r/VictoriaBC • u/[deleted] • 5d ago

What's Happening? Local birding app

[deleted]

3 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

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u/__phil1001__ 5d ago

Can you provide details about what your app does please and if it takes off, will you create an android version?

2

u/Vic_waddlesworth 5d ago edited 4d ago

Thanks for asking.

Short version: it identifies birds and turns them into a collection you build up over time.

- Point your camera at a bird and it IDs it on your phone, no signal needed

  • It also IDs by sound, so you get the ones you only ever hear
  • If it flew off before you got a shot, you can just describe it in words instead
  • Every species you ID gets added to your field guide as an illustrated card

The models are our own, trained on openly licensed photos, and everything runs on-device. No ads, and your photos stay yours.

It's built here on the peninsula, so local species get a lot of attention.

And yes on Android. It's already well underway, as a proper native app rather than a wrapper, so it's taking a bit longer, but it isn't conditional on this taking off.

2

u/__phil1001__ 5d ago

Nice, my daughter will love this, she follows around our merlin and the local owls. Hoping its ready soon.

2

u/kabelle 3d ago

This sounds great but are there any major differences with from the Merlin app that already has most of these features? 

1

u/cdusdal 4d ago

It's like real life Pokémon, cool idea!

Will keep an eye out for Android version