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--- bird_bar [2026/02/08 00:44] – [Background] qlyoung
+++ bird_bar [2026/02/08 00:58] (current) – update history section qlyoung
@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 At the start of 2021 I received a window-mount bird feeder as a secret santa gift. As a bird lover I was excited to put it up and get a close up view of some of the birds that inhabited the woods around where I lived. Within around 3 days I had birds showing up regularly.
+With the floor plan of my apartment at the time, the only sensible place to put the feeder was on the kitchen window; there was a screened porch on my bedroom window, or I would have put it there. Since my work desk was in my bedroom, this meant that I couldn't watch it while I worked. If that had been an option, the rest of the project may never have materialized.
 Shortly after installing the feeder I had the idea to mount a camera pointing at it and stream it to Twitch, so that I could watch the birds while I was at my computer in another room. While watching I found myself wondering about a few of the species I saw and looking up pictures trying to identify them. Then it hit me - this is a textbook computer vision problem. I could build something that used realtime computer vision to identify birds as they appeared on camera.
-Fast forward a few years and this has bloomed into a pretty large project. I have gone through three iterations of the project. It's definitely the most popular project I've made; my friends think it's cool.
+Fast forward a few years and this has bloomed into a pretty large project, with multiple upgrades to both the hardware, software and feeder setup. It's definitely the most popular project I've made; my friends think it's cool. It's also served as a good test bed to keep up to date on advances in machine learning and accelerated computing.
-===== The Feeder =====
+===== Feeder =====
 This section covers the evolution of the feeder construction & installation details.
-With the floor plan of my apartment, the only sensible place to put the feeder was on the kitchen window; there’s a screened porch on my bedroom window, or I would have put it there. This meant that I couldn't watch it while I worked since my desk is in another room. If that had been an option, the rest of the project may never have materialized.
+==== v1 ====
 Initially the feeder was mounted 'stock'. The camera was an old webcam I had lying around. Since it's mounted outside it needed to be weatherproofed. I did that with plastic wrap. Subsequent attempts greatly improved the design.

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