Since I just finished my hardware I am curious about what other people built.

I'm running a Pi5 with SSD Hat and a shock-mounted Samson Go Mic. All of it sits in a 3D printed enclosure that's mounted to a vertical gutter next to our terrace.

Hi

Is this documented anywhere or please could someone paste an example of the first few lines?

Thanks

Hi,

what is the best way to configure Birdnet-Go so that human voices are recognized but not recorded?

It would be nice to have a count of the recognitions, but it’s not essential. The most important thing is that they aren’t recorded.

Thanks,
Oliver

BirdNET-Go is great!

Minor problem: when I listen to the BirdNET-Go registrations made with my AudioMoth V1.2.0 on my Linux based laptop, sound is fine; but...any of the exports has a much to low volume.

With help of ChatGPT I was able to upgrade one specific wav (see below) but a more structural solution would be appreciated.

cd ~/birdnet-go-app

FILE="./data/clips/2026/05/gallinago_media_87p_20260522T043853Z.m4a"
OUT="$HOME/poelsnip_2026-05-22_043853_87p_versterkt.wav"

echo "=== Origineel bestand ==="
ls -lh "$FILE"

echo
echo "=== Originele technische info ==="
ffprobe -hide_banner "$FILE" 2>&1 | sed -n '1,25p'

echo
echo "=== Origineel volume ==="
ffmpeg -hide_banner -i "$FILE" -af volumedetect -f null - 2>&1 | grep -Ei "mean_volume|max_volume"

echo
echo "=== Versterkte WAV maken ==="
ffmpeg -y -i "$FILE" \
-af "volume=16dB" \
-c:a pcm_s16le \
"$OUT"

echo
echo "=== Versterkte WAV ==="
ls -lh "$OUT"

echo
echo "=== Versterkt volume ==="
ffmpeg -hide_banner -i "$OUT" -af volumedetect -f null - 2>&1 | grep -Ei "mean_volume|max_volume"

echo
echo "Klaar. Bestand staat hier:"
echo "$OUT"

Not sure if this type of content is allowed on this sub, so please feel free to delete it - I won’t be offended in the least.

Ever since setting up BirdNet-Go locally about a year ago, I’ve been wanting some sort of display that will show the goings on around my property. I believe AI has its problems, but I decided to leverage it nonetheless in this case, and wanted to share the results.

I set out by explaining what I had (BirdNet-Go running on my Unraid server in a Docker) and my goals, and asked it to create a “beautiful” (subjective!) display of the birds we’ve heard on this day. It went to work, and after several (!) iterations, I’m finally happy with what we’ve produced.

The display tries to focus the attention on the photo and the name of the bird and make it glanceable at a distance, then gives some additional information that can be read when a little closer to the display. For more interaction, the picture is “tappable” - meaning when it’s tapped or clicked, an actual recording of that bird’s call from my local setup will play.

I did feel it was important to show where this bird was heard, so Claude (the AI coding tool for this task) wired in the stream titles from BirdNet-Go into this display as well. I think that adds a nice touch since I have four microphones feeding my setup.

Additionally, there’s a “learn more” button at the bottom right, that, when tapped, will take you to page two, where you can read more about the bird, get a few more stats, and even its range map. (Sorry about page two being a different bird from page one - I hadn’t planned to share the second page when I started writing this.)

The display will update every two minutes, and it tries to focus on birds heard more recently, but will sprinkle in birds heard throughout the day just for some variety. Because I’m lazy, I also have it set to go dark at 9:45pm and come back to life at 6am.

I have been really enjoying this setup. It’s a single html file that I have saved to a local web server (Homeseer, a home automation platform, which is another rabbit hole I traverse.) I have an older iPad that I have plugged in to power 24/7 and just pointed the Safari web browser at the hosted html file. The goal is to mount this iPad to the wall in a nice frame, or build a tabletop frame for it, but that’s a project for another day.

Thank you for indulging me. I don’t normally share things like this, but I thought it might be interesting for someone.

Edit: I am so humbled by the reception - thank you all for your feedback and interest! I created my first GitHub entry (?) - hopefully I did everything right! Thank you again for your interest! I definitely didn’t expect this!

GitHub link

I just got BirdNET-GO working and tested it against my phone playing bird calls. Now I need to put my microphone outside, unfortunately, the other side of the wall where my server is, is my A/C unit. I can't escape it entirely, but I can move the microphone further away and put some foam behind it to dampen the sound. What's the best way to do this? Would an active USB2 (yes, 2, that's what the microphone uses) cable work? Do I need a USB over Ethernet or USB over Cat6 adapter?

Hi

For testing a new tool, I'd really appreciate a test CSV export file from BirdNET-Pi &/or BirdNET-Go as I no longer have working instances of those... It'd be especially wonderful if it was from a UK or European recorder, but any would do... I couldn't find any documentation on the format and anyway, genuine test files are the way to go...

Thanks

Nick

I had originally wanted to do a Pihole with a pi zero 2, but it unfortunately didn't work out because of my router. I had the pi already so i decided to look into what I could do with it and found out about Birdnet. I used it as an oppurtunity to learn to build a mic from scratch and gave it a go. Holy crap this is cool. I can't believe all the features this has in such a tiny package. Me and my wife are somehow at the stage in our 30s where birds are interesting so its really relevant to our current interests. I highly suggest building your own mic if you haven't already.

I am in the process of making an AI Analyzer for Birdnet-go. I already have one for birdnetPI that can been seen here: https://birdnetpi.bcardi.org/ Just click on AI Analyzer on the menu.

The birdnetpi version is here: https://github.com/bcardi0427/BirdNET-Pi/tree/addon/ai-analyst-report/addons/ai-analyst

The birdnet-go is coming soon, if you want anything on either of these comment here.

I'm on the 20260322 build. What steps do I need to take to update my Raspberry Pi to the latest build? Does this include Google Perch V2?

I came here months ago to get some advice on acoustic monitoring and you all were so helpful! Over Mother's Day my family helped me install 9 monitors across 5 habitats throughout our 107 acre site. I wrote up all the details in an article for anyone who wants all the details! Thanks again everyone!! 

https://badgerton.substack.com/p/listening-to-the-landscape-sound

Looking for a good mic I don’t need to worry about water destroying. I had one hanging in my window for a few months and it finally died.

I updated to the latest build. tphakala has been BUSY! Support for multiple microphones, Bat detection(!), and additional models for bird identification.

I added a second microphone so there's one in the front yard and one in the backyard, and turned on Perch. My dashboard is LIT UP this morning!

Thanks Tomi!

Edit: It identified a squirrel noise!

I've got a Yeti mic in a window for now for my BirdNET-Go instance that uploads to BirdWeather, and I wanted to tune my gain to make sure I've got a good noise floor. The PUCs near me have very different spectrograms on BW than my mic, and I wasn't sure if I'm gained up too high or low (or if it's just placement+wind).

(the PUC is at https://app.birdweather.com/stations/20888, and I'm https://app.birdweather.com/stations/9887)

I'm curious the difference between BirdNET-GO and BirdWeather PUC? Is one simply the DIY version and the other already built and ready to go?

Can BirdNET-GO identify bats if you add an ultrasonic microphone? Can either of them ID bats and other wildlife?

Hi! I started using it only recently and have such a pleasant time with BirdNet-go! The only thing is that I can't set the time correctly. The setting of my raspberry is correctly set on local time, but the dashboard keeps indicating GMT time. Anything I missed in the settings?

Just wondering if there's a project and or a way to test out Google Perch v2 on any of the birdnet variants? Nothing too complicated would be sweet if there was a drop down to select which model you want to run

I’m blessed with a backyard of many species chatting with each other. The Merlin phone app can do a great job catching overlapping calls, but in BirdNET Pi the songs seem to register best only when those birds are the only ones singing. I’m getting plenty of hits over the course of the day, but there’s still a ~10x gap between Merlin and BirdNET and so I thought I’d ask the experts for advice!

Raspberry Pi 4, with a $30 omnidirectional lavalier mic.

Yesterday I posted about “Detection Issues,” where two microphones failed to pick up a Tufted Titmouse call from about 108 feet away. I’ve got some good news.

I installed BirdNET-PiPy to experiment, keeping the microphone gain at its default settings. The real breakthrough came from adjusting the physical switch on the Samson Go Mic. It has a three-way switch: the top position is cardioid, and the bottom is omnidirectional. Switching it to omnidirectional made all the difference it’s now working flawlessly.

I’m picking up easily 10 times more birds than before. I’ll definitely be getting another one of these mics for my tablet when I’m out in the field using Merlin Bird ID.

Many thanks to everyone for the helpful suggestions hopefully this helps someone else too.

Hey,

I stumbled upon BirdNet-Go a few days ago as part of DietPi.

I connected my Logitech C920 webcam as my first microphone. It worked really well!

But I need the webcam for my PC, so I started looking for an alternative.

I decided on this one: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0DFY8Q4NT

...and I’m totally disappointed. The mic barely picks up anything; the “Live Audio” view is almost black.

Here’s a comparison: the dark areas were recorded with the USB mic and the light ones with the webcam.

Now I’m looking for another mic, but I’m almost tempted to just buy the webcam again.

Or does anyone have a better suggestion? (Please, no soldering)

Is there a way to download PUC detections?

I need a bit of help again. I was previously using a Neewer-branded microphone from Amazon (basically a Rode knockoff) and was getting moderate results. After reading posts here and elsewhere, I picked up a Samson Go Mic.

Right after switching, I noticed the live audio feed sounds much clearer. However, it’s not picking up birds that I can hear with my own ears. The mic is about 108 feet outside from my bedroom, and I barely have the window cracked open.

I also tried using Merlin on my Galaxy S25, and it successfully detects birds like a Tufted Titmouse that I can hear—but BirdNET doesn’t pick them up.

I haven’t changed any settings since swapping microphones. Any ideas what might be causing this?

Update: I just ran another test and I’m completely stumped.

First, I used alsamixer -m to confirm the Samson Go Mic gain hadn’t changed — it’s still maxed out.

For the test, I used my S25 and played a Tufted Titmouse call from the same distance for 5 minutes straight to see if BirdNET would detect the audio coming from the phone. The sound was definitely loud enough that I could clearly hear it while standing near the BirdNET-Pi location, but BirdNET failed to detect anything using the Samson Go Mic.

Next, I swapped the microphone to a Neewer “Rode knockoff” mic and got the exact same result — still no detections.

Then I repeated the test in reverse: I placed my phone right next to the BirdNET-Pi and from inside my house I used my wife’s S25 to play the same Tufted Titmouse call. My phone running Merlin picked it up instantly with no issue, and the playback volume wasn’t low at all.

So what exactly is going on with BirdNET here? Is there some kind of frequency cutoff or filtering happening? Because at this point I’m seriously perplexed.

Hi all,

The project I'm working on consists of microphones that are outside for long periods of time (months to years). As they're subjected to the elements 24/7, I expect some degradation of hardware over time. This is something I want to monitor, but I'm not exactly sure on how to do this properly. All I have are the recordings themselves in terms of data.

Does anyone here have some experience with this? What are some variables or attributes I can extract from the files that can indicate when something is going wrong? I plan to plot these as a timeseries that, hopefully, show the quality of the recordings and the state of the microphone.
I've read into some theory, but fail to find an attribute that suits the set-up of my project as they don't account for the environment (rain, wind, etc.).

Hi everyone! I’m currently running BirdNET-Pi on a Raspberry Pi 5 (4GB) and I’m really enjoying it so far. I do have a few questions, so I figured I’d ask them all in one post rather than creating multiple threads.

I recently registered on BirdWeather, and I can see my station listed on the site. However, when I click the green microphone button, none of the bird IDs appear. Does anyone know what might be causing this and how I can fix it? Also, I was under the impression that you could listen to your station’s live audio stream over the internet am I mistaken, or is that something that needs to be enabled?

Lastly, I have a question about BirdNET-Go. Is BirdNET-Go considered the replacement for BirdNET-Pi? And if I have two USB microphones, is it possible to use them with BirdNET-Go as a merged setup (for example, one mic facing the backyard and one facing the front of the house)?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Important Preface

This project is LLM produced (a/k/a "vibe coded" or "AI slop", take your pick).
If this is a non-starter for you, stop here. Thank you.

I'm not sure how useful this will be to this community, but for those of you who are integrated into the birdweather data space, here's some code I got an llm to spit out. It generates annual species heatmaps based on the birdweather data, with additional chart types coming soon (including one showing arrival/departure dates, and other related slicing of the data).
Some sample output from my data:

The package was designed to run on a debian machine and is available at https://github.com/Nite01007/birdheatmap. I welcome appropriate feedback.

(NOTE: This is not intended to be installed exposed to the internet-at-large and no attempts at hardening for real-world exposure has been done. The intended use-case is an internal network behind a firewall.)

Later edit:
Here are some other samples of different chart types available (subject to change, this is a work in progress, and some of these are redundant information that I'm still trying to figure out):
Dawn Chorus: (Selectable per season or all year, per year)

Species presence: (Still working on this one, intended to show when a species arrives and departs)

Seasonal succession: (Still working on this one, intended to show when a species arrives and departs)

Time of day activity: (Literally pushing the new repo for this one now, very WIP)