[AIT] Birdnet-go: Self-hosted realtime soundscape analyser for birds, bats and other wildlife

Birdnet-go is a real-time sound analyzer that detects bird species. It can take in audio from microphones. I set mine up to stream audio from my security cameras that I already had installed. There’s even a Home Assistant App, if you’re using it.

I live in a more suburban/semi-urban environment, but was really surprised to so many different bird species.

github.com/tphakala/birdnet-go/

Let this post be the one to ask a question that’s been bothering me (not a coder):

Multi-model local AI inference, runs 24/7 on a Raspberry Pi.

This and similar claims in other software suggest - to me - that the AI is running locally on the raspi, no need to exchange data with sites providing AI APIs or whatever.

I struggle to believe that this is possible, let alone on a raspi.

So, how “local” ar the AIs that help more and more software with various tasks?

Is “local AI” some sort of selling point that is often false or deliberately misleading? “Localwashing”?

edit: thanks for all the answers, this has been enlightening.

It’s a small model that runs on your machine using a TFLite model. AI/ML models come in many different sizes. Some more conducive for running locally than others. There’s more info on the detection pipeline here.

I didn’t write this, just found and self hosted it.