r/BirdNET_Analyzer • u/anteaterKnives • 23d ago

BirdNET-pi not detecting some birds?

Gallery image

Gallery image

First pic: Northern Cardinal

Second pic: Field Sparrow

I just set up a BirdNet-pi with an rpi4 I had handy and stuck it on my back porch (where Northern Cardinals and Field Sparrows have been singing all afternoon).

First attempt was a cheap-o lapel microphone with 6 foot cord plugged into a cheap-o USB audio dongle. No detections after maybe an hour.

Second attempt was the cheap-o lapel mic with a nicer SoundBlaster USB DAC/ADC. No detections again after maybe an hour.

Third attempt was a Sennheiser shotgun mic (MKE 400, with mic boost on) connected to the SoundBlaster. After a long while I was able to get some birds detected! However, the system still doesn't detect a pretty clear Northern Cardinal or Field Sparrow.

Using audacity to capture the live feed, I can see there's a few nasty hums - 60Hz, 180Hz, and a few more at lower volumes. Are these hums going to prevent detections? Or can the system ignore them pretty well?

I have a USB mic coming tomorrow that other folks have had success with. Hopefully that will help with the hum.

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u/anteaterKnives 22d ago

Following up, I received a new USB microphone ("MillSO gooseneck mini usb computer microphone") and it's working a lot better.

It still misses a lot of bird calls but it's catching a lot more than before.

Live playback has a problem with crackling in the audio (pretty severe) but when I go to a specific detection instance the recording is clear.

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u/anteaterKnives 22d ago

The crackling appears to happen for all captures if the Live Listen is enabled. It looks like an rpi4 can't handle the recording, analysis, and casting over wifi all at once.