2024 BirdWeather Update

As we near the first full year of having PUCs out in the wild, I wanted to share some of the things that we’ve been working on in our continuing effort to improve the operation of BirdWeather.  So with that, here are a few things that we’ve been up to lately:

Holiday Shipping!

Our shipment of PUCs arrived in San Francisco last Friday — DHL called me at the end of the day, letting me know that it would be Monday/Tuesday when they’d be delivered, but said if I wanted to come to the warehouse in SF, I was welcome to come get them.  I now know exactly how many PUCs will it in our Mazda SUV!

Tomorrow (Dec 19th) is the last day that USPS will be able deliver in time for Christmas.  We are well stocked on PUCs and all accessories, so if you’re still in a pinch, get your orders in now!

Mobile App Notifications

This has to be the one that I’m the most excited about!  We’re working hard to get notifications launched before the end of the year.  You’ll be able to sign up for alerts when your PUC goes offline, as well as individual species notifications. When it’s ready, nothing will be needed on your part, you’ll just see some new options in the mobile app settings page.

I’ll post more details in the Community Forum when they are live!

Species Probability Model

We’ve also been working on an improved species probability model.  One of the ongoing challenges with using the BirdNET AI is that while the acoustic model does an excellent job, it relies on a its built-in species probability model to help filter out unlikely species.  Unfortunately, due to how the model was trained, it can make mistakes.  We’ve been working on a new version that is working nicely, which we plan to roll out soon!

My New Favorite AA Batteries | Smart Mode

I have a new favorite Lithium Ion AA battery — Mupoer Golden — rated at 3600mWh — they are exceeding my old favorite (the CZVVs).  They are also cheaper :-)

I’ve also been working on some new firmware for those that are wanting to run the PUC as a 24x7 live station, running on batteries.  I’ll be rolling this out soon, but with the Golden batteries, I’ve been getting close to 100hrs of Live time.  The PUC uses recent detections to take advantage of ‘quiet’ times where it can conserve energy (like at night).  The only drawback being that if an owl is only vocalizing once every 4 minutes, then we may miss it!

Eureka 7.0 Earthquake

On December 5th at 10:44AM PST, there was a 7.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Eureka, CA.  As residents along the coast, just south of San Francisco, this was the first Apple Tsunami Alert that we’ve received in 20+ years of living here!  We kept a close eye on web cams up the coast, as we had at least 30-40min before a wave would arrive, and thankfully, nothing came.

But it did leave me curious to see if any nearby PUCs might have captured the ‘shake’ - and there were!  The plot below is from a PUC that’s located in Brookings, OR, less than 50mi from the epicenter!  

Could be a fun new addition to the PUCs in 2025 …

BirdWeather Desktop Box

I’ve also been experimenting w/ an off-the-shelf product that is made by the manufacturer of the MCU that we use inside of the PUC — it’s called the ESP32S3 BOX — and is available on Amazon.  It’s around $40.

I put together some firmware for it to query our API for the most recent detection, then display that and a thumbnail image of the bird.  It’s proving to be really fun just sitting on my desktop.

I’ll post more on that in the Community Forum as well, once we’re through holiday shipping!

Happy Holidays to Everyone

We can’t thank you all enough for the support you’ve given our little project. Join us in collecting as many sounds, from as many species, in as many locations as we can, while we can.

Thank You!
-Tim, Sam, and Vitalii (your BirdWeather team)