BirdWatchBot is a hands-on workshop for builing your own BirdNET-PI, this workshop is created by Creative Coding Utrecht.
This project is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
If you use or adapt this work non-commercially, please credit it as follows:
"Based on work by Creative Coding Utrecht (https://github.com/CreativeCodingUtrecht/BirdWatchBot) licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0."
The BirdNET-PI is a realtime acoustic bird classification system for the Raspberry Pi 5, 4B, 400, 3B+, and 0W2.
BirdNET-Pi is built on the BirdNET framework. It is able to recognize bird sounds from a USB microphone or sound card in near realtime and share its data with the rest of the world.
For this workshop you'll need:
- Raspberry Pi 3B+ or higher with power supply
- SD card with a capacity of at least 16GB
- USB-lavalier microphone. Check the BirdNET-Pi forum for suggestions.
- Your own laptop to login to the BirdNET-Pi web dashboard and configure it via SSH.
To work directly with the Raspberry Pi in the workshop space or at home, you'll need:
- HDMI-monitor + HDMI cable for your model Raspberry Pi (either HDMI or Mini-HDMI).
- USB keyboard
As an alternative to using an USB keyboard and HDMI screen to configure the BirdNET-Pi, e.g. its WiFi-connection, you can also use a Adafruit PiUART. A recipe for using a PiUART can be found here. These instructions will assume you're using a screen and keyboard.
Flash your SD card with the latest Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Bookworm, 64-bit). Since the BirdNET-Pi will not be connected to a keyboard and screen it typically makes sense to install Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Bookworm, 64-bit).
The default login credentials for an SD card provided at the workshop space are:
- Username:
birdnet - Password
birdnet
The instructions for this step can be found in the Getting Started section of the Raspberry Pi documentation.
Insert your SD card with Raspberry Pi OS in the microSD slot of the Raspberry Pi.
Connect the Raspberry Pi to a screen using a (Mini) HDMI cable.
Connect the USB microphone to the Raspberry Pi.
Then, insert your power supply in the power port of the Raspberry Pi (either Micro USB or USB C).
Optionally connect a USB keyboard to the Raspberry Pi.
After its first time booting up, the Raspberry Pi will display a login screen that also contains the IP address of this device.
Debian GNU/Linux 12 birdnet-pi tty1
My IP address is 172.31.21.191 fe80::f5d5:3236:b3c3:565
This confirms that the Raspberry Pi works. In this example, the Raspberry Pi is available on the local network using its IP address 172.31.21.191. Write this IP address down for later reference.
You can now choose to further configure the Raspberry Pi using the keyboard while connected to the screen, or to login remotely with SSH (Secure Shell) from your own laptop.
More detailed instructions for this step can be found in the Getting Started section of the Raspberry Pi documentation.
In the previous step you determined the IP address of the Raspberry Pi (e.g. 172.31.21.191). You can login remotely to the Raspberry Pi using an SSH client.
For instance, on Linux or MacOS, connect to a Raspberry Pi with IP address 172.31.21.191 by typing:
ssh birdnet@172.31.21.191
When you connect to the Raspberry Pi for the first time it will ask you whether you trust the device. You can answer this question with yes.
The authenticity of host '172.31.21.191 (172.31.21.191)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:XGuoIFXoTS0cxGO3TzIz8Izu50daY1ZIJ58u+2LUWWY.
This key is not known by any other names.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
After typing yes, you'll see a message similar to the following:
Warning: Permanently added '172.31.21.191' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
On Windows, you'll need to install and use an SSH client such as PuTTY to connect to the Raspberry Pi. Make sure to provide both the username birdnet and the IP address (e.g. 172.31.21.191).
You can then provide the password. By default, this is set to birdnet.
birdnet@172.31.21.191's password:
Linux birdnet-pi 6.6.51+rpt-rpi-2712 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 1:6.6.51-1+rpt3 (2024-10-08) aarch64
The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
Last login: Thu Jan 9 16:46:18 2025
birdnet@birdnet-pi:~ $
You can change the default password with the passwd command:
birdnet@birdnet-pi:~ $ passwd
Changing password for birdnet.
Current password: ******
New password: ******
Retype new password: ******
passwd: password updated successfully
In 2024, @Nachtzuster forked and began building on @mcguirepr89's original implementation to further update and improve BirdNET-Pi.
The following steps describe how to install BirdNET-Pi and start identifying birds and sharing the results with the world (i.e. BirdWeather).
Install the software on your Raspberry Pi using the following command that uses the @Nachtzuster fork of BirdNET-Pi:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Nachtzuster/BirdNET-Pi/main/newinstaller.sh | bash
Grab yourself a drink. The installation will take a while depending on the model of your Raspberry Pi (typically at least 10 minutes). During the installation, make sure to not close your SSH client (e.g. your terminal or PuTTY) and to keep the Raspberry Pi connected to power.
When the installation is complete, you can connect the BirdNET-Pi dashboard using your browser. To do this, type your IP address in the address bar.
For instance:
http://172.31.21.191
In the right hand corner of the BirdNET-Pi dashboard, click on "Live Audio". You can then provide the default login credentials for your BirdNET-Pi:
- Username:
birdnet - Password: empty (just press enter)
If everything works well, you should here the sound that being recorded by the Raspberry Pi in real-time.
In the menu of the BirdNET-Pi dashboard, click on Tools. Then, select Settings.
In this page, under Location, you can provide the location where your BirdNET-Pi will be placed (e.g. your home location). You can use this Latitude and Longitude Finder to figure out your coordinates.
When you're ready, make sure to click on Update Settings at the bottom of the page.
Now look up a nice recording of bird sounds. For instance, use this video for blackbird (merel) sounds. And play it near the microphone of your Raspberry Pi.
Detected bird sounds will become visible on the BirdNET-Pi dashboard under Overview.
Recipe for BirdWeather - Share your bird data with the world through BirdWeather. BirdWeather is a pioneering visualization platform that harnesses the BirdNET artificial neural network to monitor bird vocalizations globally through 2000 active audio stations (and growing). The living library of bird vocalizations can be found on BirdWeather's Live Map.
Recipe for mobile notifications - Share your bird data within your community through mobile notifications. BirdNET-PI uses Apprise which allows the device to send notifications. You can send these notifications to multiple destinations, including platforms such as Telegram and Signal.
Start the Raspberry Pi configuration tool on the Raspberry Pi:
sudo raspi-config
(When asked, type your Raspberry Pi password)
Select 1 System Options, then S1 Wireless LAN. Enter your own WiFi SSID (network name) and passphrase (WiFi password). After selecting OK, the Raspberry Pi will try to connect to this network. Time to take it home!
At home, you should be able to connect to the Raspberry Pi using the address birdnet.local. This allows you to skip the step where you determine the IP address using a screen.
If this doesn't work right away, connect your Raspberry Pi to a monitor and keyboard and run the Raspberry Pi configuration tool to set up your WiFi correctly.
When logged in to the Raspberry Pi via SSH or using the Pi-UART, you can use the command-line tool nmtui to add/change/activate your WiFi-connections.
As an alternative, you can also issue commands directly to Network Manager using nmcli.
First, make sure WiFi is enabled on the Raspberry Pi:
sudo nmcli radio wifi on
The, connect to your network with SSID YOUR_WIFI_SSID and password YOUR_WIFI_PASSWORD using:
sudo nmcli dev wifi connect "YOUR_WIFI_SSID" password "YOUR_WIFI_PASSWORD"
When you need to connect again in some later stage (e.g. to reconnect to a hotspot):
sudo nmcli dev wifi connect YOUR_WIFI_SSID hidden yes
Adding hidden yes will tell Network Manager to try to connect even when the SSID has not been discovered or is not discoverable (i.e. hidden).