Description

I plan to build a custom wooden bird feeder and attach it to my flat's balcony to provide winter snacks for local birds. However, this will be no ordinary feeder; it will feature a PTZ IP Camera positioned specifically to monitor the visitors.

The camera feed will be recorded by an open-source NVR software running on an OpenSUSE virtual machine within our home hypervisor. The system must be capable of using image recognition to detect when a bird arrives for sunflower seeds and log the event timestamp.

Ideally, the software will support Multi-Object Tracking (MOT) to assign unique IDs to individual birds and track the concurrent count of birds at the feeder. This metric will be transmitted via MQTT to Home Assistant for long-term storage and visualization.

Best case scenario would be if the NVR software could do bird classification and log the bird type.

Goals

• Hardware Setup
  • Build and install the bird feeder.
  • Mount and position the PTZ camera.
• Infrastructure
  • Prepare the OpenSUSE VM on the hypervisor.
  • Select the appropriate NVR software.
• Software Installation
  • Install the OS and system dependencies.
  • Install the NVR software.
  • Add the camera feed to the NVR.
• AI & Integration
  • Configure image recognition and object detection.
  • Setup Multi-Object Tracking (MOT).
  • Configure MQTT to send data to Home Assistant.
  • Setup graphing in Home Assistant.

Resources