14 ms·
See a Fish? Ring the Bell
- Donaldwide 3y ago[dead]
- taid9iK- 3y agoFinally, an application for AI that makes sense.
- leoh 3y ago[flagged]
- junon 3y agoMy thoughts exactly. This would be a great application for it. That said, they could also implement a bot for YouTube that allows a !ring command for when they're out of stream seats.
- Traubenfuchs 3y ago"AI", what we used to call "ML" should be able to solve this, at least 10 years ago.
- layer8 3y agoML has always been considered a subfield of AI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning#Artificial_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning#Artificial_in... AI as a field started in 1956, while the term “machine learning” was coined in 1959, as a sub-discipline of it.
- Traubenfuchs 3y agoThat might be a fact in theory, but practically most companies literally did "replace all" of "ML" with "AI" in all their marketing materials and ML-engineers got rebranded as AI-engineers. ML-models are now called AI-models. Because ML is old and busted and AI is the new hotness.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoBefore it was called ML, it was machine vision, used in applications like quality control since at least the 80's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_vision
- petters 3y agoMore like an application of Canny edge detectors
- barbazoo 3y ago> Every spring, fish swim right through Utrecht, looking for a place to spawn and reproduce. Some swim all the way to Germany. There is a problem, however: they often have to wait a long time at the Weerdsluis lock on the west side of the inner city, as the lock rarely opens in spring. We have come up with a solution: the fish doorbell! An underwater camera has been set up at the lock, and the live feed is streamed to the homepage. If you see a fish, press the digital fish doorbell. The lock operator is sent a signal and can open the lock if there are enough fish. Now you can help fish make it through the canals of Utrecht. So unless there are people watching and alerting them (free labor) the fish don't get to procreate? That's a lot of responsibility. It's so nice that they found a way to offload the externalities of running a lock without having to spend any money themselves, let the public do it. A playful implementation of "privatize profits, socialize losses". Why pay someone to actually watch the feed and react when appropriate if they can gameify and let the people do it.
- RandallBrown 3y agoI'm guessing this is a situation where the people with the power to fix this problem don't care and the people that do care don't have that power. Would you rather they didn't do this at all?
- barbazoo 3y agoOf course I'd rather they do it this way than not at all. It's just so sad how unsustainable it is. It's great that there is so much interest, at least right now, I could only get a read-only spot in the feed.
- b112 3y agoIt's been around for years, how is it not sustainable! I get it may not be sustainable, but is computer hardware and electricity sustainable? What about the maintenance and cost of those? This is a great solution. Beautiful. I feel like hugging this solution, as if I should bed it, and produce efficient, beautiful, socially wondrous offspring!
- 3y ago
- speedgoose 3y agoIt could be an interesting research dataset. I wonder what’s the best method today. Perhaps a fine tuned YOLO model, or a CLIP searching for fish, or some simple OpenCV?
- FredPret 3y agoThis is amazing. They should make a little ML-operated door in the lock for the fish so you don't have to open the whole lock manually
- scoot 3y agoHow are the fish supposed to find it?
- newaccount74 3y agoThis excerpt from the FAQ might be interesting: > We also want to show Utrecht’s residents and visitors how much life there is underwater in the canals. The doorbell also provides information on the species and numbers of fish travelling through Utrecht’s waterways. We can use that information to improve the quality of underwater life in Utrecht. Of course AI could do this without human intervention. They want the public to take part in this project.
- b112 3y agoAn AI could after being trained, with a higher error level than 100s of humans (or 1000s) watching. Of course, what about a trinity of AIs with quorum? But anyhow, this sort of project.. even if announced today, likely started a decade ago in someone's mind. According to archive.org, it's been around at least 3+ years. AI wasn't realistic a decade ago, and even 5 years ago? Not really viable reliability wise. And of course, AI isn't free... they have to be trained, security updates and software updates and hardware updates over time. I mention all of this, because everyone keeps saying "AI could do this", but could it? Because it's not just "can it do it", but "can it do it as reliably and cheaply"? People are free. And as you say? People taking part is fun.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bongodongobob 3y agoI'm pretty sure good enough computer vision has been around for decades. The newer stuff is object classification and facial recognition/emotional state type stuff. I think we've had good enough tech to find moving fish for quite a while.
- erikerikson 3y agoIndeed. We have been classifying and sorting at least blueberries using neutral networks since at least the 80s or 90s.
- 3y ago
- karaterobot 3y agoIt seems like they're saying you ring the bell when you see a fish, and that notifies the lock operator, who probably checks the same camera to verify it, then opens the locks if certain conditions are met. So, the advantage is that the operator can do other things besides watching the camera all the time, knowing that helpful people on the internet will alert him when needed. Does that work in practice, especially after the site goes viral? I'd assume there would be a ton of false positives, i.e. people ringing the bell for the lulz. If it's just a fun community thing, and the alert actually goes to the equivalent of /dev/null, that that's fine. Maybe a better metaphor would be those buttons on cross-walks that aren't attached to anything, but make you feel like you're influencing the light sequence when you press them. Anyway, I just don't get how this would work well in practice.
- Izmaki 3y agoThe feed is rate limited to 999 viewers. How do I know? Because I had to refresh a few times to get the doorbell UI... Imagine 900+ people ringing a "doorbell" whenever they see a fish tonight. I hope they can disable the ringing.. :D
- dengxiaopeng 3y agoI used to work professionally in the US doing this sort of task with computer vision. The challenging part isn’t so much the labeling/classification of a fish within an image; instead, it’s a connection to cloud environments to do processing. Most of the projects I worked on were at hydroelectric dams, where-as an ironic punchline goes—it’s punishingly hard to get access to reliable power or water. If anyone is interested/curious happy to answer any questions on here or via DM.
- ska 3y ago> where-as an ironic punchline goes I knew someone who grew up a reasonable walking distance from a major operational dam, but had no grid access. They did have a generator I think, but would have had to pay the full cost of running lines to their land, and it was too expensive.
- fragmede 3y agoWell, why is it so hard to get reliable access to power or water? I can think up reasons, but you've got the background to tell me why. Are there innovations in material science and technology that make things possible today that weren't 20 years ago? I have a shower attachment to tell me the temperature of the water, and it's powered by water through the device so there are no batteries to swap. I imagine the industrial versions must be so much more advanced than a gadget I got off Amazon.
- harrisi 3y agoIt's probably a much simpler answer. Why set up a bunch of plumbing and networking inside a dam if you don't need it? Many (most?) were built before the internet, as well. And I don't think they generally are staffed around the clock. Any more complexity than you need is a waste of money.
- bombcar 3y agoI bet it's exactly this. You've a massive concrete structure where adding water lines and power is going to require quite a bit of paperwork before you can even begin to consider how you run it. And they can be quite long, too, and your sensors likely need to be somewhere that power (and clean water) currently isn't. And then you will discover just how well wifi travels through concrete whose thickness is measured in meters.
- dudeinjapan 3y agoPeople keep talking about training an AI to ring the doorbell but how about training the fish to do it themselves??
- hackyhacky 3y agoWhy bother? Just wait a few million years and fish will develop the capacity to ring doorbells on their own.
- decafninja 3y agoThe Dolphin Ascension will soon be upon us, and woe be upon us when Dolphinkind rise from the seas to reclaim the Earth that is rightfully theirs.
- ClassyJacket 3y agoWhy not train the fish to train an AI to do it?
- amelius 3y agoBecause water and electricity are not a good combination.
- thombat 3y agoTrain the fish to train electric eels to train the AI (adding indirection is both the cause of and the solution to life's problems)
- quesera 3y agoNo need, we've already trained the fish to train the humans to ring the bell. The fish wait patiently to see if the humans will develop the technology to train an AI to ring the bell. And the next test will be even harder.
- scoot 3y agoIt looks like this was given a second chance by mods, and moved to the front page, as it was originally posted 2 days ago, not 3 hours (at the time of writing) [0]. What's interesting is that it's the one with the editorialized title that has been rescued, despite this being against the HN guidelines. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=visdeurbel.nl https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=visdeurbel.nl [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pentamassiv 3y agoDid anyone see a fish? I've been watching the livestream did not see any. Luckely they have a gallery with the best pictures. I wonder how deep the camera is. There is even a picture of a bird under the water
- nouryqt 3y agoAccording to this news article from the guardian about the fish doorbell the water is around 2.1m/7ft deep. Apparently the camera is at the bottom of the lock so around that depth I guess https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jun/29/fish-doorbell-netherlands-live-stream https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jun/29/fish-do... Also a short Youtube video from the city of Utrecht shows the whole operation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MgeR85IMOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MgeR85IMOM
- tgtweak 3y agoCould this not be done with ai image recognition? Also it would be great to have an interactive timeline (like a ring or nest doorbell camera) that shows previous fish and gate openings and understand busy times of day and fish species. Edit: Someone said "why not train the fish to ring the doorbell" and that got me thinking - what if there were two chambers inter-connected with a gate - with relatively large openings on both ends like a pipe that a stream would flow through under a road... fish would swim into one side and a Sonar, IR or Conductivity sensor would know when there is something other than water in the chamber and instruct the sluice gate to open. That way the fish are opening it just by swimming in either side. It would close when nothing is detected in either chamber for a period of time. It would be the fish equivalent of walking up to an automatic sliding door at a shop. You can still record the fish traversing and display it interactively so that people are engaged, but it doesn't become reliant on it.
- Muromec 3y agoWhy would you automate the fun?
- tnolet 3y agoAwesome, this is 50m from my office. Born and raised in Utrecht but had no idea.
- jtwaleson 3y agoSame, I cycle past this spot almost every day but had no idea :)
- cool-RR 3y agoThis might be the first actual livestream.
- rvanlaar 3y agoNever expected this from my hometown to hit hackernews. For some context, here's the lock in streetview: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0974077,5.1152216,3a,75y,277.15h,85.83t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s76Lusm3bNZpDEVitPkLH-A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0974077,5.1152216,3a,75y,277...
- CalRobert 3y agoUtrecht really is one of the nicest places on earth
- fernandotakai 3y agoultrech is really nice. we (my family and i) are thinking about moving to either there or hague in a few years (we are currently in ams, but we are not staying since property values are way too high).
- CalRobert 3y agoMy family tried to move to Utrecht, but ended up in Hilversum. And Hilversum is the nicest place I've ever lived for day to day life! But every time I visit Utrecht I think "if only....". We also looked at Houten because letting my kids bike safely is a huge deal (and one Hilversum is only mediocre for) but Houten does seem quite boring...
- Vinnl 3y agoNot even the first time :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26645019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26645019
- iefbr14 3y agoWouldnt it be handier if the door bell was placed under water so the fish can reach it?
- zzzeek 3y agoI see fast moving water and tons of bits of blurry things moving all about. are those fish? or debris? they could all be blurry black and white goldfish for all I know. What does a positive picture of "a fish" look like here?
- kristopolous 3y agoIt's worth pointing out one of the best youtube channels around, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute https://www.youtube.com/@MBARIvideo https://www.youtube.com/@MBARIvideo
- jbottoms 3y agoNorway has done work in this area that uses computers. Their system recognizes fish and parasites. As the fish pass through the systdm a laser zaps the parasites and antibiotics are not needed.