@heartny People with more money than brains. (There is widespread misunderstanding among the miseducated that rich people are rich because they’re smart. This is seldom true. Rich people are rich mostly because they started off with a fair bit of money and they’re assholes enough to steal everything the law allows from everyone that they sucker into doing business with them.)
@heartny@werehatrack While true to an extent, you get far more precision if you also include proximity to whoever has the money and power, and the character of the relationships (social peers vs. the abused). That provides a little more wiggle room for smart people to, let’s say, squirrel away some of the seed without drawing blood.
@heartny@werehatrack oh yeah “the law allows” varies from class to class, influence to influence, lawyer to lawyer. “the law allows” is as gray as that catbird over there.
@jandrese I resemble that remark. Some say you can’t have one without the other. Or else the genius causes depression and psychoses. So the stupidity seems like a better deal.
@jandrese@pmarin I can think of some counterexamples. I suspect it more goes, genius is difference, and extreme difference can create loneliness, which leads to the other issues. (Thus, cherish the institutions that bring those different geniuses together to ameliorate that…)
@AySz88@jandrese@pmarin There’s a House episode where the patient is a parcel delivery guy who turns out to be a super-genius physicist who’s been “self-medicating” to cognitively impair himself so he can have something like a normal romantic relationship. When they have to put him on dialysis during treatment and the drugs are cleared out of his system, he says he feels as remote from his wife intellectually in his normal state as most people feel from monkeys. It comes off as both arrogant and heartbreaking.
@PeteJolicoeur@tinamarie1974 Subscription is also required for storage of the videos on the cloud (as opposed to an SD card), if I’m reading correctly. That raises the question of whether fetching/watching video from the SD card works with their app.
@AySz88@PeteJolicoeur@tinamarie1974 No idea, but almost certainly not. Wyze learned their lesson & now gouges everyone for the unforgivable crime of glancing in their general direction.
I’ve got a Bird Buddy and like it a lot. I’ve got it hanging from a shepherd’s hook in my yard. I mostly get house sparrows, but I also get cardinals and other birds.
If I had it mounted to a tree, I think it would be a squirrel feeder. I’ve only had a couple of squirrel visits where it is. My neighbor’s cats like to hang out in my yard, which may help.
The solar cells kept it fully charged all summer, but they sun has dropped below the tops of the neighborhood trees, and we’ve had some rainy days, so I’m charging it right now. I hope that improves when the leaves fall. I anticipate a better mix of birds in the winter, once the supply of free insects dries up.
The subscription for this one is, according to their Web site, free for the first year, then $40 a year after that. Assuming they are still in business. Dumping these here isn’t a good sign of company health, unless they have a new model coming out.
It’s got an SD card slot, so it should have some basic functionality without a subscription.
I may get one of these as a secondary feeder. I like that it can be hung from the top. I don’t like that it must be facing south for the solar charging to work.
@craigthom My Bird Buddy experience was about the opposite: even though it was hanging from a shepherd’s hook in a sunny spot in the yard and the solar panel was plugged into the camera module, it would run out of juice after a few days and require recharging inside. Also, the small bird-seed holding tank required more frequent refills than any of my other feeders.
After a few months of that, I eventually took them down and now when I walk by them, I say to myself, “I should probably put those back up sometime…”
@andymand@craigthom I got the Birdfy one as a gift and have it on the deck to avoid squirrels. I bring it inside to charge it every few days, it sits in the shade. I love looking at my little birds. And the squirrels my dog doesn’t chase off. Right now I’m not getting much traffic, I hope to get more once it gets cold.
Plus it has night vision and I get cardinals at dusk. The Birdfy software swears they are random gray birds that live nowhere near here. It also called a squirrel a mallard duck. This amuses me.
Still, I dunno how I feel about these vague possibility that a company might flip the product and cloud user base to some unsuspecting equity manager desperate to own some “AI”, who might not notice how the users’ continued subscriptions would be tied to the lifetime of the perhaps-flimsy equipment (and so, would churn more than usual customers to something like Netflix).
If you scroll down in this Wired review of smart bird feeders you’ll find this one. He says it’s usable without a subscription, but the picture quality and solar charging suck.
@adityanambiar Huh, it seems like it was com.hellobirdie.app but it’s gone, not even an APK from a reputable archive. Is this stripped of cloud stuff entirely, then? What’s the “internal AI” thing, and was it confirmed working?
@adityanambiar The Apple app still exists, but when I enter my e-mail address to receive a verification code so that I can create an account, no email shows up.
If it recognized & released food only to birds, and then recognized squirrels & didn’t release food to them - that would be something. I thought that’s where this was going, but didn’t see that was the case???
@njfan my friend used to buy peanuts to feed the birds but of course squirrels figured out where thing were happenin’ too. Then his car gave him an ABS error because squirrels had started eating the wires. So he stopped the feedings. Rest assured there is plenty of natural food in that area without an old man tossing peanuts.
This is another item from meh that I go to check the Play Store for the app, and it has been removed.
I’m sure I could find the .apk on a mirror site, but that means the app won’t be supported or updated.
If it is available here at this price, it means one of 2 things… 1. they are launching v2 soon, or (more likely) they are going to be extinct soon. Caveat emptor y’all.
We have one of the few anti-squirrel designs that actually work - two cylinders, and when something too heavy gets on, the outer cylinder drops, blocking access to the food inside the inner cylinder. It took only two days before the local squirrel gang stopped trying altogether, and now the bird food goes to the birds.
If somebody made a smart version of that I’d be down. It’d even have the advantage of being able to trigger off weight and not a flaky attempt at object recognition…
@djslack Seven years ago when I got it, there weren’t that many options. But now it appears the Chinese alphabet-soup companies have realized there’s a market, so there’s tons of options now.
I have a “Squirrel Buster” and it’s very well-made, but twice the cost of the newer options.
Amazon has this sort of thing for $30 if you shop around. Check out Dealnews.com and find them there. I have a few of these from different brands and they all more or less work. The big difference is in the apps. Some are OK, some aren’t.
This was interesting. I am kind of glad I missed it, but the solar charger might be worth it to power another camera (unfortunately the WYZE units I have are from Meh and use micro-USB).
Either way, I should really climb my roof and just patch up the gutters instead of dangling birdhouses.
Mine arrived today. I noticed that the Hello Birdie app wasn’t available for the current version of Android, but I have an old phone on my desk that I leave my security camera open on, and it’s old enough that Hello Birdie came up fine in it. (Android 9)
The camera is charging up now, but what I’d really like is to find an RSTP port to connect to from some other device. My router picked this up as a “Tmezon PTZ” camera, but I couldn’t seem to find a connect to it from there. nmap didn’t give me anything useful, though port 20202 gives me a “not found” response, and 6670 is… uh, there I guess.
I’d appreciate any other assistance for viewing the camera’s video feed without needing the app.
@styloroc It does let you get some fun images, at least, though I don’t see where to go to get it to actually do the bird identification. It says it does, says it identified a bird, but I think what they mean “Something was moving, I have figured out that it was a bird and not a leaf or a squirrel.” That’s a lot less impressive.
Anyone else with an iPhone having a hard time setting up an account for the app? I’ve contacted the company, but all they’ve sent me is a “work ticket” form e-mail to fill out. 🫤
The Android app hasn’t been updated in almost 20 months, so any current phones won’t allow the install as the “app was developed for an older version of Android.” Used an old phone and got it to install, but most of the time it’s a photo, not a video. I think out of the 20ish detections, it got one bird almost correct (identified a finch, but not the right one.) The rest of the time it just gives you random bird identifications with a 20-30% certainty. The same bird was identified a 5 different birds. The company support is non-existent. I’ve put in 3 requests for support and got no response. I’m requesting a refund.
Specs
Product: Hello Birdie Solar Roof Smart Bird Feeder and Accessories
Model: E311311172000, E311726240000
Condition: New
What’s Included?
Price Comparison
$299.99 at Limitless
Warranty
90 days
Estimated Delivery
Thursday, Nov 6 - Monday, Nov 10
-no one
@sproinky You must be new here
@sproinky Make that one person at least. Me. I love this idea.
Nice tit pic snuck in there, meh
@zippyzeb You would prefer one of these?
Who’s paying $300 for this?
@heartny People with more money than brains. (There is widespread misunderstanding among the miseducated that rich people are rich because they’re smart. This is seldom true. Rich people are rich mostly because they started off with a fair bit of money and they’re assholes enough to steal everything the law allows from everyone that they sucker into doing business with them.)
@heartny @werehatrack While true to an extent, you get far more precision if you also include proximity to whoever has the money and power, and the character of the relationships (social peers vs. the abused). That provides a little more wiggle room for smart people to, let’s say, squirrel away some of the seed without drawing blood.
@heartny @werehatrack We still talkin bout a bird feeder?
@heartny @werehatrack oh yeah “the law allows” varies from class to class, influence to influence, lawyer to lawyer. “the law allows” is as gray as that catbird over there.
This seems like a science fair project turned into a product. It has that weird combination of genius and stupidity.
@jandrese I resemble that remark. Some say you can’t have one without the other. Or else the genius causes depression and psychoses. So the stupidity seems like a better deal.
@jandrese @pmarin I can think of some counterexamples. I suspect it more goes, genius is difference, and extreme difference can create loneliness, which leads to the other issues. (Thus, cherish the institutions that bring those different geniuses together to ameliorate that…)
@AySz88 @jandrese @pmarin There’s a House episode where the patient is a parcel delivery guy who turns out to be a super-genius physicist who’s been “self-medicating” to cognitively impair himself so he can have something like a normal romantic relationship. When they have to put him on dialysis during treatment and the drugs are cleared out of his system, he says he feels as remote from his wife intellectually in his normal state as most people feel from monkeys. It comes off as both arrogant and heartbreaking.
These things usually require a subscription for the app and bird identification feature. Keep that in mind before you buy
@PeteJolicoeur thanks for that. Membership is required for the AI functionality/bird identification features
@PeteJolicoeur @tinamarie1974 Subscription is also required for storage of the videos on the cloud (as opposed to an SD card), if I’m reading correctly. That raises the question of whether fetching/watching video from the SD card works with their app.
@AySz88 @PeteJolicoeur @tinamarie1974 No idea, but almost certainly not. Wyze learned their lesson & now gouges everyone for the unforgivable crime of glancing in their general direction.
@PeteJolicoeur The app also looks to have been pulled from the android store. Wonder if it’s abandonware… Found the manual and the QR code for the app takes you to a pulled app. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0264/0143/9806/files/hello-birdie-user-manual_f733c017-1805-453a-a2bc-621ff880bb64.pdf
Can the solar power be rigged up to zap squirrels without frying the birds? (I have an air fryer for that.)
@phendrick this is the only question that matters here.
Why does the name sound like an appropriate cat toy: Hello Birdie / Hello Kitty.
/image hello kitty with birds
Sold on QVC previously. Video overview on YouTube.
[YT video of this being sold on QVC.
I’ve got a Bird Buddy and like it a lot. I’ve got it hanging from a shepherd’s hook in my yard. I mostly get house sparrows, but I also get cardinals and other birds.
If I had it mounted to a tree, I think it would be a squirrel feeder. I’ve only had a couple of squirrel visits where it is. My neighbor’s cats like to hang out in my yard, which may help.
The solar cells kept it fully charged all summer, but they sun has dropped below the tops of the neighborhood trees, and we’ve had some rainy days, so I’m charging it right now. I hope that improves when the leaves fall. I anticipate a better mix of birds in the winter, once the supply of free insects dries up.
The subscription for this one is, according to their Web site, free for the first year, then $40 a year after that. Assuming they are still in business. Dumping these here isn’t a good sign of company health, unless they have a new model coming out.
It’s got an SD card slot, so it should have some basic functionality without a subscription.
I may get one of these as a secondary feeder. I like that it can be hung from the top. I don’t like that it must be facing south for the solar charging to work.
@craigthom My Bird Buddy experience was about the opposite: even though it was hanging from a shepherd’s hook in a sunny spot in the yard and the solar panel was plugged into the camera module, it would run out of juice after a few days and require recharging inside. Also, the small bird-seed holding tank required more frequent refills than any of my other feeders.
After a few months of that, I eventually took them down and now when I walk by them, I say to myself, “I should probably put those back up sometime…”
@andymand I bought an expanded see hopper and a grid to put over the seed tray to keep them from throwing as much out.
Did the app show that it was charging? Maybe the solar cable wasn’t plugged in securely, or maybe it was defective.
@andymand @craigthom I got the Birdfy one as a gift and have it on the deck to avoid squirrels. I bring it inside to charge it every few days, it sits in the shade. I love looking at my little birds. And the squirrels my dog doesn’t chase off. Right now I’m not getting much traffic, I hope to get more once it gets cold.
Plus it has night vision and I get cardinals at dusk. The Birdfy software swears they are random gray birds that live nowhere near here. It also called a squirrel a mallard duck. This amuses me.
My only bird today has fur.
@andymand @craigthom @sammydog01 Love that Mallard duck.
@craigthom @sammydog01 LOL
Also, a variation of this with a bird bath still sold on QVC. Website includes FAQ, manuals, etc. Bird bath version on QVC
Feels like regular price should be $50 and $25 on Meh. Then I’d be a buyer.
Does the camera have an SD card slot for storing photos & videos? If so, does this come with an SD card?
@hiddenwoodsman According to the FAQ I found, unless it’s changed for Meh, “It’s also an option to use an SD Card for storage by inserting an SD card (not included) into the slot on the back of the Camera.” https://limitlessinnovations.onsitesupport.io/hellobirdie/knowledge-base/article/where-does-my-data-go
Wow, just what I needed! …no really, it’s a tempting off-season “Xmas” splurge for anyone you noticed scowling at the price tags in-season.
Don’t love the Waze-style cloud-based subscription these all want for the nicer sounding features ($4/mo or $40/yr). One thing to clarify: the help docs at Limitless suggest they had 1 year of the cloud services free to start, but there’s no mention of it here…so, no first hit free then? https://limitlessinnovations.onsitesupport.io/hellobirdie/knowledge-base/article/choose-a-membership-to-continue-use-of-the-hello-birdie-apps-smart-features
Still, I dunno how I feel about these vague possibility that a company might flip the product and cloud user base to some unsuspecting equity manager desperate to own some “AI”, who might not notice how the users’ continued subscriptions would be tied to the lifetime of the perhaps-flimsy equipment (and so, would churn more than usual customers to something like Netflix).
If you scroll down in this Wired review of smart bird feeders you’ll find this one. He says it’s usable without a subscription, but the picture quality and solar charging suck.
The android app doesn’t exist! Wtf
@adityanambiar Huh, it seems like it was com.hellobirdie.app but it’s gone, not even an APK from a reputable archive. Is this stripped of cloud stuff entirely, then? What’s the “internal AI” thing, and was it confirmed working?
@adityanambiar I’m all android…and I really wanted this! Argh!
@adityanambiar @lomerson2 I guess that you could write one,
@adityanambiar @AySz88 without the app there’s no way to configure it or communicate with it.
@adityanambiar Yeah if they are not supporting android, I think it’s end of life for this product. Not much point spending even 50$
@adityanambiar The Apple app still exists, but when I enter my e-mail address to receive a verification code so that I can create an account, no email shows up.
@adityanambiar @sneezix Same issue here - tried to sign up for the app and never get an email back to create an account.
Can I just stick an SD card in there and read it from time to time without the app or wifi?
Looks seedy
@phelmurh
Yeah… It’s really “for the birds”.
My squirrels are begging me to buy this.
@user56039068
/showme squirrels begging skeptical human to buy Hello Birdie Solar Roof Smart Bird Feeder
If it recognized & released food only to birds, and then recognized squirrels & didn’t release food to them - that would be something. I thought that’s where this was going, but didn’t see that was the case???
Interesting squirrel feeder.
@njfan my friend used to buy peanuts to feed the birds but of course squirrels figured out where thing were happenin’ too. Then his car gave him an ABS error because squirrels had started eating the wires. So he stopped the feedings. Rest assured there is plenty of natural food in that area without an old man tossing peanuts.
@njfan
This is for the birds!
@user98121461
Agreed… We evidently think alike. See above posted slightly before you.
attract the birds to feed the cats to free the mice to steal the cat food to fill my toolbox to remind me yo set the traps. Sold!!
@markkorn I didn’t think I needed this, but you make a compelling case…
@markkorn
/showme bird feeder to attract the birds to feed the cats to free the mice to steal the cat food.
This is another item from meh that I go to check the Play Store for the app, and it has been removed.
I’m sure I could find the .apk on a mirror site, but that means the app won’t be supported or updated.
Would have been pretty neat to test out.
If it is available here at this price, it means one of 2 things… 1. they are launching v2 soon, or (more likely) they are going to be extinct soon. Caveat emptor y’all.
/showme an older lady feeding birbs in a park
Feed the Birbs, Feed the Birbs
/showme an older lady robot feeding birbs in a park
@mediocrebot
/showme human size bird feeding cupcakes to 10 inch tall little old ladies in a park.
That third leg is horrifying.
There are several vultures that regularly circle around this area. Would the feeder accommodate a deer carcass?
We have one of the few anti-squirrel designs that actually work - two cylinders, and when something too heavy gets on, the outer cylinder drops, blocking access to the food inside the inner cylinder. It took only two days before the local squirrel gang stopped trying altogether, and now the bird food goes to the birds.
If somebody made a smart version of that I’d be down. It’d even have the advantage of being able to trigger off weight and not a flaky attempt at object recognition…
@gdorn got a link or a pic? Squirrels here render bird feeders all but useless for actual birds.
@gdorn I’m not into the monetizing thing but you probably raise money posting the videos of squirrel fail on T or YT. Use it to buy more bird food.
@djslack Seven years ago when I got it, there weren’t that many options. But now it appears the Chinese alphabet-soup companies have realized there’s a market, so there’s tons of options now.
I have a “Squirrel Buster” and it’s very well-made, but twice the cost of the newer options.
This looks like a piece of crap. No way this sold for $300, ever. Design looks lousy.
Interesting as a concept but it looks like a cheap toy.
Eh, seems interesting. My order number though tells a different story.
/giphy black masked dead
/showme Pterodactyl on a Hello Birdie Solar Roof Smart Bird Feeder with a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the background
Meh Stretch Goal :
Take this 1970s tv theme song and replace “Larry” with “Birdie” and …
… redo all the video footage with either live action actors with bird heads orrrrrr cartoons of same scenes but with birds instead of people.
/showme birds using Hello Birdie Solar Roof Smart Bird Feeder as power source to take over world.
Outstanding @mediocrebot!
Amazon has this sort of thing for $30 if you shop around. Check out Dealnews.com and find them there. I have a few of these from different brands and they all more or less work. The big difference is in the apps. Some are OK, some aren’t.
@christianboyce thank you. Im bummed i missed out but now im checking these others out
will it hold the weight of a wild turkey?
@samnsara
Just a shot or the whole bottle?
This was interesting. I am kind of glad I missed it, but the solar charger might be worth it to power another camera (unfortunately the WYZE units I have are from Meh and use micro-USB).
Either way, I should really climb my roof and just patch up the gutters instead of dangling birdhouses.
Mine arrived today. I noticed that the Hello Birdie app wasn’t available for the current version of Android, but I have an old phone on my desk that I leave my security camera open on, and it’s old enough that Hello Birdie came up fine in it. (Android 9)
The camera is charging up now, but what I’d really like is to find an RSTP port to connect to from some other device. My router picked this up as a “Tmezon PTZ” camera, but I couldn’t seem to find a connect to it from there. nmap didn’t give me anything useful, though port 20202 gives me a “not found” response, and 6670 is… uh, there I guess.
I’d appreciate any other assistance for viewing the camera’s video feed without needing the app.
@LexPendragon same, which is incredible because I have an old pixel 5 – did you find a solution?
@styloroc Not yet, but I haven’t gotten back to playing with it yet.
@LexPendragon it’s pretty disappointing; got this for my mom as a present; I’d happy if there was just a windows app for it.
@styloroc It does let you get some fun images, at least, though I don’t see where to go to get it to actually do the bird identification. It says it does, says it identified a bird, but I think what they mean “Something was moving, I have figured out that it was a bird and not a leaf or a squirrel.” That’s a lot less impressive.
https://QuarteredCircle.net/@LexPendragon/115559645858771767
Anyone else with an iPhone having a hard time setting up an account for the app? I’ve contacted the company, but all they’ve sent me is a “work ticket” form e-mail to fill out. 🫤
The Android app hasn’t been updated in almost 20 months, so any current phones won’t allow the install as the “app was developed for an older version of Android.” Used an old phone and got it to install, but most of the time it’s a photo, not a video. I think out of the 20ish detections, it got one bird almost correct (identified a finch, but not the right one.) The rest of the time it just gives you random bird identifications with a 20-30% certainty. The same bird was identified a 5 different birds. The company support is non-existent. I’ve put in 3 requests for support and got no response. I’m requesting a refund.