Show HN: An e-ink frame that hears birds and draws them as 1800s illustrations

arnemunthekaas

Author here. A mic listens to the sounds in my garden, BirdNET-Go (an open-source BirdNET classifier) detects birds by sound, and the e-ink frame draws a real 1800s natural-history illustration of each one as it hears them. Here’s a live web-demo from my garden in Bergen, Norway: https://fugleramme.arnegiacomo.dev A few things that might be interesting: - The screen only redraws when the set of birds changes, and dithers the collage down to six colours for the e-ink display. - Bigger birds sit toward the centre, scaled by real body mass. - 800+ cutouts across 400+ species, each cut from a real public domain plate. All art is historic and human-made. Coverage is currently best for the Nordics, Britain and Germany (but other parts of the world are in the works). - Runs fully local on a Raspberry Pi or your homelab (yes, even the classifier runs great on a RPI) The e-ink panel is optional and it can run web-only in a container against a BirdNET-Go you already have. Happy to answer any questions!

firmretention

This is such a cool idea and I want to build one. I wish I had this kind of creativity. I can do the hardware/software side, but great ideas elude me.

mungoman2

Now this is why I come here! Amazing thing, will replicate.

jiwidi

Isnt this a fork* of https://x.com/WarnerTeddy/status/2060018688645115964 ? https://github.com/Twarner491/AvianVisitors https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/ Or maybe im missing to see is the same author? It went viral a few months ago

fnands

Very cool! I wish E-ink displays were a bit more affordable. The 13 inch one is £229.50. Does anyone know why they are still so expensive, at least at large sizes?

practicalsystem

oh I need to build this for my mom she would love it!

misetech

I would like to build something which can do the exact opposite. Sounds from illustrations.

nsbk

Very cool, but IMO not mentioning https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/ as an inspiration is a very ugly move from the author

RGS1811

This is one of the most wonderful uses of AI I've seen in a while.

meteyor

I love this! I have a forest garden with lots of birds. I so want to try this project asap!

lvl256

What would be cool is if you can put AI to identify individual birds. They all have different calls/voices, though largely indistinguishable to human ears. And you can name them and see when they come for a visit.

scottndecker

Why isn't this a thing on Amazon I can buy?

qarl

I love this new era of AI powered creativity. I expect we're just getting started.

bix6

super stylin’

dmitrij

We could also leave fake images aside, go outside and try to watch the birds ourselves. Maybe even let the camera inside, just looking with our own eyes. Real nature. No intermediate.

gigantino

Now could you make one for urban noises? (e.g. traffic, trash truck, drunk guys at 3AM etc)

poutrathor

My granny is almost deaf and I will test the idea for her, for she loves birds

reedlaw

Frigate, the IP camera security system, also does bird classification: https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/bird_classification...

gabzofar

That's a blatant copy of https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/ , please.