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

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aarnemunthekaas about 2 hours ago 45 commentsRead Article on github.com

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Discussion (45 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

dmitrij•3 minutes ago

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.

world2vec•1 minute ago

I do recommend a decent pair of binoculars and the Merlin Bird ID app.

nsbk•34 minutes ago

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

arnemunthekaas•32 minutes ago

Duly noted, I'll reference this, as well as other similar projects in the readme. Thanks for the feedback

nsbk•24 minutes ago

Fair! Also, I would love to build this myself as I'm moving out of the city and to the countryside soon.

I'm based off Spain, so I'll be happy to contribute if I find missing Iberian and Mediterranean species, or if some cool feature idea comes up :)

jiwidi•about 1 hour ago

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

wccrawford•about 1 hour ago

The new one appears to use real art from real humans, instead of AI art that was fixed.

And just because 2 things do the same job doesn't make one a "copy" of the other.

jiwidi•43 minutes ago

My mistake for calling it "copy", should have said fork maybe (?)

They are awful close to still require a reference to the original project imo. They are achieving the same output (identify birds and display them in a frame display all hosted in a raspberry pi) with that twist to how to generate the art.

arnemunthekaas•39 minutes ago

Author here: I'll take any feedback and critisism. I haven't based any of my work on his project, but will consider referencing it as a similar one in the readme, as well as e.g. https://github.com/veteranbv/inky-bird-frame.

jdiff•39 minutes ago

What is "the new one"? The old one used AI, and this one seems to as well.

arnemunthekaas•36 minutes ago

Author here: It doesn't, well at least not art-wise. All sources are attributed in https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme/blob/main/assets/a... and https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme/blob/main/assets/a...

bradly•5 minutes ago

Fwiw an eink display is fairly common tech in the birdiverse. I also have a project that is the same thing.

carb•about 1 hour ago

I agree I would expect a reference. Another difference between this an AvianVisitors is the image sources. AvianVisitors is all AI generated with a consistent prompt, but OP's is using chiefly public domain images with retouching by AI as needed.

jiwidi•about 1 hour ago

Yeah agree

I understand OP is continuing the work and improving it as he sees fit, but that in my mind is a fork and should aknowledge the initial work that sparked it.

Maybe i'm wrong tho and this is completely parallel work! Waiting for OPs reply

arnemunthekaas•about 1 hour ago

Hi, yeah I'm not basing any of my coding or feature-work on that project. My biggest source of inspiration is actually just a paper poster I have hanging on my wall https://www.axelthorenfeldt.com/news/wwf-verdens-naturfonds-.... I wanted to make a version of that, showing the actual birds in my garden.

DavCreator•43 minutes ago

https://xxcancel.com/WarnerTeddy/status/2060018688645115964

tencentshill•about 1 hour ago

This one seems to be more North European focused

jiwidi•about 1 hour ago

Its awful close with no attribution or mention of the original project, which should be the minimum i feel like.

arnemunthekaas•about 1 hour ago

Original author here. Fair point, this project was one of my inspirations, but I chose to take a different approach. This uses public domain natural history art and builds on top of BirdNET-Go which is a popular way of self-hosting bird-detections. (This is really a BirdNET-Go companion, as it cannot run without).

I've seen other similar projects pop up like https://github.com/veteranbv/inky-bird-frame and https://github.com/adamoberley/HABirdDashboard/tree/HABirdDa..., each with their own spin.

KaiserPro•about 1 hour ago

true, but we are assuming that the author is aware of the other repo

qarl•7 minutes ago

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

lvl256•14 minutes ago

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.

firmretention•about 1 hour ago

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.

away0g•34 minutes ago

are you setting yourself up to record ideas as they happen?

scottndecker•8 minutes ago

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

fnands•about 1 hour ago

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?

pjerem•42 minutes ago

You have to distinguish the fake color e-ink that are used in mass consumer products which are actually black&white e-ink plus an LCD layer and are expensive, and the real color e-ink where each micro capsule embeds 3 to 5 different inks of different colors.

The latest are pretty complex devices, very slow to refresh (hence why they are not used in your e-reader) and also very expensive. But the rendering is way much nicer because it’s real ink that is used to render the colors.

whiskers•21 minutes ago

This project will work with a 7.3" display just as well - they are £79.50! https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression?variant=5...

Disclaimer: I am the CEO of Pimoroni :-)

fnands•13 minutes ago

Yeah, the 4 and 7.3" prices are not bad, the jump to 13 is just large. That being said, the cost per area goes down, so it is also probably fair.

eckelhesten•about 1 hour ago

Patents and greed in a combination.

misetech•36 minutes ago

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

bix6•5 minutes ago

super stylin’

RGS1811•32 minutes ago

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

telesilla•30 minutes ago

I agree. It's such a pity Cats don't recognize images, would make for wonderful CatTV.

meteyor•25 minutes ago

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

practicalsystem•42 minutes ago

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

bronlund•about 1 hour ago

Artig! :)

mungoman2•about 1 hour ago

Now this is why I come here!

Amazing thing, will replicate.

arnemunthekaas•about 2 hours ago

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!

smeej•33 minutes ago

Do you have your image source available somewhere? I'm not going to build this same thing, but I'd love to add some prints of birds to my shelves and, not knowing much about birds, it would help to have a set of pictures I could look through and go, "Ooh! This one!" and learn about them. It'd be a good jumping on point!

arnemunthekaas•31 minutes ago

Yeah, all art i attributed an linked in https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme/tree/main/assets/a.... Check the manifest for exact sources

onionisafruit•29 minutes ago

If I were to make one of these as a Christmas present for somebody in Texas, and I wanted to contribute work toward good coverage for the area, how big of a time commitment would that be? It sounds like the kind of hobby work I could get into for a few months.