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Hardware

The recommended build for this project - other hardware variants and combinations might work, but haven't been verified. If you come up with something cool, let me know!

Parts

Part What I recommend
Board Raspberry Pi 5, 2 GB
Storage microSD card (32 GB or more)
Cooling Raspberry Pi Active Cooler
Panel Inky Impression 13.3" (Spectra 6, 1600x1200)
Mic Boya BY-M3*, plus a USB-C to USB-A adapter
Power Official Raspberry Pi 27W USB-C power supply
Frame IKEA RÖDALM 21x30 (A4)

* No longer an active product, I'm looking for an alternative to recommend - suggestions welcome!

Why these

  • 2 GB RAM is enough. BirdNET-Go does the classifying and the frame only renders a collage every few minutes, and at the time of writing Pis with more RAM are very expensive.
  • 32 GB or more storage, to hold the sound clips and the artwork.
  • The active cooler is not optional. BirdNET-Go runs the classifier continuously, and the Pi 5 runs surprisingly hot.
  • The official power supply. Anything weaker and the Pi throttles or browns out under load.

Alternatives

  • Pi 4 should work but is untested (will probably be a little slower - unsure about cooling)
  • Other USB mics are fine, as long as they go in a USB-A port - the USB-C port is the power input. run.sh picks the capture device from arecord -l, so anything ALSA sees will do; re-run it after swapping mics.
  • NVMe instead of microSD works and spares the card BirdNET-Go's constant writes, but we don't recommend it here: the HAT adds cost, height and heat for a workload that is mostly idle - and at the time of writing NVMe drives are crazy expensive.
  • Other Inky displays are supported but not recommended - you lose resolution and size. The panel is optional entirely: the frame serves the same view as a web kiosk, so you can run it on an HDMI display or fully headless.

Enclosure/Frame

The panel board is exactly A4 - 297 x 210 mm - so it fits any A4 picture frame.

I used the IKEA RÖDALM 21x30. It sits pretty snug, and at 3 cm it is barely deep enough for the Pi to sit inside without touching the wall.

Tip

This frame is cheap, so it lets you mess up a few times without it costing your right kidney.

Front to back:

front                                                          back
  |
  +-- plastic front sheet (optional - adds glare, flattens the mat)
  +-- passepartout, cut down to fit
  +-- e-ink panel, with the Pi mounted to it on the included screws
  +-- the frame's own plastic spacer, tightened against the metal fasteners
  +-- open cavity (let the Pi breathe)
  x   no backing board

Cutting the passepartout

The included mat is cut for a much smaller picture, so cut your own from it with a sharp craft knife and a steel ruler: 20 mm along the short sides, 15 mm along the long sides. That leaves a border wide enough to hide the panel's bezel and the edge of the board, without intruding too much on the image.

Tip

Cut against the steel ruler in several light passes rather than one hard one - and buy a spare mat or two or three (recommended from experience).

Airflow

Leave the backing board out, or cut a big hole in it.

Warning

The Pi and the active cooler sit in the cavity behind the panel, and the constant BirdNET inference gets them quite hot. Don't close the back up.

Rubber feet in the back corners give the frame some clearance from whatever it rests against.

Note

Hanging it is still an open problem for me - whatever you come up with has to hold it off the wall, not flat against it.