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.
> Half the point of this project is showing off some amazing public-domain natural-history illustrations. Over 800 cut-outs covering more than 400 species, every one taken from a real plate and hand-curated for this project (no art is AI-generated, though some has been retouched with AI).
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
That's fair, and I totally get wanting to give it your own spin.
I still think it would be good to acknowledge the original project that sparked the idea, especially now that you've mentioned it was one of the inspirations.
Definitely keep going with yours and evolve it further. That's how good projects grow. But for a healthy open source community, I think we should make a point of crediting the people whose work inspires us. Otherwise, over time, it can discourage people from sharing their projects publicly in the first place.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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 :)
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
And just because 2 things do the same job doesn't make one a "copy" of the other.
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.
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
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.
I still think it would be good to acknowledge the original project that sparked the idea, especially now that you've mentioned it was one of the inspirations.
Definitely keep going with yours and evolve it further. That's how good projects grow. But for a healthy open source community, I think we should make a point of crediting the people whose work inspires us. Otherwise, over time, it can discourage people from sharing their projects publicly in the first place.
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?
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.
Disclaimer: I am the CEO of Pimoroni :-)
Amazing thing, will replicate.
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!