8 ms·

I had this idea nearly 10 years ago when my wife and I started dating and she introduced me to (very amateur) birding. I even talked about contacting Cornell fo

by atonse 5y ago

I had this idea nearly 10 years ago when my wife and I started dating and she introduced me to (very amateur) birding. I even talked about contacting Cornell for their database. But it was always going to be a hobby project. So when she read about this a few weeks ago, she literally smacked me for not building it. Now if I tell her it's on the front page of Hacker News AND everyone here loves the idea even more, I'm going to get another, harder smack because she knows how HN is full of others like me! (yes I'm aware that this community more than others will agree that ideas by themselves are a dime a dozen, but nonetheless, it would've been a really fun project)

worldsayshi 5y ago
To be fair the idea is probably not that uncommon but it's hard to execute right. I think I had someone in my class (about 10 years ago) attempting this as a project.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I'm sure there have been plenty of attempts at this, but ultimately became Not A Hotdog for birding.
- atonse 5y ago
  I've told my wife that. It's not a unique idea, I'm sure many have had it. But that's not even 1% of the work in actually building it.
boredumb 5y ago
No time like the present.
bcraven 5y ago
The Android app is about about 3 years old, so let her know there's 3 years of kicking to be done! https://www.appbrain.com/app/birdnet-bird-sound-identification/de.tu_chemnitz.mi.kahst.birdnet https://www.appbrain.com/app/birdnet-bird-sound-identificati...
LanceH 5y ago
A couple years before pg wrote about classifying email, I was using the same technique on classifying movies. So close...
kjaftaedi 5y ago
I had this idea as well, but as you start to build the app you quickly realize that each bird doesn't just have one sound, but many sounds and trying to do this accurately takes much more effort than you're probably expecting. Download any of the existing bird apps that help you recognize birds by their sound and you'll see that each bird often has 3-4 distinct sounds, each of them different, and these are just partial examples. You'd have to be extremely dedicated (and very good at machine learning) to see this idea through to completion.
- sombremesa 5y ago
  > I had this idea as well, but as you start to build the app you quickly realize that each bird doesn't just have one sound, but many sounds and trying to do this accurately takes much more effort than you're probably expecting. Effort? Not really so much (stand on the shoulders of giants, etc.) Data? Yes. Lots and lots of data.
- atonse 5y ago
  I agree. And also I actually realized a large part of the issue here might also be other background noises adding .. ahem.. noise to the samples. Because in nature, it's almost never just one bird you hear. You hear it in the context of all the other sounds.
  - devin 5y ago
    True, but Shazam is a testament to what's achievable even without audio source separation. Even going back about 10 years when I first tried it, I was kind of stupefied that it managed to work in a noisy department store.
    - an1sotropy 5y ago
      But in some sense Shazam has it very easy - it is working from a discrete set of specific audio recordings, not, say, the set of artists, or the set of songs. Shazam is useless for live performances, or covers (by different band) of songs (unless those specific recordings are also in Shazam's database). Birdnet is tackling the problem of trying to get some essential properties of one species' song (and each bird is a new live performance, by a different cover artist). There used to be an an app called Midomi (I think?) that could identify songs by humming or you singing, which was cool, but then I vaguely remember it rebranding itself and being less useful. Does anyone else know of a song-recognition app that is more like BirdNet and less like Shazam?
hasmanean 5y ago
You can build the next generation bird app. This one requires uploading to the cloud to recognize bird calls. What if you used the AI hardware in the phone to do the audio recognition? For efficiency you could even use geolocation and figure out which species are found in a location and download a model just for those. Anything not matched could be uploaded as before.
- gregsadetsky 5y ago
  I asked a veterinarian friend who specializes in birds (and is a long time bird watcher), and she knew the app and said that it works pretty well (coming from her, that's definitely high praise) The only thing she'd improve was exactly what you mentioned: offline recognition! (and also keeping the bird sound recordings to export them later)
  - marcdevo 5y ago
    see above thread for info on Merlin with offline sound ID capabilities...
    - gregsadetsky 5y ago
      Yep, that's great news. Thanks!
- marcdevo 5y ago
  I work at the Cornell Lab, and we also have an app that is more consumer-oriented, and which DOESN'T require uploading the recordings to the cloud -- see Merlin Bird ID app https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/ https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/ When the Lab’s researchers conceived of BirdNET, there were no reliable bird sound identification tools. BirdNET was built as a rapid prototype, engaging computer science students to build an app for that users to test the machine learning algorithms. BirdNET proved to be a research breakthrough and by 2020 was performing with far better accuracy than five other apps tested. That success opened the way to apply computer vision to sound identification in the Lab’s outreach and education app, Merlin. Merlin offers OFFLINE functionality, and multiple ways to help identify birds, including through a user describing the bird, taking a photo of the bird, and now recording a bird song or call. Merlin Bird ID is integrated with the Lab’s systems and resources, including updated taxonomy, bird information from eBird and Birds of the World, rich media from the Macaulay Library, life list building tools integrated with eBird, and more.
spoonjim 5y ago
I hope you realize that The market price of this service is 0, set by Merlin.
- atonse 5y ago
  That's also what I would say "there's no money to be made here – it would be a fun hobby project and I could learn some machine learning but that's about it"
smackthrow 5y ago
Why does she keep smacking you? You may want to seek help.
1001101 5y ago
My mom is a master naturalist and has listened to (hours of) frog field recordings to determine which types of frogs are at specific locations for our department of natural resources (IIRC). There is a paper that describes how to calculate minimum adult population from audial surveys. If you still need to scratch that itch, I'm sure there are still some interesting applications along these lines.
antidaily 5y ago
You could have been a thousandnaire.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
How about doing the reverse? Listening to birds from different parts of the world on-demand? Listening to bird sounds is now recognized to have positive impact on mental health[1], So how about selecting a particular region on the earth and listing to high quality bird sounds? There some good YT playlists[2] but a separate service could be more functional, Tie up with bird zoos to do it live, share a piece of revenue for conservation and you'll have my subscription. [1] https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-listening-to-bird-song-can-transform-our-mental-health.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-listening-to-bird-song-ca... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EaSSgqsQs4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EaSSgqsQs4
b0rsuk 5y ago
It's one of the cases where idea is cheap, but the devil is in the details. Executing the idea well is the whole problem.
oh_sigh 5y ago
Even a mere 7 years ago this was the joke: https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/
brendyn 5y ago
I also met a fellow student who was working on this too years ago. Not sure how far e got. to be honest I think he was just to reluctant to graduate and get a real job so kept finding ways to stay at uni.

by atonse 5y ago

worldsayshi 5y ago

To be fair the idea is probably not that uncommon but it's hard to execute right. I think I had someone in my class (about 10 years ago) attempting this as a project.

dylan604 5y ago
I'm sure there have been plenty of attempts at this, but ultimately became Not A Hotdog for birding.
atonse 5y ago
I've told my wife that. It's not a unique idea, I'm sure many have had it. But that's not even 1% of the work in actually building it.

boredumb 5y ago

No time like the present.

bcraven 5y ago

The Android app is about about 3 years old, so let her know there's 3 years of kicking to be done! https://www.appbrain.com/app/birdnet-bird-sound-identification/de.tu_chemnitz.mi.kahst.birdnet https://www.appbrain.com/app/birdnet-bird-sound-identificati...

LanceH 5y ago

A couple years before pg wrote about classifying email, I was using the same technique on classifying movies. So close...

kjaftaedi 5y ago

I had this idea as well, but as you start to build the app you quickly realize that each bird doesn't just have one sound, but many sounds and trying to do this accurately takes much more effort than you're probably expecting. Download any of the existing bird apps that help you recognize birds by their sound and you'll see that each bird often has 3-4 distinct sounds, each of them different, and these are just partial examples. You'd have to be extremely dedicated (and very good at machine learning) to see this idea through to completion.

sombremesa 5y ago
> I had this idea as well, but as you start to build the app you quickly realize that each bird doesn't just have one sound, but many sounds and trying to do this accurately takes much more effort than you're probably expecting. Effort? Not really so much (stand on the shoulders of giants, etc.) Data? Yes. Lots and lots of data.
atonse 5y ago
I agree. And also I actually realized a large part of the issue here might also be other background noises adding .. ahem.. noise to the samples. Because in nature, it's almost never just one bird you hear. You hear it in the context of all the other sounds.
- devin 5y ago
  True, but Shazam is a testament to what's achievable even without audio source separation. Even going back about 10 years when I first tried it, I was kind of stupefied that it managed to work in a noisy department store.
  - an1sotropy 5y ago
    But in some sense Shazam has it very easy - it is working from a discrete set of specific audio recordings, not, say, the set of artists, or the set of songs. Shazam is useless for live performances, or covers (by different band) of songs (unless those specific recordings are also in Shazam's database). Birdnet is tackling the problem of trying to get some essential properties of one species' song (and each bird is a new live performance, by a different cover artist). There used to be an an app called Midomi (I think?) that could identify songs by humming or you singing, which was cool, but then I vaguely remember it rebranding itself and being less useful. Does anyone else know of a song-recognition app that is more like BirdNet and less like Shazam?

hasmanean 5y ago

You can build the next generation bird app. This one requires uploading to the cloud to recognize bird calls. What if you used the AI hardware in the phone to do the audio recognition? For efficiency you could even use geolocation and figure out which species are found in a location and download a model just for those. Anything not matched could be uploaded as before.

gregsadetsky 5y ago
I asked a veterinarian friend who specializes in birds (and is a long time bird watcher), and she knew the app and said that it works pretty well (coming from her, that's definitely high praise) The only thing she'd improve was exactly what you mentioned: offline recognition! (and also keeping the bird sound recordings to export them later)
- marcdevo 5y ago
  see above thread for info on Merlin with offline sound ID capabilities...
  - gregsadetsky 5y ago
    Yep, that's great news. Thanks!
marcdevo 5y ago
I work at the Cornell Lab, and we also have an app that is more consumer-oriented, and which DOESN'T require uploading the recordings to the cloud -- see Merlin Bird ID app https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/ https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/ When the Lab’s researchers conceived of BirdNET, there were no reliable bird sound identification tools. BirdNET was built as a rapid prototype, engaging computer science students to build an app for that users to test the machine learning algorithms. BirdNET proved to be a research breakthrough and by 2020 was performing with far better accuracy than five other apps tested. That success opened the way to apply computer vision to sound identification in the Lab’s outreach and education app, Merlin. Merlin offers OFFLINE functionality, and multiple ways to help identify birds, including through a user describing the bird, taking a photo of the bird, and now recording a bird song or call. Merlin Bird ID is integrated with the Lab’s systems and resources, including updated taxonomy, bird information from eBird and Birds of the World, rich media from the Macaulay Library, life list building tools integrated with eBird, and more.

spoonjim 5y ago

I hope you realize that The market price of this service is 0, set by Merlin.

atonse 5y ago
That's also what I would say "there's no money to be made here – it would be a fun hobby project and I could learn some machine learning but that's about it"

smackthrow 5y ago

Why does she keep smacking you? You may want to seek help.

1001101 5y ago

My mom is a master naturalist and has listened to (hours of) frog field recordings to determine which types of frogs are at specific locations for our department of natural resources (IIRC). There is a paper that describes how to calculate minimum adult population from audial surveys. If you still need to scratch that itch, I'm sure there are still some interesting applications along these lines.

antidaily 5y ago

You could have been a thousandnaire.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

How about doing the reverse? Listening to birds from different parts of the world on-demand? Listening to bird sounds is now recognized to have positive impact on mental health[1], So how about selecting a particular region on the earth and listing to high quality bird sounds? There some good YT playlists[2] but a separate service could be more functional, Tie up with bird zoos to do it live, share a piece of revenue for conservation and you'll have my subscription. [1] https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-listening-to-bird-song-can-transform-our-mental-health.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-listening-to-bird-song-ca... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EaSSgqsQs4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EaSSgqsQs4

b0rsuk 5y ago

It's one of the cases where idea is cheap, but the devil is in the details. Executing the idea well is the whole problem.

oh_sigh 5y ago

Even a mere 7 years ago this was the joke: https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/

brendyn 5y ago

I also met a fellow student who was working on this too years ago. Not sure how far e got. to be honest I think he was just to reluctant to graduate and get a real job so kept finding ways to stay at uni.