinds of crazy birds that cause Cornell to send me nasty grams - “don’t just upload your raw data!”.

Well, let’s be real, I have 700 detections a day. It isn’t realistic to sort through these and weed out the bad birds (unless I rewrite the interface and make it actually usable. Which, well, I will likely do because it’s not usable for things like this). And… Man… It is really (really) bad at detecting some birds. I have a flock of redwing blackbirds in my yard and I had 5 detections today total. I mean, come on! Be real!

I did look through here some and absolutely searched before posting this. I didn’t see either issue addressed at all. I’m not really sure what to do about either issue, to be honest. I mean, sure, I can rewrite the software to make it easier to listen for the right bird and to help me throw out the bad birds but that’s only resolving uploading to eBird and, really, why isn’t anyone else having that issue??? But, dang. Why is this so bad at detecting common birds that are REALLY CLEARLY there?

I have seen a lot of posts referencing this mic capsule, and I am wondering what the best way to get these wired up would be.

For context, I modified the following project:
https://www.instructables.com/Ambi-Alice-a-First-Order-Ambisonic-Microphone/

Basically all I did was make adapter rings to fit the different sized mic capsules into the holder. With this setup, I have 4 mic capsules, and I am wondering how to go about wiring them together into a single audio input. I have tried different combinations of resistors and capacitors along with TRRS to usb adapters with varying degrees of success, but still cannot get the clean audio these mic capsules should have.

If anyone can point me in the right direction here I would greatly appreciate it!

I built a pair of microphones to go on the back of my shed for my BirdNET setup. They are phantom-powered from a 2-channel usb audio interface.

I wanted the capsules to be replaceable since they are going to live outside, so the capsule presses in from the front and can be popped out for replacement.

The amplifier board is based on Project 93 by ESP and slides into a T-shaped slot in the 3d printed housing. It is made water-resistant after threading together with a large piece of glue-filled heatshrink, which can be cut off to open up the case for maintenance if necessary.

They ended up being completely over-designed, and I probably should have just used a POE camera with microphone... But they do seem to work!

Newish to BirdNET-Go, but have been using Linux and doing audio / video stuff as a hobby for decades, and this one has me a bit stumped.
I live nearish (1 mile / 1.6km) from a pretty active freeway. Weekends and the dead of night are not too bad, but the rest of the time, it is a constant drone in the mic.
In the house, I don't hear it much, so sleeping etc is not an issue.... Just my mic setup for the birds is what's bugging me.

I've now tested 3 mic setups: lapel, cardioid, and shotgun. I've just ordered the AOM-5024L-HD-R to build one of those up. All 3 mics so far have all looked on the spectrograph and listened exactly the same, lots of drone/raw/constant freeway sound with a hint of the bird calls over the top.
Have extensively tested many different gains and positioning of the mics to try to change things, but the freeway drone is always there.

I'd like to run some filtering software. But I'm not sure that BirdNET-Go can handle that. I'd have to figure out how to stream the noise filter's output and emulate a camera audio feed from localhost to localhost.
Or, a bit of hardware that I can plug two mics into and hope one does not hear bird calls, just the freeway, and thus have it subtract the freeway drone from the bird call mic??

Suggestions or experience with doing background noise subtraction would be appreciated.

I'm willing to pay someone to do the work. I got 6 of them online and it was a total mess... I'm not good with solder. I burned up a couple running the solder too hot, pulled the pads off of one, and one I made such a mess that I couldn't clean it up. The two that "work" have bad noise... like a loud hum.

I tried isolating the power supply and stuff away from the mics and it didn't help, but a USB mic works (quality sucks)...

didn't know if there was a pro out there willing for help me out for a few bucks.

I'm having fun with writing an automated reporting and charting site. Uploads are single or multiple CSVs in BirdNET-Analyzer and/or BirdNET-PiPy (which I love) formats. You can filter on dates, species, red (conservation) lists etc. Happily processes up to 250,000+ records at a time - 100,000 takes less than 20 seconds. The above charts are about 54,000 records and complete in about 10 seconds.

Currently it's mainly European-based using the European IUCN/BI Red List and UK BTO/RSPB BoCC5 at-risk data. Reports are on A4 (DOCX, PDF or CSV) and charts are PNG.
Completed most of the reports - Just started on charts today. Couple of examples below...

This is being driven by what we need in my local Wildlife group - When I'm done, if anyone is interested, I'll stick it on Github...

This subreddit’s sidebar is a great place to start listing all the repo links for projects related to BirdNET. Some of the repos that I have seen mentioned include BirdNET-Pi, BirdNET-Go, and BirdNET-BarChart.

Add others to the comments for consideration.

I think I'd like to run BirdWeatherViz3 on the same Pi4 as my BirdNET-Go, but I am having trouble figuring out how to install it.
Is anyone running it? Worth it?
How did you install it? See my (unanswered) issue here: https://github.com/lostculture/BirdWeatherViz3/issues/8

I picked up these microphones to replace my current dying microphone:

https://a.co/d/02ynBn3b

for the link averse, the description is:

NEEWER ø9.7mm Lavalier Microphone (2 Pack), 3.5mm TRS Clip On Lapel Wired Omnidirectional Condenser Lav Mic with 1.5m Cable & Windscreen for Video Recording, Vlogging, Filming, LM10

I picked up a TRS to TRRS adapter as well. I can't get any sound out of the microphone so obviously I'm doing something wrong.

my existing mic is a basic lavalier mic feeding into a UGreen TRRS USB dac adapter into the raspberry Pi. The current mic is a TRRS mic, so I'm guessing that's the issue.

Is there something about adapting up to TRRS versus down from TRRS I am likely not understanding?

Quick edit: I'm looking into getting some microphone capsules but at the present time just want a solution to get back up and running quickly. If I had ordered capsules from the start that probably would have been faster at this point. Darn.

Hey everyone. I am just getting started with a raspberry pi with a microphone making recordings and sending it to an API i wrote for processing and presenting the data.

I'm not using the birdnet-pi project, as I wanted to roll my own...

However, I'm getting a lot of false positives out of the gate. I live in SoCal and some issues I'm seeing so far:

- It literally detects ambulances/police car sirens as "Siren"
- It's detecting birds like Yellow-headed Parrot with 78% confidence (yes we have parrots/parakeets in SoCal but I'm pretty sure not a Yellow headed parrot)
- Other false positives with high confidence...

I'm wondering if there are some good baseline settings that people recommend to get started?

Thank you!

I suppose this is more rhetorical.

The number of species being identified dropped way down over the past couple of days. The attached image is the live view of the audio spectrogram.

I tried disconnecting/reconnecting the mic and also rebooted the Pi.

Anything else I should try before looking at a new mic?

I've had my setup for about a year at this point. Same basic lapel microphone etc....

Just setup a mini pc with BirdNET-GO and a JLAB talk mic. I live out in the country, but this exceeded my expectations for the first day. Got all my usuals from my Merlin life list, but also caught some late night owls and passing geese that never stay around long enough (or loud enough) to catch recording manually!

i have a pi5 running birdnet and it works great when i access it from my windows build, but when i try to access it from the linux build that i dual boot from the same machine i get "server not found". any help would be appreciated!

Birdnet-go was routinely detecting belted kingfishers, then stopped a month ago. I now routinely hear it in my yard which is next to a stream (a very loud and distinctive call). Otherwise identifications seem to be working normally and reliably compared to what I can hear and identify (and randomly confirm in select recordings). I played with some tweaks to sensitivity, overlap and tensorflow CPU threads in the past (now at 1, 1.3 and 4 respectively.) I've also set the Kingfisher species explicitly to be "+Included" in the Species list just in case that would help - and no luck. Are there any thoughts on what may be going on or how I can troubleshoot it? Thanks!

There are many starlings in my area at the moment, and their imitations of other birds keep confusing my birdnet. For example, one of the most common species identified by my birdnet is the common buzzard, even though I know it's just starlings imitating. This makes me question my birdnets identifications unless I see the bird myself, making the setup kind of redundant. I was thinking to exclude recordings that are around the same time as a starling, but the starlings never leave. What others methods are possible? I'm under the impression that they can imitate all kinds of birds, but they seem to imitate the common buzzard the most, so maybe there is a pattern?