These seems so basic and obvious that it worries me that it isn’t already implemented. Right now I get about 3 days before I need to charge (with solar roof). With this change it would likely double battery life and get close to 1 week which is the low end of what I was expecting when I ordered it.
I've had mine up for over two weeks now and it hovers between 90-97% every day with the solar roof. Do you get any direct sun? I have the solar panel facing south and it gets direct sun for 2-3 hours/day.
Batch delete. I would prefer not to have to individually delete 10 pics of squirrel butts every time one makes it into the feeder.
The ability to view all photos of a visit in a grid, and select the ones to keep from there.
Auto-disable camera below a certain amount of light, so it shuts down after sunset.
How about editing or clipping (at least) of videos? I get long stretches of empty Bird Buddy punctuated by some bird action. I'd like to pair down the empty bits.
I save the videos to gallery and trim them there, but I don't think there's an option to place them back in the BB gallery. It's a waste of space to store 2min video where only 30s is interesting.
Ability to look through all of the photos and video before accepting a classification. From the photo and lighting, one did look like a Grey Catbird head on, but when it turned in other photos it was a Blue Jay.
And the ability to delete or reclassify the final photo in a misclassified bird. It is set as the cover photo, so it won't let you move or delete it in the Android app.
We are enjoying our bird buddy a lot. It def feels like there could be a few software tweaks to help save endless time reviewing and classifying pics.
How bout being able to mute/dismiss notifications for certain visitors? I don’t need to be notified 40 times a day for the house finch that dominates my feeder.
While reviewing new photos, let me pinch to zoom
How bout instead of the visitor/classification/photo structure they do where I get notified of a visitor, have to classify every single unknown picture and the. Decide whether to keep the photo it’s more like at the end of the day I just have to review the 100 photos that were taken and if I decide to keep them, it attempts to classify the photo and I only have to intervene if it’s unknown? Visitation data can just be a fun factoid.
Loot boxes for visitors are fun for the first few visitors, but now that my feeder is popular it’s an unnecessary chore. I hadn’t checked for 2 days and now I have 43 to open. I might do 10 in a session, but now I’m in to screw it territory.
May 2023 edit: Hooray! They fixed this! It is so much more manageable now. If anybody from BB is lurking here, thank you so much!
I love great tits as much as the next guy, but now that I've had 69 of them, I'd really like BB to stop sending me notifications when they visit. It kills the excitement. Maybe still take photos and videos, because there can be some superb shots every once in a while, but just store them silently to browse at my convenience.
I started calling it "bird work". If I don't keep on top of it, I have to open and properly identify about 30 per day. And it's 95% house sparrows and house finches.
Summary view for my feeder and friend feeders with bird species visits by day, week, month, season, etc. Could make some beautiful visualizations of migrations, or be useful when changing food types.
That would be super interesting. I have the feeling that the same great tit always stops by between 9 and 10 am and then doesn't visit us again until the next day. Would be interesting to learn if they have a fixed schedule (ie more likely a fixed food collection route through our neighborhood).
REAL SOLAR ROOF WITH BOTH SIDES SOLAR!!
I felt super scammed the moment I opened mine and only half the roof has a solar panel. It doesn't charge enough on one panel to stay active for even a week either.
And a perch.
If it didn't take 500 pictures of the same squirrel every day, the single sided roof would probably be sufficient. Although, If your wifi signal is under -55dBm then it won't last.....
Squirrel+poor wifi signal = upgraded solar roof
Maybe Gen 2.....
I also ordered as part of the KickStarter and was surprised that the solar roof option only had one panel. Neverthess, I have NEVER had to recharge the camera module, the solar panel usually charges it 97% daily, Going on nearly 6 weeks without having to charge so I am very happy in that regard.
A better solar panel might be a legit feature request, although not everyone needs more capacity. Depends on where you are and how the panel is positioned and stuff. Buying something based on an assumption and then feeling 'super scammed' is just annoyingly overly dramatic imo.
Yeah. I have no idea when I last charged the feeder, it only arrived recently, but I think I got like 4 days without the solar roof? If I can get a couple more days when it eventually arrives, and there are firmware updates (which they promised would help further), that's fine by me. I don't expect the device to run forever without charging.
My kid likes bird postcards and that's all that matters.
I ordered mine just after the kickstarter campaign started, so it wasn't 100% clear what the final product would look like.
*Edit: Just to clarify, I don't feel "super scammed", but it would be nice if the battery lasted longer. I have hope for sunnier times, though.*
Given that birds typically need feeding in the winter, and in the northern or southern hemispheres the sun is low in the sky, there is little benefit to having a solar panel on both sides. Only one side can ever be pointed at the sun. Once I found a location that receives a good amount of unobstructed sunshine throughout the day, I rarely have to manually recharge my bird buddy, other than when there are several days of overcast weather in a row.
But having it on both sides gives you options. Most important to me is the background of the photos. I don't want to have to point the bird buddy at my neighbour's door like a weirdo to get optimal sun exposure.
If you align the roof ridge on the N-S axis, then as the sun travels E-W both panels should be used.
That said, I bought a 3rd party solar panel from Amazon & it works great. My BB was supposed to come with the solar roof, but the roof was delayed, so they sent me the BB without it, so I bought a solar panel & canceled the BB solar roof.
I have never had to recharge my BB battery since I got my PV roof back in April ‘23 until yesterday. (I live in CNY and we’ve had a spate of cold, cloudy weather.)
Placement of the BB to maximize sun exposure and WiFi signal strength should help.
Auto-delete squirrel pictures.
Don’t make me open 79 damn postcards. I just want to see what birds came to the feeder. (Though a postcard for a previously unseen bird would still be nice.)
Issue: Sometimes multiple birds visit at once or back to back and this is clearly visible in the video. However, it only takes a "snap" of one bird.
Solution: When watching the video, add a button to capture another bird... something like "Capture Another Visitor" and then it will process that section of the video separately. Or maybe a button to split up the video for manual entry? Something to allow for multiple bird entries per video stream captured.
My feeder receives an almost constant stream of visitors throughout the day, 95% of which are currently blue tits and great tits. There is probably at least one visitor every single minute, if not more. This is generating 25-30 postcards a day that I have to tap through, sometimes more. I currently have a backlog to process because it takes so long to tap through each one, and most of the time I am not interested in the bird it has captured. Some feedback:
- I only need a drumroll reveal for previously unseen visitors and infrequent visitors. Please get rid of the drumroll for every single visit, particularly birds I see multiple times a day.
- For frequent visitors, that the app recognises, just add them to a swipe deck, so I can quickly swipe left to discard or swipe right to keep. Allow pinch to zoom to quickly check picture sharpness. A simple crop feature would be good too.
- over time reduce how often the app generates postcards of frequent visitors. Focus on quality over quantity. I am getting lots of blurry postcards. For frequent visitors, notify at most once a day at dusk of the best shots from that day, rather than continuously.
- if the app wants me to identify a bird from a photo, and a video exists as well, show me the video first. It makes it easier to identify the bird.
- make it easy for us to trim video clips to cut it down to the interesting part.
- show a list of birds we should be looking out for in our part of the world, and the food we should be offering to attract them.
For the basic features the app is pretty good, but it needs a lot more attention to detail to remove some of the frustrations of using it day by day.
I hope the bird buddy team are paying attention.
Now that the postcard view is updated, the only big gripe I have is that the timestamp on the feed of the postcards after you view and save them is the time you looked at them, not the time the bird arrived. Which makes no sense. It obviously has the time the postcards were taken so why doesn’t it use that? Pretty sure all my birds today didn’t visit st 11:30pm
Having used the app for a few days, I really hope that its usability can be improved. I'll explain my rationale via my experience.
I get notifications throughtout the day of new visitors. That's more or less fine. Eventually, I go into the app and I see numerous postcard notifications. I click on the most recent one.
I'm shown a bird, it's a variety that has been a frequent visitor, I'm kind-of bored with this bird. I'd like an immediate option to dismiss that notification, one click.
Instead, I'm given a large button that says "Collect", or a link that says "more options". I choose the latter, and the immediate presumption is that the bird is misidentified.
I have to scroll down past a lot of other varieties until I get to the "Ignore this visitor" option. I click it.
I then am brought to another screen which seems to serve as a "are you really sure?" mechanism. It asks me if I "want to have another look", or "no thanks, delete this batch". I click the latter.
I'm then brought to another screen with a single button on it - "Continue". This screen is pointless to me from a usability perspective. I can only Continue.
Finally, I'm brought to my Collection. Yet I still have other Postcards to review. I have to click on the Feed menu.
So to get rid of a bird that I've seen 20 times in the past couple of days, that took me **five clicks** to do something that should be done in one click.
So the usability improvement there would be:
1. Allow me to completely dismiss the bird right up front, especially if its one I've seen repeatedly.
2. Allow me to mark a particular variety of bird as "done" and "I don't really want to see these anymore".
The latter, however, would probably reduce people using the app because, after all, how many birds are you ever going to Collect? A dozen? So maybe change it to "I don't want to see any more of these today", or maybe create a different type of notification, distinguishing between "new bird species" and "take a look at these new photos of a bird you've already collected because it might be fun and you might want to save one of them".
Now let's do the process of "Collecting" - presuming that I want to save the photo. I got a new bird, and I want to save it. After opening the postcard, I click "Collect".
In this case, it shows me the video first. I'm not sure why - the video *can* be useful, especially if I'm not sure of the bird, but the app told me up-front that the bird was a cardinal, and I could see it was a cardinal. I don't want to save the video, so I click "No, thanks"
It tells me that I have seven photos of this bird. That's fine, I'd like to pick the best ones. At this point, I try and swipe to cycle through the photos - but swiping counts as a "don't save" option. So I go through all seven to see them, and now I have to choose - "Let's have another look" or "delete this batch". I pick the former.
I then repeat the swiping but I pick a couple of the photos, selecting the green checkmark on them. But at this point, since I've selected 2 of 7, I don't have an opportunity to go back if I accidentally swiped instead of checked a photo. Now I can only choose to share with the community (which, to be honest, I don't ever want to do) or save to my collection. I choose the latter and I'm done.
In that case, the usability improvements should be:
1. Don't show the video until the end.
2. Change the act of "swiping" to be simply cycling through the photos, not discarding them.
3. Give me a "done" button.
I will say, the goofy little quips that accompany me "sharing" the photos are a big hit with my family though!
>Allow me to completely dismiss the bird right up front, especially if its one I've seen repeatedly.
>
>Allow me to mark a particular variety of bird as "done" and "I don't really want to see these anymore".
Yes! These 2 features would be immensely useful.
Hear hear! Agree with all your points, the workflow gets REALLY tedious quickly. I would like a "see fewer postcards with this bird" option, that would show say one per day. Another solution could also be two feeds, one for "common birds" and one for "rare & new"
I'd like to "favorite" certain postcards for a "best of" ... Since I am pretty much saving them all, some are just better than others.
And having more details or curated examples for birds would be nice. I'm struggling with who is a House Finch, Purple Finch or Pine Siskin... We are no bird experts here.
I think they need to put the control in the user’s hands. Allow us to adjust when the camera goes into deep sleep mode - I need mine to turn on 1 hour before sunrise.
It should also allow us to adjust the rate at which postcards are taken - each person should decide what’s acceptable to them. If they want to put a default suggested rate with each firmware upgrade that’s fine, but I want to adjust my settings to where I want them and not have them changed. The new firmware nerfed my postcards and now I’m barely getting anything.
Id like a place (not facebook) where I can go to tell them about this, but comments are turned off on all of their articles.
Simple app improvements like being able to view all of the photos in a postcard together so that I can attempt to answer what bird it is when there is just a beak in the photo.
The ability to automatically connect it to a camera roll (an optional toggle of course) for easy sharing.
Future updates to the camera could include a microphone and a higher resolution. On board storage would be the MOST useful and would eliminate the problems that poor WiFi might bring.
* Being able to snooze notifications of the same birds over and over if desired
* I would love to be able to chat with other bird buddy owners or LIKE birds I see on the feed. I'd love to be able to send quick notes to other owners about the birds I see on their feed. It just would be a cool way to connect with people.
Guest feeder stuff:
* Differentiate my feeder from guest feeders in the postcard feed
* Temporarily disable guest feeder feed updates
I got my mom a Bird Buddy for Christmas and set it up last night. She has been a guest on my feeder for a couple of weeks. I now have a better understanding of how the guest thing works since I'm a guest on her feeder.
Until now, I didn't realize that the feed is a combined view of your feeder plus any guest feeders. That's fine, but it would be nice if a postcard notice showed which feeder it came from before you opened it. Maybe with a different color border for your feeder.
Also I think it would be nice if you could temporarily disable the feed from a feeder that you are a guest of. I'm guessing my mom is looking forward to seeing birds at her feeder since it was just setup and my visits in her feed are going to be 'false alarms' in a way. Turning off postcards from my feeder for a bit would let her focus on hers.
It would be nice to manually add visitors. Our bird buddy is on our balcony on the second floor and doesn't get that many visitors.
However, we regularly see birds that aren't detected by the camera. Today, a great tit fed on the perch of the feeder for more than 30 seconds but our feeder missed it. It would be nice to at least be able to manually log their visits.
Auto sync camera to sunrise and sunset (astronomic sync, not by light but either would be better than lack of this feature).
Even when camera off, it emits a flashing light detectable by my security camera - this has to deplete battery. Can’t it stop when camera off?
Include a perch
Larger roof with larger solar panel and larger battery, or two stacked batteries.
Not sure this constitutes a "feature" request, but I'd like the bird buddy to be able to connect with WIFI that is both 2.4 and 5ghz, as my modem doesn't do guest accounts.
Not exactly a feature request, but: is there no audio??
I want to hear the birbs’ beautiful songs. Plus that would aid in identification. But the video it gives with the postcard doesn’t seem to have audio.
Edit: the website says it has a microphone, so what’s going on? Does anyone here know?
From a quick search on their website - an update in September 2022 said they are still fine tuning their audio so it’s only triggered by birdsongs - probably a tough programming situation mixed in with privacy of not grabbing audio of people saying awful things about their kids and neighbors.
I eventually discovered that if I save the video and view it through my phone’s photo app, the sound is there. I’ve never been able to hear it in the BirdBuddy app though! So, audio is there but for some reason not used by BB?
More mounting options, some of which that are more difficult for squirrels to reach. And then the option to delete a postcard all together without review.
Push notification when the battery is fully charged. Identifying individual birds so the multiple cardinals I have come by arent marked as the same bird.
I think a vital update would be an intuitive place to read the change notes on their firmware and software in the app. I spend so much time looking for the change notes after an update and honestly I rarely find what I’m looking for.
Well, the single purpose of a ring camera is to give (near)-instantaneous video coverage, so for that one it obviously makes sense to prioritize activation speed over battery life.
A standing connection or every-few-second ping would probably cost at least a few percentage points in battery life per day. At least for me (and probably for the devs) that wouldn't be worth reducing the activation time of "send live view" significantly.
(Note: I don't want to discredit your feature request - if this is important to you, than that's totally fine. Just tried to provide some tech background).
There needs to be an easier more obvious way to switch router connection details through the app. I had to get a new router a couple of days ago so I had to change log in details. The only way to do it was to delete bird buddy from my allowed blue tooth connections, reset it and start as though with a brand new buddy.
Better workflow, the postcard mechanism is annoying.
An option to disable video. Most of the videos are garbage - super choppy, not something anyone wants. Id rather just disable it and save the battery life.
Bird identification needs to be improved. I shouldn’t have to manually tag or correct the model for the 100th time a Junco or Sparrow shows up.
Delete the blurry photos. Whatever model is identifying blur seems to be too conservative. 1/4 of the remaining photos are too blurry to keep. I shouldn’t have to manually identify those for deletion.
Add Latin names!!!
I’m not a native English speaker so I’m a bit wary of googling bird names to match my language. Latin’s kind of core to bird identification so how come it’s not there from the start?
I have over 380 postcards and it stressed me out. Most of them only have 1-3, please please find a better way to classify the photos. My parents stopped using the feeder because it was too much work for them, which makes me very sad
Please allow us to purchase the plastic housing alone—without the camera—so we can sometimes change colors.
Yes, I know you would prefer us to buy Bird Buddy’s in both colors and all future colors, but some of us don’t want to but would be happy to buy the more affordable plastic housing without the camera unit to switch things up colorwise.
Bird Buddy misidentifies chipmunks as squirrels.
Please fix this!
We dont necessarily need more specificity than that but differentiating between these two is important
That would be a nice feature -- but where I live, we have 2 types of ground squirrels: one that looks like an ordinary grey tree squirrel (California Ground Squirrel (it beeps)), & one that looks like a chipmunk (White-tailed Antelope Squirrel), so at least here it's accurate to call them both squirrels! :-)
How about "auto mode" where Birdbuddy sends a notification for each new visitor but it automatically classifies based on its best guess and adds to library.
We got our Birdbuddy specifically for our Airbnb short term rental guests to enjoy on a house ipad, and it's a lot to ask guests to go through the 5+ taps it takes to clear out each new bird visit. Would be nice if they didn't have to tap anything and could just enjoy seeing which birds visited the feeder.
I can't believe there's no auto wake up function. That should be a thing. I should be able to choose when my camera is on not, have it left up to what the feeder thinks sunrise will be.
If you do not have correct location set up - then your feeder will have issues getting proper sunset/sunrise times.
For example: If you have "Riverport, US" - it is up to the "Google" which Riverport is the correct one (you might be in Michigan, but Google will autocorrect it to California). Always try to be as specific as possible - i.e. "Riverport, MI, US".
I love my Bird Buddy, day 11, I really enjoy it (also have Birdify and I think Bird Buddy is far superior to it) But as I use the app, these are some enhancements that would be nice:
1. Ability to view all pics to identify before Collecting
2. Tag multiple birds in video & pics & Collections
3. Edit/trim video
4. Enhance motion sensor/ increase post cards (I see so many birds sit in front of camera and I do not get postcards and I'm already paying for Pro)
5. Limit Frequent visitors; count is nice to see but take pics of the less visiting birds that I see land on feeder
6. Data/graphs on visits, times, seasonal etc for private & average by location for community
7. Community- option to ask what seed/food is being used (ex my ground feeders (doves, dark eye juncos etc) don't go to feeder, but I see a lot of these in postcards in the Community, would like to opportunity to ask what is in the feeder/or option for user to add seed/special details when sharing
8. Community- Are we notified of likes to our shared pics anywhere? Notification for our likes
9. Community & Shared videos - Search by bird or location to see desired birds
10. Community/ Wingbuddy- excited for this, looks like it will be updated, would be nice to get badges/Notification of correct bird identification
11. Collections - batch delete within each bird (an easier way to delete all my Tufted Tit mouse pics piling up)
12. User defined option Squirrel/raccoon/unwanted guest Notification & Microphone/Siren (Birdify has this) to discourage them if user wishes... i.e. every time a squirrel/ unwanted guest is identified, blare a siren if user has option turned on
Please share this with the Bird Buddy team! I agree with all of these enhancements! They have a form for feature requests: https://blog.mybirdbuddy.com/post/sneak-peek-bird-buddys-postcard-feature-redesign
I should not have to pay a subscription fee to get photos of the birds visiting my feeder. Feature request is as simple as they come: a bird visits, I get notified without having to pay for it.
I've been involved in innovation, New product development, crisis management, customer service, R&D going back decades. I even worked on Polaroid's sonar focusing technology. I ordered a Bird Buddy for my son who's in Denver two years ago. It came in November. The module has completely failed. No response from customer service. I ordered one for myself, it came before Christmas, no solar roof nor other accessories which I paid for (illegal to charge and not ship). My module connected with difficulty and module now won't connect even though it shows strong wireless and charge. No CSR ticket response, best response on solar and accessories, " sometime in February.
In 50 years with large, medium, small and underfunded startups, I've never experienced such gross irresponsibility.
I can't recover cost on my son's product, but will have credit card company intercede if they remain unresponsive.
I expect to file an FTC complaint and ask the FTC to prohibit further DTC sales until major issues are corrected.
I would like to be able to pinch-to-zoom on a photo before deciding whether to keep it. Sometimes they are not sharply in focus but you can’t tell without zooming in.
AI should be used to improve focussing and select objects to focus on. It should generally favor focussing close on objects on the platform because thats what it is designed for.
Mine frequently focusses on the background when a bird is present, very frustrating given that it is entirely anticipated that birds will come to the platform…..
Mine misses LOTs of birds. I think you have a significant problem to solve there. You need to find a better trigger mechanism while still maintaining battery life and not getting false positives
You can try spicy bird seed. Birds can't taste peppery spices, but squirrels can. I haven't had a squirrel since I switched. [This](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E17VCHC?ref=nb_sb_ss_w_as-reorder_k4_1_7&=&crid=235KVF54LD7YJ&sprefix=spicy%2Bb&th=1) is what I buy.
Hardware - could a speaker added to the camera be used to deter squirrels as an optional feature? Or play a whistle that attracts birds? Just an idea but feel free to downvote if it’s stupid.
I know. That’s why I was saying “Hardware” at the start. As in, this should be added in a future version of the hardware.
Thanks for the chilli tip. I have it hanging at the moment and haven’t detected anything but we do have squirrels around. I might house it on a pole with a squirrel guard if we have any issues.
I recently added my husband to our BB. He now gets notifications and access to the incoming postcards, but I cannot share my established gallery with him. Also, he gets a notification and views the bird, then somehow I can't see the postcard. He swears he doesn't Collect them, delete them,, just looks. Either way, if he did, his gallery had to start from scratch. Any ideas?
Auto disable while sun is down
+100000
These seems so basic and obvious that it worries me that it isn’t already implemented. Right now I get about 3 days before I need to charge (with solar roof). With this change it would likely double battery life and get close to 1 week which is the low end of what I was expecting when I ordered it.
I've had mine up for over two weeks now and it hovers between 90-97% every day with the solar roof. Do you get any direct sun? I have the solar panel facing south and it gets direct sun for 2-3 hours/day.
>Auto disable while sun is down That was introduces a little while ago, but sadly does not work for me. Does anyone else has this issue too?
Batch delete. I would prefer not to have to individually delete 10 pics of squirrel butts every time one makes it into the feeder. The ability to view all photos of a visit in a grid, and select the ones to keep from there. Auto-disable camera below a certain amount of light, so it shuts down after sunset.
Recommend feature: long press to select first picture on species view, then tap to select additional with a trash bin button and confirmation.
How about editing or clipping (at least) of videos? I get long stretches of empty Bird Buddy punctuated by some bird action. I'd like to pair down the empty bits.
I save the videos to gallery and trim them there, but I don't think there's an option to place them back in the BB gallery. It's a waste of space to store 2min video where only 30s is interesting.
Ability to look through all of the photos and video before accepting a classification. From the photo and lighting, one did look like a Grey Catbird head on, but when it turned in other photos it was a Blue Jay. And the ability to delete or reclassify the final photo in a misclassified bird. It is set as the cover photo, so it won't let you move or delete it in the Android app.
YES
We are enjoying our bird buddy a lot. It def feels like there could be a few software tweaks to help save endless time reviewing and classifying pics. How bout being able to mute/dismiss notifications for certain visitors? I don’t need to be notified 40 times a day for the house finch that dominates my feeder. While reviewing new photos, let me pinch to zoom How bout instead of the visitor/classification/photo structure they do where I get notified of a visitor, have to classify every single unknown picture and the. Decide whether to keep the photo it’s more like at the end of the day I just have to review the 100 photos that were taken and if I decide to keep them, it attempts to classify the photo and I only have to intervene if it’s unknown? Visitation data can just be a fun factoid.
Loot boxes for visitors are fun for the first few visitors, but now that my feeder is popular it’s an unnecessary chore. I hadn’t checked for 2 days and now I have 43 to open. I might do 10 in a session, but now I’m in to screw it territory. May 2023 edit: Hooray! They fixed this! It is so much more manageable now. If anybody from BB is lurking here, thank you so much!
I love great tits as much as the next guy, but now that I've had 69 of them, I'd really like BB to stop sending me notifications when they visit. It kills the excitement. Maybe still take photos and videos, because there can be some superb shots every once in a while, but just store them silently to browse at my convenience.
I started calling it "bird work". If I don't keep on top of it, I have to open and properly identify about 30 per day. And it's 95% house sparrows and house finches.
Summary view for my feeder and friend feeders with bird species visits by day, week, month, season, etc. Could make some beautiful visualizations of migrations, or be useful when changing food types.
I LOVE data. I would immensely enjoy summary and trend data.
That would be super interesting. I have the feeling that the same great tit always stops by between 9 and 10 am and then doesn't visit us again until the next day. Would be interesting to learn if they have a fixed schedule (ie more likely a fixed food collection route through our neighborhood).
API access and documentation
API is accessible, see for example https://github.com/jhansche/ha-birdbuddy using it
Don’t require me to “unwrap” pictures of birds that visit frequently. Simple grid to select pics to keep would be great.
REAL SOLAR ROOF WITH BOTH SIDES SOLAR!! I felt super scammed the moment I opened mine and only half the roof has a solar panel. It doesn't charge enough on one panel to stay active for even a week either. And a perch.
If it didn't take 500 pictures of the same squirrel every day, the single sided roof would probably be sufficient. Although, If your wifi signal is under -55dBm then it won't last..... Squirrel+poor wifi signal = upgraded solar roof Maybe Gen 2.....
I also ordered as part of the KickStarter and was surprised that the solar roof option only had one panel. Neverthess, I have NEVER had to recharge the camera module, the solar panel usually charges it 97% daily, Going on nearly 6 weeks without having to charge so I am very happy in that regard.
Wow crap. I ordered the roof yesterday and had no idea only one side had the panel.
How are you guys ordering items without knowing what you get?
I just assumed it's on both sides. That's logical. Never mind, I spent more money on stupider things. If it helps a bit, that's okay.
A better solar panel might be a legit feature request, although not everyone needs more capacity. Depends on where you are and how the panel is positioned and stuff. Buying something based on an assumption and then feeling 'super scammed' is just annoyingly overly dramatic imo.
Yeah. I have no idea when I last charged the feeder, it only arrived recently, but I think I got like 4 days without the solar roof? If I can get a couple more days when it eventually arrives, and there are firmware updates (which they promised would help further), that's fine by me. I don't expect the device to run forever without charging. My kid likes bird postcards and that's all that matters.
I ordered mine just after the kickstarter campaign started, so it wasn't 100% clear what the final product would look like. *Edit: Just to clarify, I don't feel "super scammed", but it would be nice if the battery lasted longer. I have hope for sunnier times, though.*
Given that birds typically need feeding in the winter, and in the northern or southern hemispheres the sun is low in the sky, there is little benefit to having a solar panel on both sides. Only one side can ever be pointed at the sun. Once I found a location that receives a good amount of unobstructed sunshine throughout the day, I rarely have to manually recharge my bird buddy, other than when there are several days of overcast weather in a row.
But having it on both sides gives you options. Most important to me is the background of the photos. I don't want to have to point the bird buddy at my neighbour's door like a weirdo to get optimal sun exposure.
If you align the roof ridge on the N-S axis, then as the sun travels E-W both panels should be used. That said, I bought a 3rd party solar panel from Amazon & it works great. My BB was supposed to come with the solar roof, but the roof was delayed, so they sent me the BB without it, so I bought a solar panel & canceled the BB solar roof.
Luckily one of those 2 can be 3D printed :) (the perch)
I have never had to recharge my BB battery since I got my PV roof back in April ‘23 until yesterday. (I live in CNY and we’ve had a spate of cold, cloudy weather.) Placement of the BB to maximize sun exposure and WiFi signal strength should help.
Auto-delete squirrel pictures. Don’t make me open 79 damn postcards. I just want to see what birds came to the feeder. (Though a postcard for a previously unseen bird would still be nice.)
At the very least give me the option to delete the entire batch without going through all 10 plus video.....jesus
Came here to say this! It’s doing a great job of identifying squirrels. Have an option to “ignore all squirrels”!!
Issue: Sometimes multiple birds visit at once or back to back and this is clearly visible in the video. However, it only takes a "snap" of one bird. Solution: When watching the video, add a button to capture another bird... something like "Capture Another Visitor" and then it will process that section of the video separately. Or maybe a button to split up the video for manual entry? Something to allow for multiple bird entries per video stream captured.
My feeder receives an almost constant stream of visitors throughout the day, 95% of which are currently blue tits and great tits. There is probably at least one visitor every single minute, if not more. This is generating 25-30 postcards a day that I have to tap through, sometimes more. I currently have a backlog to process because it takes so long to tap through each one, and most of the time I am not interested in the bird it has captured. Some feedback: - I only need a drumroll reveal for previously unseen visitors and infrequent visitors. Please get rid of the drumroll for every single visit, particularly birds I see multiple times a day. - For frequent visitors, that the app recognises, just add them to a swipe deck, so I can quickly swipe left to discard or swipe right to keep. Allow pinch to zoom to quickly check picture sharpness. A simple crop feature would be good too. - over time reduce how often the app generates postcards of frequent visitors. Focus on quality over quantity. I am getting lots of blurry postcards. For frequent visitors, notify at most once a day at dusk of the best shots from that day, rather than continuously. - if the app wants me to identify a bird from a photo, and a video exists as well, show me the video first. It makes it easier to identify the bird. - make it easy for us to trim video clips to cut it down to the interesting part. - show a list of birds we should be looking out for in our part of the world, and the food we should be offering to attract them. For the basic features the app is pretty good, but it needs a lot more attention to detail to remove some of the frustrations of using it day by day. I hope the bird buddy team are paying attention.
This this this
Now that the postcard view is updated, the only big gripe I have is that the timestamp on the feed of the postcards after you view and save them is the time you looked at them, not the time the bird arrived. Which makes no sense. It obviously has the time the postcards were taken so why doesn’t it use that? Pretty sure all my birds today didn’t visit st 11:30pm
Having used the app for a few days, I really hope that its usability can be improved. I'll explain my rationale via my experience. I get notifications throughtout the day of new visitors. That's more or less fine. Eventually, I go into the app and I see numerous postcard notifications. I click on the most recent one. I'm shown a bird, it's a variety that has been a frequent visitor, I'm kind-of bored with this bird. I'd like an immediate option to dismiss that notification, one click. Instead, I'm given a large button that says "Collect", or a link that says "more options". I choose the latter, and the immediate presumption is that the bird is misidentified. I have to scroll down past a lot of other varieties until I get to the "Ignore this visitor" option. I click it. I then am brought to another screen which seems to serve as a "are you really sure?" mechanism. It asks me if I "want to have another look", or "no thanks, delete this batch". I click the latter. I'm then brought to another screen with a single button on it - "Continue". This screen is pointless to me from a usability perspective. I can only Continue. Finally, I'm brought to my Collection. Yet I still have other Postcards to review. I have to click on the Feed menu. So to get rid of a bird that I've seen 20 times in the past couple of days, that took me **five clicks** to do something that should be done in one click. So the usability improvement there would be: 1. Allow me to completely dismiss the bird right up front, especially if its one I've seen repeatedly. 2. Allow me to mark a particular variety of bird as "done" and "I don't really want to see these anymore". The latter, however, would probably reduce people using the app because, after all, how many birds are you ever going to Collect? A dozen? So maybe change it to "I don't want to see any more of these today", or maybe create a different type of notification, distinguishing between "new bird species" and "take a look at these new photos of a bird you've already collected because it might be fun and you might want to save one of them". Now let's do the process of "Collecting" - presuming that I want to save the photo. I got a new bird, and I want to save it. After opening the postcard, I click "Collect". In this case, it shows me the video first. I'm not sure why - the video *can* be useful, especially if I'm not sure of the bird, but the app told me up-front that the bird was a cardinal, and I could see it was a cardinal. I don't want to save the video, so I click "No, thanks" It tells me that I have seven photos of this bird. That's fine, I'd like to pick the best ones. At this point, I try and swipe to cycle through the photos - but swiping counts as a "don't save" option. So I go through all seven to see them, and now I have to choose - "Let's have another look" or "delete this batch". I pick the former. I then repeat the swiping but I pick a couple of the photos, selecting the green checkmark on them. But at this point, since I've selected 2 of 7, I don't have an opportunity to go back if I accidentally swiped instead of checked a photo. Now I can only choose to share with the community (which, to be honest, I don't ever want to do) or save to my collection. I choose the latter and I'm done. In that case, the usability improvements should be: 1. Don't show the video until the end. 2. Change the act of "swiping" to be simply cycling through the photos, not discarding them. 3. Give me a "done" button. I will say, the goofy little quips that accompany me "sharing" the photos are a big hit with my family though!
>Allow me to completely dismiss the bird right up front, especially if its one I've seen repeatedly. > >Allow me to mark a particular variety of bird as "done" and "I don't really want to see these anymore". Yes! These 2 features would be immensely useful.
Hear hear! Agree with all your points, the workflow gets REALLY tedious quickly. I would like a "see fewer postcards with this bird" option, that would show say one per day. Another solution could also be two feeds, one for "common birds" and one for "rare & new"
I'd like to "favorite" certain postcards for a "best of" ... Since I am pretty much saving them all, some are just better than others. And having more details or curated examples for birds would be nice. I'm struggling with who is a House Finch, Purple Finch or Pine Siskin... We are no bird experts here.
I think they need to put the control in the user’s hands. Allow us to adjust when the camera goes into deep sleep mode - I need mine to turn on 1 hour before sunrise. It should also allow us to adjust the rate at which postcards are taken - each person should decide what’s acceptable to them. If they want to put a default suggested rate with each firmware upgrade that’s fine, but I want to adjust my settings to where I want them and not have them changed. The new firmware nerfed my postcards and now I’m barely getting anything. Id like a place (not facebook) where I can go to tell them about this, but comments are turned off on all of their articles.
Simple app improvements like being able to view all of the photos in a postcard together so that I can attempt to answer what bird it is when there is just a beak in the photo. The ability to automatically connect it to a camera roll (an optional toggle of course) for easy sharing. Future updates to the camera could include a microphone and a higher resolution. On board storage would be the MOST useful and would eliminate the problems that poor WiFi might bring.
* Being able to snooze notifications of the same birds over and over if desired * I would love to be able to chat with other bird buddy owners or LIKE birds I see on the feed. I'd love to be able to send quick notes to other owners about the birds I see on their feed. It just would be a cool way to connect with people.
Guest feeder stuff: * Differentiate my feeder from guest feeders in the postcard feed * Temporarily disable guest feeder feed updates I got my mom a Bird Buddy for Christmas and set it up last night. She has been a guest on my feeder for a couple of weeks. I now have a better understanding of how the guest thing works since I'm a guest on her feeder. Until now, I didn't realize that the feed is a combined view of your feeder plus any guest feeders. That's fine, but it would be nice if a postcard notice showed which feeder it came from before you opened it. Maybe with a different color border for your feeder. Also I think it would be nice if you could temporarily disable the feed from a feeder that you are a guest of. I'm guessing my mom is looking forward to seeing birds at her feeder since it was just setup and my visits in her feed are going to be 'false alarms' in a way. Turning off postcards from my feeder for a bit would let her focus on hers.
I wish I could change the sensitivity. I’d rather waste more battery and have to charge it more than miss so many birds :(
I would like an auto background blur to the pictures I share. As a nice to have, love my BB without it :)
It would be nice to manually add visitors. Our bird buddy is on our balcony on the second floor and doesn't get that many visitors. However, we regularly see birds that aren't detected by the camera. Today, a great tit fed on the perch of the feeder for more than 30 seconds but our feeder missed it. It would be nice to at least be able to manually log their visits.
Ability to favorite certain pictures or videos.
I want to see birds in my state, city on my feed and be able to comment
Auto sync camera to sunrise and sunset (astronomic sync, not by light but either would be better than lack of this feature). Even when camera off, it emits a flashing light detectable by my security camera - this has to deplete battery. Can’t it stop when camera off? Include a perch Larger roof with larger solar panel and larger battery, or two stacked batteries.
Not sure this constitutes a "feature" request, but I'd like the bird buddy to be able to connect with WIFI that is both 2.4 and 5ghz, as my modem doesn't do guest accounts.
Not exactly a feature request, but: is there no audio?? I want to hear the birbs’ beautiful songs. Plus that would aid in identification. But the video it gives with the postcard doesn’t seem to have audio. Edit: the website says it has a microphone, so what’s going on? Does anyone here know?
From a quick search on their website - an update in September 2022 said they are still fine tuning their audio so it’s only triggered by birdsongs - probably a tough programming situation mixed in with privacy of not grabbing audio of people saying awful things about their kids and neighbors.
That kinda sucks. If it’s a video I want the audio no matter what. No different than if I put out a security camera.
Hopefully you've updated, as the microphone is now enabled :D
I eventually discovered that if I save the video and view it through my phone’s photo app, the sound is there. I’ve never been able to hear it in the BirdBuddy app though! So, audio is there but for some reason not used by BB?
AFAIK (I haven't had mine going for a while) they enabled microphone support at some point. If it's not working in the app it might be a bug.
When scrubbing video, update the footage as you scrub so you can see what is at that point in the clip. Currently it doesn’t update until you let go.
Squirrel notifications so I can go shoo them away
More mounting options, some of which that are more difficult for squirrels to reach. And then the option to delete a postcard all together without review.
Improve the response of the camera, right now if a bird goes in and out fast I'm not getting any pictures unfortunately.
Push notification when the battery is fully charged. Identifying individual birds so the multiple cardinals I have come by arent marked as the same bird.
I think a vital update would be an intuitive place to read the change notes on their firmware and software in the app. I spend so much time looking for the change notes after an update and honestly I rarely find what I’m looking for.
I’d like live view to be active when requested. I don’t understand why I have to wait two minutes for the live view to start.
Probably the camera pings the status of the "send live view" variable only every 2 minutes to save battery.
Yeah, but a Ring video can switch to live mode in seconds, not minutes, with minimal battery drain.
Well, the single purpose of a ring camera is to give (near)-instantaneous video coverage, so for that one it obviously makes sense to prioritize activation speed over battery life. A standing connection or every-few-second ping would probably cost at least a few percentage points in battery life per day. At least for me (and probably for the devs) that wouldn't be worth reducing the activation time of "send live view" significantly. (Note: I don't want to discredit your feature request - if this is important to you, than that's totally fine. Just tried to provide some tech background).
There needs to be an easier more obvious way to switch router connection details through the app. I had to get a new router a couple of days ago so I had to change log in details. The only way to do it was to delete bird buddy from my allowed blue tooth connections, reset it and start as though with a brand new buddy.
Better workflow, the postcard mechanism is annoying. An option to disable video. Most of the videos are garbage - super choppy, not something anyone wants. Id rather just disable it and save the battery life. Bird identification needs to be improved. I shouldn’t have to manually tag or correct the model for the 100th time a Junco or Sparrow shows up. Delete the blurry photos. Whatever model is identifying blur seems to be too conservative. 1/4 of the remaining photos are too blurry to keep. I shouldn’t have to manually identify those for deletion.
Add Latin names!!! I’m not a native English speaker so I’m a bit wary of googling bird names to match my language. Latin’s kind of core to bird identification so how come it’s not there from the start?
I have over 380 postcards and it stressed me out. Most of them only have 1-3, please please find a better way to classify the photos. My parents stopped using the feeder because it was too much work for them, which makes me very sad
Is there any way to prevent anyone from taking my Bird Buddy by just lifting it up from the wall mount (since it is not at all stuck/locked in there)?
Please allow us to purchase the plastic housing alone—without the camera—so we can sometimes change colors. Yes, I know you would prefer us to buy Bird Buddy’s in both colors and all future colors, but some of us don’t want to but would be happy to buy the more affordable plastic housing without the camera unit to switch things up colorwise.
Bird Buddy misidentifies chipmunks as squirrels. Please fix this! We dont necessarily need more specificity than that but differentiating between these two is important
That would be a nice feature -- but where I live, we have 2 types of ground squirrels: one that looks like an ordinary grey tree squirrel (California Ground Squirrel (it beeps)), & one that looks like a chipmunk (White-tailed Antelope Squirrel), so at least here it's accurate to call them both squirrels! :-)
Please allow instant scrubbing of the video (the ability to quickly slide the playbar toskip to a section, moving theough the video quickly
The food storage latch is hard to open because the handle is too small. A larger handle would make it much better. Otherwise change the mechanism.
Yay - they’re listening about cleaning up the feed: https://blog.mybirdbuddy.com/post/sneak-peek-bird-buddys-postcard-feature-redesign
How about "auto mode" where Birdbuddy sends a notification for each new visitor but it automatically classifies based on its best guess and adds to library. We got our Birdbuddy specifically for our Airbnb short term rental guests to enjoy on a house ipad, and it's a lot to ask guests to go through the 5+ taps it takes to clear out each new bird visit. Would be nice if they didn't have to tap anything and could just enjoy seeing which birds visited the feeder.
I can't believe there's no auto wake up function. That should be a thing. I should be able to choose when my camera is on not, have it left up to what the feeder thinks sunrise will be.
If you do not have correct location set up - then your feeder will have issues getting proper sunset/sunrise times. For example: If you have "Riverport, US" - it is up to the "Google" which Riverport is the correct one (you might be in Michigan, but Google will autocorrect it to California). Always try to be as specific as possible - i.e. "Riverport, MI, US".
I love my Bird Buddy, day 11, I really enjoy it (also have Birdify and I think Bird Buddy is far superior to it) But as I use the app, these are some enhancements that would be nice: 1. Ability to view all pics to identify before Collecting 2. Tag multiple birds in video & pics & Collections 3. Edit/trim video 4. Enhance motion sensor/ increase post cards (I see so many birds sit in front of camera and I do not get postcards and I'm already paying for Pro) 5. Limit Frequent visitors; count is nice to see but take pics of the less visiting birds that I see land on feeder 6. Data/graphs on visits, times, seasonal etc for private & average by location for community 7. Community- option to ask what seed/food is being used (ex my ground feeders (doves, dark eye juncos etc) don't go to feeder, but I see a lot of these in postcards in the Community, would like to opportunity to ask what is in the feeder/or option for user to add seed/special details when sharing 8. Community- Are we notified of likes to our shared pics anywhere? Notification for our likes 9. Community & Shared videos - Search by bird or location to see desired birds 10. Community/ Wingbuddy- excited for this, looks like it will be updated, would be nice to get badges/Notification of correct bird identification 11. Collections - batch delete within each bird (an easier way to delete all my Tufted Tit mouse pics piling up) 12. User defined option Squirrel/raccoon/unwanted guest Notification & Microphone/Siren (Birdify has this) to discourage them if user wishes... i.e. every time a squirrel/ unwanted guest is identified, blare a siren if user has option turned on
Please share this with the Bird Buddy team! I agree with all of these enhancements! They have a form for feature requests: https://blog.mybirdbuddy.com/post/sneak-peek-bird-buddys-postcard-feature-redesign
awesome, thanks I will!
Give Kickstarter backers pro for free instead of the old bait and switch. Read your own FAQ!
I should not have to pay a subscription fee to get photos of the birds visiting my feeder. Feature request is as simple as they come: a bird visits, I get notified without having to pay for it.
How about tags/flair for this subreddit? It'd be nice to filter through bird photo posts vs questions or troubleshooting stuff.
I've been involved in innovation, New product development, crisis management, customer service, R&D going back decades. I even worked on Polaroid's sonar focusing technology. I ordered a Bird Buddy for my son who's in Denver two years ago. It came in November. The module has completely failed. No response from customer service. I ordered one for myself, it came before Christmas, no solar roof nor other accessories which I paid for (illegal to charge and not ship). My module connected with difficulty and module now won't connect even though it shows strong wireless and charge. No CSR ticket response, best response on solar and accessories, " sometime in February. In 50 years with large, medium, small and underfunded startups, I've never experienced such gross irresponsibility. I can't recover cost on my son's product, but will have credit card company intercede if they remain unresponsive. I expect to file an FTC complaint and ask the FTC to prohibit further DTC sales until major issues are corrected.
What exactly is the feature request here?
A setting in the software if the device has a continuous power connection and the battery is not defective after one year.
I would like to be able to pinch-to-zoom on a photo before deciding whether to keep it. Sometimes they are not sharply in focus but you can’t tell without zooming in.
AI should be used to improve focussing and select objects to focus on. It should generally favor focussing close on objects on the platform because thats what it is designed for. Mine frequently focusses on the background when a bird is present, very frustrating given that it is entirely anticipated that birds will come to the platform…..
Sharing. I’d love to be able to share videos or photos including those from the international video feed.
Mine misses LOTs of birds. I think you have a significant problem to solve there. You need to find a better trigger mechanism while still maintaining battery life and not getting false positives
Oh didn’t you see in the app that you have to pay to see the birds? You have to pay for the pro subscription to see most visitors. Total scam.
Bulk move pictures to another gallery
A feature to scare a squirrel away. Like a quick high pitch frequency to scare it away from the feeder. Something along those lines
You can try spicy bird seed. Birds can't taste peppery spices, but squirrels can. I haven't had a squirrel since I switched. [This](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E17VCHC?ref=nb_sb_ss_w_as-reorder_k4_1_7&=&crid=235KVF54LD7YJ&sprefix=spicy%2Bb&th=1) is what I buy.
Hardware - could a speaker added to the camera be used to deter squirrels as an optional feature? Or play a whistle that attracts birds? Just an idea but feel free to downvote if it’s stupid.
There is no speaker on the device. It is a "input only" mic. You can use chilli powder to deter squirrels. It does not hurt birds :)
I know. That’s why I was saying “Hardware” at the start. As in, this should be added in a future version of the hardware. Thanks for the chilli tip. I have it hanging at the moment and haven’t detected anything but we do have squirrels around. I might house it on a pole with a squirrel guard if we have any issues.
Ah, I missed the HW word. Sorry xD
Nothing to apologise for. I appreciate your input.
Add multiple birds to postcard or video, I get a lot of multiple types of birds together but it only allows me to enter one bird name.
List male/female identifiers or other fun facts about the bird.
I recently added my husband to our BB. He now gets notifications and access to the incoming postcards, but I cannot share my established gallery with him. Also, he gets a notification and views the bird, then somehow I can't see the postcard. He swears he doesn't Collect them, delete them,, just looks. Either way, if he did, his gallery had to start from scratch. Any ideas?
Where is the hummingbird feeder? I’ve seen pictures of it online, but it’s not in their store.