Threlkeld Projects is a citizen environmental science platform built by an IT professional with over 35 years of experience, living in Threlkeld village at the foot of Blencathra in the Northern Lake District. It uses acoustic AI, weather instrumentation and live data feeds to monitor the natural environment of this corner of Cumbria in real time. What started as a simple bird detection experiment has grown into a comprehensive platform covering birds, bats, weather, rivers, flights, fells and wildlife.
All data is live and sourced as locally as possible. The bird detections come from a microphone in the garden. The weather is from a station on the roof. The river level is from an EA gauge 500 metres away. The flight data is from planes actually overflying this location. Where local sensors aren't possible — fell summit conditions, wildlife sightings, wild swimming classifications — the best available APIs and community data are used instead, clearly labelled throughout the site.
The Numbers
8
Live pages
9
River stations
9
Fell summits
50,000
Max bird detections
2000
Max flights logged
0
Cloud bills
Data Pipeline
All data flows through the same pipeline — sensors and APIs feed into Home Assistant and Node-RED running at home, which publishes everything to a public MQTT broker. The website subscribes directly from the browser — no backend, no server costs. The bird and bat detectors each keep their own database as the source of truth, queried and published on a schedule, so the public site stays simple while the underlying records stay safe.
🎙️
Sensors
BirdNET-Pi Weather station EA river API
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🏠
Home Assistant
HA OS 2026 Lenovo ThinkCentre Proxmox VM
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⚙️
Node-RED
v4.1 · Relay Notifications Scheduled publish
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📡
MQTT
HiveMQ broker Public · Free Retained topics
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🌐
GitHub Pages
Static HTML/JS Free hosting No backend
Tech Stack
Bird Detection
BirdNET-Pi
Open source acoustic bird monitoring. Raspberry Pi 3B+ with USB microphone, runs BirdNET neural network in real time. Detects species from audio and publishes via MQTT apprise to the local Mosquitto broker.
Bat Detection
acoupi · BatDetect2
Raspberry Pi 4 4GB running acoupi with BatDetect2 neural network and AudioMoth USB microphone. Detects UK bat species in real time at dusk, publishing detections via MQTT with time-expanded audio saved for playback.
Home Automation
Home Assistant
Open source home automation platform running as a VM on a Lenovo ThinkCentre running Proxmox. Collects weather station data, triggers automations, provides the webhook for analytics.
Data Processing
Node-RED
Visual flow-based programming tool running as a Home Assistant add-on. Processes all data streams, handles notifications, stores detection history to JSON files.
Messaging
MQTT · HiveMQ
Lightweight publish/subscribe protocol. HiveMQ's free public broker relays all data from home to the website. Retained messages mean data survives page refreshes.
Weather Data
Ecowitt via HA
Personal weather station on a pole mount feeding into Home Assistant. Temperature, wind, rainfall, solar radiation, UV, lightning, humidity and pressure — all live.
River Data
EA Flood API
Environment Agency's real-time flood monitoring API. Free, no key required. 9 stations covering the Glenderamackin, Greta, Derwent and 4 lakes. Updated every 15 minutes.
Fell & Weather Cam
Reolink · Node-RED
Reolink WiFi camera mounted in the garden pointing toward Blencathra. Node-RED saves a snapshot every 5 minutes during daylight. Live image shown on both the Fells and Weather pages, with a full day time-lapse viewer.
Flight Data
FlightRadar24 · HA
Home Assistant FlightRadar24 integration detects flights entering a 15km radius around Threlkeld and fires events into Node-RED for processing and storage.
Mountain Weather
Open-Meteo
Free weather API with no key required. Queried at specific summit elevations for real summit conditions — not valley readings extrapolated upward.
Wildlife Data
iNaturalist API
Community science platform. The API returns verified research-grade observations within 10km of Threlkeld. No key required. Updated in real time as observations are verified.
Maps
Leaflet · CartoDB
Open source mapping library with dark CartoDB tiles. Used on the wildlife observation map and fell summit map. No API key, no usage limits.
Hosting
GitHub Pages
Free static site hosting from a public GitHub repository. No server, no database, no build process — just HTML, CSS and JavaScript files committed and pushed.
Notifications
HA · iOS Companion
Push notifications via the Home Assistant iOS companion app. New species alerts delivered immediately during waking hours, queued overnight and sent at 8am. Daily dawn chorus summary at 8:45am with yesterday's top species, best confidence score and first detection. Rare Cumbrian species flagged separately.
Hardware
Bird detectionRaspberry Pi 4 4GB · USB microphone
Home automationLenovo ThinkCentre · Proxmox · Home Assistant VM
Weather stationEcowitt HP2553 · Pole mounted
Bat detectorAudioMoth USB Microphone · Raspberry Pi 4 4GB · Live from June 2026
Stream sensorPi Zero 2W · JSN-SR04T ultrasonic · Planned
Running Costs
Almost zero. GitHub Pages is free. HiveMQ's public broker is free. Open-Meteo, iNaturalist, the EA API and CartoDB tiles are all free with no key required. The only costs are home electricity for the Raspberry Pis (~£3/month combined) and the hardware purchased once.
Recent Changes
📖 Valley Firsts, woven into the recordJun 2026 · The Naturalist's daily diary now interleaves each species' first appearance of the year as markers in the timeline — one continuous record of the valley announcing itself, day by day
🌅 Dawn chorus vs sunriseJun 2026 · Tracks the first confident birdsong each day relative to Threlkeld's sunrise · Robins and Reed Buntings reliably open the valley before first light
🌧️ River level vs catchment rainfallJun 2026 · The Glenderamackin's level overlaid with rainfall in its upper catchment near Mungrisdale · Watch the river answer rain on the fells, hours later
🧠 The AI Naturalist gathers everythingJun 2026 · The daily summary now draws on dawn chorus, river and rainfall alongside birds, bats, weather and sky — weaving the day's threads into a single written account
🦇 Bat detection calendar + per-night speciesJun 2026 · Year-grid heatmap matching the birds page, with each night's species breakdown on tap · Nightly species data published from the detector's own database
🛡️ Detection data made bulletproofJun 2026 · Both bird and bat histories now read directly from each detector's own database as the single source of truth, published reliably and backed up nightly · Robust by design, no data at risk
🦇 Bat detector launchedJun 2026 · acoupi + BatDetect2 on Raspberry Pi 4 · Live species detection, species summary, activity charts, time-expanded audio playback
📷 Fell & Weather Cam + time-lapseJun 2026 · Reolink WiFi camera with live snapshot and full-day time-lapse viewer on both Fells and Weather pages · Updated every 5 minutes during daylight
📅 Bird species activity calendarJun 2026 · GitHub-style heatmap showing daily detection counts across the full year, powered by complete detection history
🌱 GDD bird cross-referencingJun 2026 · Growing Degree Day milestones now confirmed by actual BirdNET detections · Swift arrival confirmed
✈️ Flight total counterJun 2026 · Running total of all flights logged, night flights tracking, aircraft photo in last seen card
🌊 EA flood alertsMay 2026 · Live flood warnings for Rivers Greta and Glenderamackin area
🐦 Bird detection storageMay 2026 · History increased to 50,000 detections · Full history powers calendar and species summary
🌡️ BirdNET-Pi monitoringMay 2026 · Temperature, fan status and IP published to Home Assistant
🌱 Phenology loggingMay 2026 · First detection date per species per year logged automatically · Back-filled from full detection history
🌌 Northern Lights forecastMay 2026 · NOAA Kp index with aurora likelihood rating for Threlkeld at 54.6°N
🌱 Growing Degree DaysMay 2026 · Accumulated heat units since 1 Jan with seasonal milestones cross-referenced against bird detections
⭐ Stargazing conditionsMay 2026 · Cloud cover, moon phase, visibility and Bortle 3–4 dark sky rating for tonight
🌤️ 7-day weather forecastMay 2026 · Open-Meteo forecast with hourly breakdown added to weather page
✈️ Flight mapMay 2026 · OSM tile map with SVG flight markers, tooltips and trail lines
📱 PWA appMay 2026 · Installable as home screen app on iPhone and Android · Works offline with cached data
What's Coming Next
The project is actively growing. Several hardware builds are planned or underway for 2026:
Planned · 2026
🐿️ Red Squirrel Feeder Cam
A Tuya wildlife camera mounted at the garden red squirrel feeder, integrated via RTSP into Home Assistant. Live motion-triggered snapshots published to the Wildlife page.
Planned · 2026
💧 Garden Stream Sensor
A Pi Zero 2W with a waterproof JSN-SR04T ultrasonic sensor mounted above the garden stream — a direct tributary of the Glenderamackin. Will give hyperlocal flood early warning before the EA gauges downstream even register the event.
2026
🐦 Smart Bird Box
A handmade nest box with an ESP32-CAM wide-angle camera and 850nm IR night vision, solar powered and WiFi enabled. Watch live from any browser on the home network — no app, no subscription. Trial units going to friends and neighbours first.
2026
🦇 Smart Bat Box
Same concept as the bird box but designed for pipistrelles — narrow crevice design in rough-sawn larch, with a Pi Camera Module 3 NoIR and 940nm IR LEDs completely invisible to bats. Mounted stream-side where bat activity is highest.
Ongoing
📊 Year-on-Year Analysis
As detection history accumulates, the site will add seasonal comparisons — first swallow of the year, peak dawn chorus week, year-on-year species trends. The data is already being collected; the analysis will follow as the dataset matures.
Planned
🪵 Commercial Boxes
If the trial boxes prove reliable, there are plans to sell handmade smart bird and bat boxes. Self-configuring via a WiFi hotspot on first boot — plug in, connect your phone, done. Handcrafted from local Cumbrian timber with lifetime local delivery.