We get lots of birds but not many pictures. I emailed their support team and was told the birds need to be on the center of the perch and that their AI needs to deem the picture “interesting”. The only bird out of the dozen or so landing on the feeder that’s it feels is interesting is the black capped chickadee. There are many birds landing on it that are way more interesting. As for the app itself, it is difficult to find my way around and not very intuitive. It does not allow for saving the password on my iPhone 12 Pro Max and have to re-enter my email address and password every time I open the app. It’s a great concept if it would work.
App needs help but it is still relatively new. Hoping for many improvements over time.
On the plus side, it seems to mostly identify birds straightaway and organizes them nicely. So far no app crashes and setup/updates to the camera have been easy.
Areas for improvement: UI not very intuitive, especially when not being able to identify a bird. There should be an obvious way to save mystery birds to a folder for future research. Also please let us zoom in on a postcard without having to download to a camera roll. We could probably identify a bird if it wasn’t on a tiny postage stamp-sized image.
I understood I was buying from a start up. I know that means there will be glitches. The bird buddy itself is plagued with issues. Since this is a review of the software I will focus on that. You have to log in multiple times a day with no “remember me” feature. I needed to do a complete reboot of the unit at least 3 times (not sure if that is software or the actual camera). The AI in identifying birds has been mostly accurate but it’s difficult changing the description. When everything works, it’s great, unfortunately that is less time than it not working. Fingers crossed it improves.
These comments are about the app design, not the bird buddy hardware. If you have a busy feeder, you will quickly realize that going thru postcards then becomes a chore. It shouldn’t feel like this. Way too many clicks to sort thru birds or mark them mystery or bypass. All of the options should be on one screen when the bird comes up, not all these various screens to sort thru them.
And for birds that the AI can’t recognize, the app doesn’t allow you to zoom in to see the bird clearer or close up. This is really a priority need in the next update. All the little graphics and animations are well done and adorable. But you need to be able to go quickly thru them if you want.
It is a cool product, but the app needs some work to make it seem less like a chore, and not require so many steps to process postcards.
I keep reading bad reviews and a lot of negative remarks on social media about the wait time for this product. We all bought it with the knowledge it was being developed and the wait would be long. It was well worth my 15 month wait. Both the product and the app are brand new so everyone should expect some kinks. The company has been great about sending out email updates and keeping people informed. The app does randomly log me out sometimes, but logging in with your Google account or Apple ID means you don’t have to type your email and password every time. Worth it. The photo quality has everything to do with the direction your camera faces and mostly with how close the birds are. Some birds have a habit of standing in the food when they eat and they’re always out of focus 😂 Not Bird Buddy’s fault, just the bird itself. I really appreciate the ability to classify a bird as a “Mystery” to give me time to research and identify better. And I like being able to edit the type of bird in case it’s wrong. Overall I’m very pleased with the progress of the app and I LOVE my bird buddy. Highly recommend the solar roof add-on. I haven’t charged my battery in 10 days bc of solar charging 🙌
I realize this is a new product, but I received mine as a gift. I’m a little disappointed in how long the battery life is. It lasts about a day and a half before needing a charge. I live in Michigan so I realize the cold affects the battery life, but with snow and location, it’s really inconvenient to be taking the camera out to charge and reinstalling it in the feeder every other day. Plus, there is still seed in the feeder when I need to remove the camera which also makes it difficult. I wish there was a way to order the solar panel to add to my current feeder, but apparently that had to be ordered initially.
I backed the Bird Buddy on Kickstarter, and the company did a great job keeping me informed of the process while it was in development. I got my Bird Buddy last week, and found it fairly easy to put together and get up and running. At first I was disappointed that it did not take many photos - I would see a bird taking seed, but no "postcard" would be generated. However, they published an app update this morning, and now I am getting a lot of photos. The photos are also very good: clear, sharp, detailed. My one request at this point is as follows. Once in a while, the AI cannot recognize the bird. It then gives choices of possible species for the user to click to identify the bird. It would be better, however, if the user could type in the name of the bird, because each time this has happened, the choices given were all incorrect! If I could type in the bird name, I could correctly identify and categorize those photos. Overall though, great job Bird Buddy! I get so excited with each new photo!! UPDATE: the developers responded to this review with an email instructing me how to correctly identify unrecognized birds. Thank you, Bird Buddy!
Developer Response
Hi Borealiscolor! There actually is a way to type in the name of the bird you'd like to assign to a "non-identified" bird photo. Here's how you do it: when in the "manual identification" mode, tapp on the "Show me more options" on the bottom on the screen. After that scroll to the bottom of the screen and select the "Not on the list?" option. This will allow you to search for the bird you'd like to assign to the photo. Hope you find this helpful!I just received my new bird buddy and was super excited after waiting nearly 2 years for it to arrive. I was incredibly disappointed to find that I can’t even get past the connect to WiFi step. I am an IT consultant, so I’m very familiar with setting up a 2.4ghz WiFi network with WPA2. I have a network setup like this specifically for older devices that won’t work with 5ghz. Regardless, the bird buddy refuses to stay connected to it. I can actually see the traffic on my network, and it briefly connects then disconnects over and over again until the app finally says it failed and that I should attempt a factory reset. I have done this over and over, including attempting to setup a new SSID with wpa1, another with wpa1/wpa2, and different names and passwords but regardless of what I try it won’t connect. I reached out to support and waited 5 days as requested with no response. I reached out again and it’s been multiple days again. I’m so frustrated with them and wish I could get my money back (or quite frankly, just a working bird buddy). If you haven’t purchased one yet, don’t waste your time.
Update: the developer had time to respond to my message here to tell me they would reach out but it’s been weeks still with no response from their official support team. Ridiculous.
Developer Response
Hi swordmasterlink - our customer support team is experiencing a high volume of tickets right now and will get back to you as soon as possible. I'm sure they can help you set the device up!I received this as a gift from a good friend. I had no problem getting post cards from the minute I set up the camera. However, getting 11 postcard’s with about 10 photos in each postcard that have to be reviewed individually before you save or delete, can be very time consuming. The only birds I’m getting this time of year are sparrows so it’s been quite tedious. The battery is not the greatest, it runs out after 2 days even if left in full sun ( I have the solar roof). I would not spend the extra money for solar as it doesn’t work at all. I did get a few cute photos but overall very disappointed.
I purchased one of these about 2 years ago. I finally got it and after 10 days, I can say I’m pretty disappointed. The solar roof I have does not charge the unit. I have it facing south and I get plenty of Florida sun all day but no charge. The product is designed well, easy to set up and the app has a lot of potential. I have not had a single postcard or visitor recorded yet, despite having a medium to good Wi-Fi signal for the unit on my mesh network. Maybe I just haven’t had any visitors yet, who knows. I tried to link up with support and they’re so backed up, it’s at least 7 business days to get a response. I know there’s other similar products out there that support real-time recording and even night vision recording. I’m really hoping Birdbuddy can fix the issues with their product launch because they had so many excited backers to support them.
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