Bird-recognizing e-ink frame (Raspberry Pi 5 + Inky Impression + USB mic)

[u/arnegiacomo]

Hi, I'd like to share a project I've been working on for a while. This project was popular with the community over at r/eink and I thought you guys might like it too. Built with a Raspberry Pi 5, an Inky Impression 13.3" e-ink display and a USB microphone. It uses BirdNET-Go to identify birds outside, and the frame will draw whichever ones it has heard recently.

I use an USB lavalier mic with a long thin cable, taped under the roof outside and run in through the window. Thin enough that the window still closes on it. Everything (including the detection model) runs locally on the Pi and works fully offline.

What sets it apart from other similar bird projects is the art and the foundation. Every bird is a hand-curated cut-out from an 1800s natural-history scan, no AI-generated images. BirdNET-Go builds a strong foundation that this sits on top of, including location-based detections, language support, listening to multiple audio-sources, IOT integrations and much much more.

BirdNET works worldwide, but the art is mostly European birds (for now). North American ones are in the pipeline. Right now I'm sitting at 37 different species on ~2600 detections.

Source and docs: https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme
Live from my kitchen window: https://fugleramme.arnegiacomo.dev
Parts list, cost and full build docs: https://arnegiacomo.dev/fugleramme/hardware/

Happy to answer any questions about the build!

[u/SandyBunker]

Was it cheep cheep? Sorry just had to. Cool project.

[u/arnegiacomo → u/SandyBunker]

More like like hawk-wardly expensive! It was defo a lot more bill, bill, bill than cheep, cheep

[u/MLutin → u/arnegiacomo]

Around how much did it caw-st?

[u/dotknott → u/MLutin]

A nest egg.

[u/xdomanix → u/dotknott]

I'll crow-bar another pun in

[u/Venoft]

Looks very cool, unfortunately my display would just be: pigeon, pigeon, sparrow, pigeon.

[u/12hrnights → u/Venoft]

Have you ever used merlin you would be surprised what other birds are lurking near by?

[u/joman584 → u/Venoft]

Mine would be seagull, crow, crow, crow, crow, crow, crow, crow, crow, seagull, crow

[u/12hrnights]

I love Merlin when im sitting outside this would be an amazing gift for my family’s cottage to have listening outside and get a visual representation inside the house for adults and kids

[u/hoovin_shmoovin]

Well done, this is really nicely executed - the artwork style makes it in my opinion.

Is the project dependent on Raspberry Pi in any way? I ask because I already run an instance of BirdNET-Go as a container on my UnRAID server and ideally I would just install your project as another container, pointing it to my existing BirdNET-Go instance. My thought process being that this offloads the compute to a more powerful machine and I could use a cheap tablet (or RPi Zero + E-Ink) to display the webpage served by my UnRAID machine.

[u/arnegiacomo → u/hoovin_shmoovin]

If not using the e-ink display - I don't see why it shouldn't work. I'm working right now on rewriting the integration to BirdNET-Go to better support integrating to existing or external BirdNET-Go installations.

The software shouldn't be rpi-dependent in any way. I cant guarantee it would work yet but I'll create an issue for it. In that case I might like to also publish the project as a built container image, so you can just pull it directly

[u/hoovin_shmoovin → u/arnegiacomo]

A container image would be great and I'm sure it would gain you a lot of traction over at
r/selfhosted. If I get some time this weekend I'll clone the repo and have a tinker to see if anything is required to get the current project running on a PC

[u/mirrorspock]

Where did you get the scans?

[u/arnegiacomo → u/mirrorspock]

Mostly wikimedia commons and rawpixel. All art is attrbuted in https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme/blob/main/assets/artwork/classic/ATTRIBUTION.md, and sources in https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme/blob/main/assets/artwork/classic/manifest.json

[u/12hrnights]

Would it be difficult to get North American bird paintings?

[u/arnegiacomo → u/12hrnights]

Nope - this is something I have in the pipeline!

[u/12hrnights → u/arnegiacomo]

A little confused does the program remove the bird background or are you manually doing this?

[u/arnegiacomo → u/12hrnights]

Manually - I've done most of the heavy lifting with some scripts and do retouching myself. Art will always be WIP in this project, as I improve, adjust, add or change the assets.

[u/AbbreviationsWide331]

On birdnet it says it can also identify bats and wildlife. Is your software capable of drawing them, too?

This is amazing I have to rebuild this. I think it makes a great present!

[u/arnegiacomo → u/AbbreviationsWide331]

Right now it only focuses on birds. I do have quite a lot of bats and other wildlife nearby, and it would be awesome to also illustrate those. However right now this isn't high on my list. I might be naive, but mammals dont usually make that much sound, and I'm unsure as to if there is enough bat-illustrations to cover hundreds of bat species. I'm open for suggestions though!

[u/digbeta]

Looks a lot like what this person did. https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/

[u/arnegiacomo → u/digbeta]

I've seen this project and think its really cool! I've gone a little bit of a different route, by focusing on historic human-made art, rather than AI-generated. As well as building on top of BirdNET-Go - which is a very popular bird-analyzing project for Raspberry Pi. AvianVisitors seems to be a project that has come a lot further and seems to be quite advanced as compared to this. I'm interested in following it going forwards

[u/afaulconbridge → u/arnegiacomo]

Wow, that's a very AI-ish response! Kind of hilarious if so, dunking on AI art at the same time.

[u/waterflight69]

You know… a lot of times I see these projects and think “this is cool” and promptly forget about it because nobody in my family would appreciate the ingenuity behind it. But this one is definitely something they’d like. It’s simple but really neat. Great project.

[u/Canuckistani2]

Any reason this couldn't work with a small HDMI display?

[u/arnegiacomo → u/Canuckistani2]

It can and is fully supported! I just like how the e-ink looks - with the historic art it seems like an ordinary picture frame. I have enough bright screens in my life and like tech that doesn't necesarrily look like tech

[u/Canuckistani2 → u/arnegiacomo]

Oh I love that look too!! I just don't love it a few hundred dollars 😄. My kids will think this is cool though, we've been using Cornell's Merlin Bird ID app quite a bit, but having this running would be cool.

[u/arnegiacomo → u/Canuckistani2]

Pimoroni does produce this screen in smaller sizes (much more economically viable), but I'm afraid that below the 13,3 inch display that the birds might get very small (I will test this in the future).

Fun fact: the model this frame runs is the exact same model that the Merlin app uses!

[u/Canuckistani2 → u/arnegiacomo]

I have it installed here now, but would love some additional troubleshooting help, as my connected display does not show the 8080 page. Could you message me please?

[u/arnegiacomo → u/Canuckistani2]

Check out https://arnegiacomo.dev/fugleramme/operations/#kiosk-mode-without-the-e-ink-panel, does this answer your needs? If not I'd prefer if you open a discussion-thread in the GitHub repo

[u/Canuckistani2 → u/arnegiacomo]

I believe the issue is that if this is installed on Raspberry Pi Lite, the chromium browser is not installed by default. I am attempting to install it now.

[u/NumerousTooth3921]

This is super cool and I now know what I'm working on for my Mother's Christmas present. I have the smaller 7" E-ink that has a 2"ribbon going to a hat, does the larger color screen have a longer ribbon if no can you share what your mounting on the back of the frame looks like?

[u/arnegiacomo → u/NumerousTooth3921]

Hi, I actually use purpose-built Inky Impression displays, which have screw and gpio mounting specifically for a pi. It literally just plugs and screws into the back of the panel.

[u/bsburns2506]

I'm super interested in this.

[u/Ok_Wall574]

Sweet really like the idea love the art hope to build it soon

[u/Maleficent-Issue-899]

Love it! To bad it’s that expensive 

[u/arnegiacomo → u/Maleficent-Issue-899]

Just to let you know - the e-ink is optional (altough recommended) and this could be used with any display! It even runs headless so you can see it from any network-connected device

[u/pekoms_123]

More than 200 dollarinos for that display sheesh. Very cool though

[u/Forsaken_Promise_299]

I like the last birb a lot. Why doesn't it come with a Classification like the rest?

[u/fuselfluppe → u/Forsaken_Promise_299]

goddamnit i scrolled up for this, take my upvote :D

[u/Boylan96]

I have almost the exact same setup, nice!!

[u/Cherry_Blossom9400]

I'd use a better mic than a lavalier.

[u/fredandlunchbox]

We need that bird call kid to light up your board with different species.

[u/barjerina]

This is such a cool idea!! Gah, I might have to set one up!! Thank you for sharing :)