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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.
Less than you'd think, because you likely wouldn't need full "Texas coverage", you mostly need the birds that actually show up. BirdNET filters by location, you'll likely need a couple of dozen. Over the summer I've had about 40 visitors where I live.

Right now the coverage of North America is relatively sparse, but the interest has been high and I'm hoping for some contributions.

Edit: For North America the most obvious source is Audubon's Birds of America, which is public domain and should provide a lot of coverage. This collection includes some beautiful plates.

This is such a cool idea and I want to build one. I wish I had this kind of creativity. I can do the hardware/software side, but great ideas elude me.
are you setting yourself up to record ideas as they happen?
Now this is why I come here!

Amazing thing, will replicate.

Isnt this a copy of https://x.com/WarnerTeddy/status/2060018688645115964?

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

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.
The new one appears to use real art from real humans, instead of AI art that was fixed.

And just because 2 things do the same job doesn't make one a "copy" of the other.

What is "the new one"? The old one used AI, and this one seems to as well.
From the link: "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)."
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Fwiw an eink display is fairly common tech in the birdiverse. I also have a project that is the same thing.
I would like to build something which can do the exact opposite. Sounds from illustrations.
This is one of the most wonderful uses of AI I've seen in a while.
I love this! I have a forest garden with lots of birds. I so want to try this project asap!
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.
Something like fpcalc for soundbytes? Neat
I love this new era of AI powered creativity. I expect we're just getting started.
super stylin’
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.
You can in fact both have an interesting bird-based art display in your home and also go outside and watch birds yourself. Neither precludes the other.
An app like this would be used as augmentation rather than simulation.
We could also recognize this for the piece of art is is, without worrying about the creator's ability or need to touch grass.
Now could you make one for urban noises? (e.g. traffic, trash truck, drunk guys at 3AM etc)
My granny is almost deaf and I will test the idea for her, for she loves birds
Love the aesthetic of 1800s illustrations combined with modern tech. Wonder if it ever misidentifies a squirrel.
e-ink is so much fun, especially when combined with ESP32 or BTLE boards. I currently have 4 around my house displaying book quotes that I've highlighted in KOReader and they bring me joy each time I see them. They are simple and do one thing very well.

I just got and setup a BTLE e-ink driver the other day and according to my calculations it will last _years_ on a single charge (2000mAh) even with multiple refreshes per day (crazy compared to the Wifi ones). Year+ lifetime completely changes the calculus for where to put these IMHO.

I'm considering designing a multiple-screen "art" piece to hang on my wall and playing around with various ideas (on both content and design).

LLMs + 3D Printer + e-ink is my new favorite hobby.

Years on a wall mounted eink screen sounds super interesting. What are you using for the power delivery/battery side of that setup?
Here are the parts I bought, I'm still getting it all setup (I have my pictures displaying, working on designing the 3D printed case now, and testing it all) but according to OpenDisplay's calculator [0] I can expect 3.4 years if I refresh the screen once every 4 hours (and currently I'm doing closer to once a day to mimic my ESP32s which need deep sleep and once-a-day refresh to get even month/months of battery on a charge).

Screen: 7.5" Monochrome eInk / ePaper Display with 800x480 Pixels (https://www.seeedstudio.com/7-5-Monochrome-ePaper-Display-wi...)

BTLE board: XIAO ePaper Display Board(nRF52840) - EN05 (https://www.seeedstudio.com/XIAO-ePaper-Display-Board-nRF528...)

Battery: 3.7V 2000mAh - (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FR9GH966)

Picture of it all assembled (no case yet): https://cs.joshstrange.com/zJFvGGPB

The image rendered to the screen is coming from a little service I wrote that renders a book quote it pulls from BookOrbit which syncs with KOReader (annotations, progress, etc). My plan is to set up one of these one each bookshelf/series rotating quotes I highlighted from the series.

Here are 2 ESP32-based screens I have, the one on the left is a an all-in-one [1] and the one on the right I printed the case from the TRMNL DIY kit from SeeedStudio [2]: https://cs.joshstrange.com/knk4Ns2h

Right now only the BTLE one is running OpenDisplay (the other two are semi-managed by HomeAssistant ESPHome) and all the devices are in HA for controlling them, though the ESP32's all deep-sleep for saving battery so I can can't "push" stuff to them like I can the BTLE one.

[0] https://opendisplay.org/index.html#battery

[1] https://www.seeedstudio.com/reTerminal-E1001-p-6534.html

[2] https://www.seeedstudio.com/TRMNL-7-5-Inch-OG-DIY-Kit-p-6481...

When it does run out, are you able to replace the battery? Or is it something way more painful than that?