Show HN: BirdDex – Pokémon Go, but with real life birds(birddex.co)

Show HN: BirdDex – Pokémon Go, but with real life birds

https://birddex.co/

Hey HN!

I've always loved games where you collect various creatures and chase 100% completion (ahem, Pokémon)

I made BirdDex to try to bring the fun of those games to real life.

Here’s how it works: you snap a photo of a bird, identify the species with AI, and add it to your personal BirdDex collection.

Each photo earns XP based on the species' rarity, and your goal is to try and “catch” all the birds in your region (lists pulled for every country from wikipedia)

Would love any feedback or thoughts!

2 comments

Paulo754 mesi fa

Fun idea. The rarity based XP system is a good way to keep people motivated beyond the first few common sightings. Another idea could be seasonal bonuses like for example extra XP for migratory species that are only in your region for a few weeks.

vunderba4 mesi fa

Nice job. There was a pretty popular Show HN around this concept called Wildex about a month ago though its not limited to birds.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47040390

Seek by iNaturalist has also been around for much longer and is (probably) the OG of Pokemon Go with animals - it's intended for kids and is a bit more educational.

https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app

Depending on the VLM you are using under the covers - I'd recommend snagging a bunch of nature pictures from instagram/etc. and measuring its baseline accuracy. In my experience, individual species of birds can be more difficult to identify particularly the smaller ones.