RPi0W2 Installation Guide

BirdNET-Pi on a Raspberry Pi 0W2

Before you get started you should have realistic expectations about how responsive BirdNET-Pi will be on this modest hardware. You are welcome to take a look at an example BirdNET-Pi0W2 installation to get an idea of how things should run for you.

What needs to change

1. The RAM on the Pi0W2 is too small for our needs, so we're going to increase the swap size
2. Things run a bit slower, so we're going to increase the default recording length from 15 seconds to 30 seconds
3. The power_save settings for the WiFi card are always on, so we need to turn them off on boot to keep the installation reachable

(optional)

1. If you want a smoother interface, you can disable any services you don't use, e.g., Live Audio Stream, Web Terminal, BirdNET Log (the "View Log" page), Streamlit Statistics (the "Species Stats" page), Chart Viewer (this creates the charts you see on the "Overview" and "Daily Charts" pages), Spectrogram Viewer (the "Spectrogram" page), or Pushed Notifications. You can easily disable these services as needed in "Tools" > "Services". Be sure to select "Disable" and not "Stop" to ensure the service is not started again on reboot.

How to install on the Raspberry Pi 0 W 2

1. Type or paste the following into the SSH terminal when you first connect to the Raspberry Pi (before you have installed BirdNET-Pi). These commands will adjust the default swap size for the installation to mitigate the RPi0W2's RAM constraints and will put a line in rc.local disabling the WiFi power_save mode on each boot to keep the installation reachable:

   sudo sed -i 's/CONF_SWAPSIZE=100/CONF_SWAPSIZE=2048/g' /etc/dphys-swapfile &&
   sudo sed -i 's/#CONF_MAXSWAP=2048/CONF_MAXSWAP=4096/g' /etc/dphys-swapfile &&
   sudo sed -i '/^exit 0/i sudo iw wlan0 set power_save off' /etc/rc.local &&
   sudo reboot
   

2. When the system comes back up after the reboot, follow the standard installation guide

3. Finally, when the installation is complete and the system has come back up after its last reboot, go to "Tools" > "Settings" > "Advanced Settings" to adjust the "Recording Length" up to 30 seconds. Don't forget to "Update Settings."

That is it! When the system comes back up you will have a fully functioning (albeit a little slower) BirdNET-Pi.

Notes

While all of the features work, some things are not worth using, namely the Species Stats page.