Everything you need to know about heardhere — how it works, what it detects, and what to expect.
A heardhere unit is a weatherproof, solar-powered acoustic monitoring station. It listens to your site 24 hours a day — identifying birds by their calls at dawn and throughout the day, and detecting bats by their ultrasonic echolocation calls at dusk and through the night. All detections are uploaded in real time to a live website unique to your location, along with a daily AI-written field note summarising what was heard.
No. The unit runs entirely on solar power via an onboard LiFePO4 battery, and connects to the internet over 4G. It can be deployed in remote locations with no infrastructure — woodland edges, field margins, nature reserves, upland sites — anywhere with reasonable phone signal and adequate sunlight.
Via a 4G SIM. The unit uploads bird and bat detections every 15 minutes. Data usage is modest — typically a few hundred megabytes per month — and we manage the SIM as part of the platform subscription.
The unit is housed in a weatherproof enclosure mounted on a post or tree at approximately head height. A small solar panel is positioned to catch maximum sun. Two microphones are attached — one facing upward for birds, one facing outward for bats. Installation typically takes around an hour and requires no specialist equipment. We handle the setup and configuration.
The LiFePO4 battery is sized to run the unit through the night and carry several days of reserve in low-light conditions. In deep winter at UK latitudes, solar input is reduced but the detection windows are also shorter. Units are designed to be resilient through typical UK winter conditions, though extended overcast periods in December and January may occasionally reduce upload frequency.
Bird calls are identified using BirdNET, a deep learning model developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Chemnitz University of Technology. BirdNET analyses 15-second audio clips and matches them against a library of over 6,000 species. Each detection includes a confidence score — we typically display detections above 70% confidence.
BirdNET performs well on common UK species but like all AI models, it can occasionally misidentify species with similar calls, particularly in noisy conditions. Treat the data as strong evidence rather than certainty.
Bat echolocation calls are recorded by an AudioMoth ultrasonic microphone at 384kHz — well above the range of human hearing. They are then identified using BatDetect2, a neural network trained on UK bat species. Detection confidence scores are shown on the bats page.
Bat identification by call is inherently more challenging than bird identification — some species have overlapping echolocation frequencies, and call characteristics vary with behaviour. Results are best interpreted at the species group level (e.g. Pipistrelle species) rather than always at exact species level.
Yes — owl calls fall within the frequency range detected by the bird microphone and BirdNET includes Tawny Owl, Barn Owl, Little Owl and other UK species. However, the current unit hardware means there is a brief overlap window around dusk (approximately one hour after sunset) during which the bat detection system takes priority and bird detection is paused. Owl detections from earlier in the evening and pre-dawn are captured normally.
Effective detection range varies by species and conditions. Loud, clear singers like Chaffinch or Blackbird may be detected at 50–100 metres in still conditions. Quieter species or calls in wind or rain will have a shorter effective range. For bats, the AudioMoth at 384kHz typically detects echolocation calls within 10–30 metres depending on species and call intensity.
Yes — wind noise and heavy rain reduce detection sensitivity and can generate false positives. The AI models are generally robust to mild background noise but performance drops in severe weather. This is reflected in the detection data — you'll notice fewer detections on stormy days, which is ecologically meaningful as well as technical.
Detection data uploads every 15 minutes. The live station page refreshes automatically, so you'll see new detections appear without reloading. The AI Naturalist field note is generated once per day at approximately 08:00, covering the previous 24 hours of acoustic activity.
Each morning, an AI (Claude, by Anthropic) reads the previous 24 hours of bird and bat detections and writes a short field note in the style of a nature journal — warm, precise, and ecologically informed. It's not a summary of statistics; it's an attempt to interpret what the acoustic record means for the life of the site.
The AI Naturalist draws on the detection data only — it doesn't have eyes or ears at the site. Think of it as a thoughtful observer making sense of the numbers, not a replacement for human expertise.
Yes — each station has a public URL (e.g. dam-mire-wood.heardhere.uk) that anyone can visit. You can share it freely, embed it in your own website, or link to it from social media. We also provide embed codes for displaying a detection count, species badge, or naturalist note on external websites.
All detection data is stored and the activity calendar on the birds and bats pages shows the full history since the unit was installed. Owners can request a CSV export of raw detection data via the owner dashboard. We're working on extended data views including year-on-year species comparisons and phenology tracking.
The bird microphone (AB13X) and the bat microphone (AudioMoth at 384kHz) share the same USB bus on the Raspberry Pi that powers the unit. The AudioMoth's ultrasonic recording at 384kHz requires significant USB bandwidth — enough that both microphones cannot operate simultaneously without conflict.
To ensure reliable bat detection from dusk onwards, bird detection is paused at sunset and resumes an hour before dawn. This means there is approximately one hour each evening (around dusk) and one transition each morning where only one sensor is active. We're working on hardware solutions for future units to eliminate this gap entirely.
The unit is designed to recover automatically from power loss. On restart, it checks what time it is, determines whether it should be in bird or bat detection mode, and resumes immediately. Detections made while offline are stored locally and uploaded in batches once connectivity is restored. The station page will show the last known update time if the unit has been offline.
Yes — each unit connects to Tailscale, a secure VPN. As the station owner, you can SSH into the unit from anywhere in the world to check logs, update configuration, or diagnose issues. Connection details are available on your owner dashboard.
heardhere is built on the shoulders of excellent open-source projects. Bird identification uses BirdNET-Pi (Cornell Lab of Ornithology / Chemnitz University). Bat detection uses BatDetect2 via the acoupi framework. Audio recording uses AudioMoth from Open Acoustic Devices. We're grateful to the teams behind all of these.
Get in touch via the contact form. Tell us about your site — where it is, what habitat, and what you're hoping to monitor. We'll come back to you within a couple of days to discuss the best setup for your needs and talk through installation.
Absolutely. The live station website is designed to be accessible to anyone — no technical knowledge needed. Schools can use the live data to support nature study and citizen science projects. The AI Naturalist field note gives daily context that makes the data meaningful for non-specialists. We're happy to discuss educational partnerships and reduced-cost arrangements for schools and community groups.
heardhere is built on open-source components and we're a small team who believe in openness. If you're technically minded and want to self-host, get in touch — we're happy to point you in the right direction. The managed service (unit + platform + support) is designed for those who want the monitoring without the technical overhead.