I Turned My Security Cameras into an Automatic Bird Identification System
A developer repurposed his home security cameras to identify birds by their songs using BirdNet-Go, a self-hosted AI tool that runs 24/7 on a Raspberry Pi or server. It detects over 14,000 species (with Google Perch v2), sends alerts for specific birds, tracks new species, and integrates with Home Assistant and BirdWeather. No cloud dependencies, no subscription fees—just local, private, and surprisingly fun.
It turned our security camera setup into something genuinely useful beyond security.
- CircuitSeuss
Eerie how easy it is to leverage these always on network connected sensors we keep putting everywhere to get precise data profiles
- ben1040
I did exactly this with BirdNet-Go and my Unifi doorbell cam. Unifi exposes an RTSP feed for each camera so it was easy for the tool to just "listen" to the doorbell and start classifying.
I have a spare e-ink display and my next weekend project to follow onto this is to wire it up so it shows some faux "woodcut" images of birds detected, or something like that.
- mulle188
The documentary 'Listers ' (about two brothers who go all in on birding for a year) on YouTube is so hilarious and got me into birding (and using Merlin) this year. Highly recommend.
- comboy
Btw, Merlin Bird ID app by Cornell University is so good that I got some people interested that weren't into that topic at all.
- maciejb
I tried that with my Aqara camera. The mic there has no windshield, though; wind noise was terrible. Also I couldn’t get Aqara support to enable higher sampling rates in the firmware than 16kHz; BirdNET expects 48kHz audio samples.
Ended up installing a better microphone attached to a RPi3A+ and using a RaspberyPi 4 which I already owned for hosting BirdNET-Go
https://maciejb.me/posts/birdnet-go-setup/
Much better sound quality now!
- KyleWasTaken
Heads up. I noticed the screenshot of your markdown card has an ASCII block that goes below the baseline. `U+2588` (Full block) tends to do that depending on a lot of things.
I made a change to the markdown card sometime ago that uses only `U+2581` through `U+ 2587` instead to avoid that issue.
It's under a collapsed block here:
https://www.kyleniewiada.org/blog/2025/05/backyard-bird-trac...
- tacodestroyer
Nice! I never thought about using my security cameras but ended up building a regular Birdnet-Pi with a microphone. I took it one step further to make it portable so that I can use it when we hike or travel to new places. Added a little e-ink display to the front and it allows me to see Top 3 for the day, last detected, and total number for the day.
Case I used to make it portable and fit the display
https://makerworld.com/en/models/1336154-portable-pi-sdr-cas...
- electroweak
I don't know how this possibly worked for the northern mockingbird. One full moon I stood and listened to one call continuously for an hour and I couldn't remember hearing the same call twice. Every bird I'd ever heard in person and more mimicked...several car alarms..sirens... Do they even have their own distinctive call?