Starting of docker compose and getting audio working

[slmingol]

I was able to get your docker compose supplied running on a RPi5 RPI OS Lite (Trixie) but wasn't sure what you did to get Pulseaudio working with this setup. I noticed your comment here - https://github.com/Suncuss/BirdNET-PiPy/blob/main/docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

RPi OS Desktop: Uses PipeWire with pipewire-pulse compatibility layer
RPi OS Lite: Installs PulseAudio in system-wide mode

...and attempted to follow the system-wide mode docs here - https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/SystemWide/?__goaway_challenge=meta-refresh&__goaway_id=5b88269de301f5d605f27e084e9b9c8b&__goaway_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F.

Icecast would just sit in a 30s loop. I then ran pulseaudio in debug mode:

pulseaudio --system --daemonize=no --exit-idle-time=-1

This allowed for Icecast to connect but things still do not seem correct. Are you running pulseaudio as a systemd service? I did not see one provided in the Pulseaudio DEB. Also when I clicked Start Audio in the live feed the speaker didn't seem be configured properly. Was wondering if you could share any steps you used to get the audio portion of this working?

[slmingol]

I'm able to see the MIC so it appeared pulseaudio could see it:

$ sudo PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH=/var/run/pulse -u pulse pacmd list-sources | grep input
	name: <alsa_input.usb-DCMT_Technology_USB_Lavalier_Microphone_214b206000000178-00.mono-fallback>
		device.icon_name = "audio-input-microphone-usb"
		analog-input-mic: Microphone (priority 8700, latency offset 0 usec, available: unknown)
				device.icon_name = "audio-input-microphone"
	active port: <analog-input-mic>
		device.icon_name = "audio-input-microphone"

I found this resource and used some of the details so that I can at least get the Live Feed -> Start Audio to record. I also used some of the details to setup a Systemd unit file and DBUS policy.

$ cat /usr/lib/systemd/system/pulseaudio.service
[Unit]
Description=PulseAudio system server

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/pulseaudio --system --disallow-exit --log-target=journal
#ExecStart=/usr/bin/pulseaudio --system --disallow-exit --disallow-module-loading --log-target=journal
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

$ tail -20 /usr/share/dbus-1/system.d/pulseaudio-system.conf
Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
License along with PulseAudio; if not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
-->

<busconfig>

  <!-- System-wide PulseAudio runs as 'pulse' user. This fragment is
       not necessary for user PulseAudio instances. -->

  <policy user="pulse">
    <allow own="org.pulseaudio.Server"/>
  </policy>
  <policy context="default">
    <allow send_destination="org.pulseaudio.Server"/>
    <allow receive_sender="org.pulseaudio.Server"/>
   </policy>

</busconfig>

$ sudo -Es
$ systemctl restart dbus && systemctl restart polkit && systemctl restart systemd-logind

$ grep -Ev '^#|^;|^$'  /etc/pulse/client.conf
default-server = /var/run/pulse/native
autospawn = no

Make sure pulse-access group exists with both your main user pi and root as members. Make sure you have the user pulse with group pulse.

$ grep ^pulse /etc/group
pulse:x:107:
pulse-access:x:108:pi,root

$ grep ^pulse /etc/passwd
pulse:x:105:107:PulseAudio daemon:/run/pulse:/usr/sbin/nologin

$ sudo -ES
$ systemctl daemon-reload
$ systemctl enable pulseaudio
$ systemctl start pulseaudio

[slmingol]

So I did go ahead and import my BirdNET-Pi DB + audio and let it analyze it, those are showing up in the app but nothing new is being acquired. The Live Feed is able to play audio via Icecast so I have that working atm best I can tell, but nothing new is being captured. Looking at your architecture diagrams for how things interconnect seems like an issue with the main getting at the icecast recordings?

[07:11:19] INFO     [main] Shutdown initiated
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<frozen runpy>", line 198, in _run_module_as_main
  File "<frozen runpy>", line 88, in _run_code
  File "/app/core/main.py", line 490, in <module>
    time.sleep(1)
  File "/app/core/main.py", line 472, in signal_handler
    shutdown()
  File "/app/core/main.py", line 455, in shutdown
    recording_thread.join(timeout=RECORDING_THREAD_SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT)
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
NameError: name 'recording_thread' is not defined
[07:11:21] INFO     [main] [DB] DatabaseManager initialized | database_path=/app/data/db/birds.db
[07:11:21] INFO     [main] 🎵 BirdNET-PiPy v0.3.2 starting | recording_dir=/app/data/audio/recordings | recording_length=9 | analysis_chunk_length=3
[07:11:21] INFO     [main] ⏳ Location not configured. Waiting for user to set location in the web interface...

I attempted to restart the main container and it seems to be having issue with accessing pulseaudio best I can tell?

NameError: name 'recording_thread' is not defined
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] [DB] DatabaseManager initialized | database_path=/app/data/db/birds.db
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] 🎵 BirdNET-PiPy v0.3.2 starting | recording_dir=/app/data/audio/recordings | recording_length=9 | analysis_chunk_length=3
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Weather service started | lat=35.74 | lon=-78.87
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Starting PulseAudio recording | pulseaudio_source=None | chunk_duration=9 | output_dir=/app/data/audio/recordings
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Recording thread started
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Processing thread started
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Processing thread started
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Storage monitor started | auto_cleanup_enabled=True | trigger_percent=85 | target_percent=80 | keep_per_species=60 | check_interval_minutes=30
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Storage monitor thread started
[15:37:10] ERROR    [main] PulseAudio recording failed (returncode=253): ffmpeg version 7.1.3-0+deb13u1 Copyright (c) 2000-2025 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 14 (Debian 14.2.0-19)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr --extra-version=0+deb13u1 --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu --incdir=/usr/include/aarch64-linux-gnu --arch=arm64 --enable-gpl --disable-stripping --disable-libmfx --disable-omx --enable-gnutls --enable-libaom --enable-libass --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcdio --enable-libcodec2 --enable-libdav1d --enable-libflite --enable-libfont
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Timezone cache updated: None -> America/New_York
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Timezone cached to settings: America/New_York
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Weather updated | temp=-4.7 | code=0
[15:37:41] ERROR    [main] PulseAudio recording failed (returncode=253): ffmpeg version 7.1.3-0+deb13u1 Copyright (c) 2000-2025 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 14 (Debian 14.2.0-19)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr --extra-version=0+deb13u1 --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu --incdir=/usr/include/aarch64-linux-gnu --arch=arm64 --enable-gpl --disable-stripping --disable-libmfx --disable-omx --enable-gnutls --enable-libaom --enable-libass --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcdio --enable-libcodec2 --enable-libdav1d --enable-libflite --enable-libfont

[Suncuss]

Hi! thanks for the feedback! Looking at your most rencent log. it seems like this is still a pulseaudio issue. that was some nice digging you did for the pulseaudio part.

One question, so you are trying get this working by using the docker-compose file yourself?
I asked becuase i saw your reddit comment about using docker so to bypass the installation script.

The the core part of installation script is actually buidling those docker images using the compose file, but you will see that in order to make the whole thing works, the script does a lot to make sure other host side things are properly configured so that docker containers can work properly with the rest of the host component.

there is actually a configure_pulseaudio() fucntuion in the script, that try to setup the pulse user and pulse-access user group.

there are other things the script does like creating systemd service so that i typically just do systemctl restart birdnet-pipy to restart all containers. I think part of the system update feature also depends on having systemd service setup.

On high level, the script does:

Install Git, docker, docker-compose and pulsueaudio (if not already on host) on host
Configure pulseaudio if it is not already configed (the non-Lite Pi OS has it configure already with pipewire-pulse)
Build docker images, fix permissions
Setup systemd service
Reboot to make sure everything is clean and the systemd would auto start the program

Give it try if you haven't? that should make things a lot easier. i hope.

But i see your point that it would be nicer this it has less host dependecy. that might be some future goals, if say we want to get it onto other platforms like Home Assistant add-on. future works :D

For now, do you want to give the install.sh a try?

[slmingol]

Yes I was taking your docker-compose.yaml and attempting to docker compose up -d which is the typical flow you'll see with a lot of homelab services. I may have assumed that incorrectly I can also attempt the install.sh route now that I've kinda figured things out to a degree below.

Seems to resolve some/most of the issue?

I did find the issue, it's with the /var/pulse directory within the main container.

birdnet@0d31c451205b:/app$ ls -la /run/
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Feb  1 07:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Feb  1 07:01 ..
drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 4096 Jan 12 00:00 lock
drwx------ 3  105  107  120 Feb  1 08:06 pulse
birdnet@0d31c451205b:/app$ ls -la /run/pulse/
ls: cannot open directory '/run/pulse/': Permission denied

birdnet@0d31c451205b:/app$ id
uid=1000(birdnet) gid=1000(birdnet) groups=1000(birdnet)

Just to confirm I was going down the right path I opened up the perms in that location on the main docker host:

birdnet@0d31c451205b:/app$ ls -la /run/pulse/
total 20
drwxrwxrwx 3  105  107  120 Feb  1 08:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Feb  1 07:01 ..
drwxrwxrwx 3  105  107   60 Feb  1 07:15 .config
srwxrwxrwx 1  105  107    0 Feb  1 08:06 cli
srwxrwxrwx 1  105  107    0 Feb  1 08:03 native
-rw-rwxrwx 1  105  107    6 Feb  1 08:03 pid
birdnet@0d31c451205b:/app$

As soon as I did this the logs of main started processing audio:

  built with gcc 14 (Debian 14.2.0-19)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr --extra-version=0+deb13u1 --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu --incdir=/usr/include/aarch64-linux-gnu --arch=arm64 --enable-gpl --disable-stripping --disable-libmfx --disable-omx --enable-gnutls --enable-libaom --enable-libass --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcdio --enable-libcodec2 --enable-libdav1d --enable-libflite --enable-libfont
[16:03:20] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160310.wav
[16:03:28] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160319.wav
[16:03:29] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=White-throated Sparrow | confidence=77 | time=16:03:22
[16:03:29] INFO     [main] BirdWeather service started | station_id=2posrJ8X...
[16:03:32] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=White-throated Sparrow | soundscape_id=8323238023
[16:03:38] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160328.wav
[16:03:48] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160338.wav
[16:03:56] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160347.wav
[16:04:07] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160356.wav
[16:04:15] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160405.wav
[16:04:25] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160414.wav
[16:04:34] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160424.wav
[16:04:34] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=White-throated Sparrow | confidence=60 | time=16:04:27
[16:04:37] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=White-throated Sparrow | soundscape_id=8323256748
[16:04:43] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160433.wav
[16:04:53] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160442.wav
[16:05:01] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160451.wav
[16:05:12] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160501.wav
[16:05:12] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=White-throated Sparrow | confidence=77 | time=16:05:04
[16:05:14] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=White-throated Sparrow | soundscape_id=8323267403
[16:05:21] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160510.wav
[16:05:29] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160519.wav
[16:05:29] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=White-throated Sparrow | confidence=64 | time=16:05:19
[16:05:30] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=Red-bellied Woodpecker | confidence=90 | time=16:05:22
[16:05:31] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=Red-bellied Woodpecker | confidence=72 | time=16:05:25
[16:05:32] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=White-throated Sparrow | soundscape_id=8323272756
[16:05:32] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=Red-bellied Woodpecker | soundscape_id=8323272966
[16:05:33] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=Red-bellied Woodpecker | soundscape_id=8323273167
[16:05:38] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160528.wav
[16:05:38] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=Red-bellied Woodpecker | confidence=69 | time=16:05:28
[16:05:39] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=Red-bellied Woodpecker | confidence=70 | time=16:05:31
[16:05:39] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=Red-bellied Woodpecker | soundscape_id=8323275216
[16:05:40] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=Red-bellied Woodpecker | soundscape_id=8323275464
[16:05:47] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160537.wav
[16:05:58] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160547.wav
[16:05:58] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=White-throated Sparrow | confidence=67 | time=16:05:47
[16:05:59] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=White-throated Sparrow | confidence=66 | time=16:05:50
[16:06:01] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=White-throated Sparrow | soundscape_id=8323281080
[16:06:01] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=White-throated Sparrow | soundscape_id=8323281462
[16:06:05] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160556.wav
[16:06:06] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=Red-bellied Woodpecker | confidence=66 | time=16:05:56
[16:06:07] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=Red-bellied Woodpecker | soundscape_id=8323282991
[16:06:16] INFO     [main] 🔴 Processing recording | file=20260201_160605.wav
[16:06:17] INFO     [main] 🐦 Bird detected | species=Dark-eyed Junco | confidence=86 | time=16:06:08
[16:06:19] INFO     [main] BirdWeather upload complete | species=Dark-eyed Junco | soundscape_id=8323286089

[Suncuss]

yay!! gald it is working. you are on to soemthing.

looking at the the birdnet-service.sh

if [ ! -d "$system_pulse_dir" ]; then
      sudo mkdir -p "$system_pulse_dir"
      sudo chown pulse:pulse-access "$system_pulse_dir" 2>/dev/null || sudo chmod 777 "$system_pulse_dir"
fi

this might be why you run into the issue. it only create dir and set the correct permission when the dir does not exist.
but if the dir exist, we don't check and fix permission.

let me get this one fixed.

[slmingol]

This one burned me a bit too, on a vanilla Raspian OS the TZ isn't set, at least not in the Lite version. Since I bypassed your install.sh script which you hardwire TZ into your unit file I had it set to nothing. When I fired up the docker compose file I was wondering why my capture times on audio were off, realized it was UTC and went into the docker-compose.yaml and set the env var TZ for all the services.

It's basically ~1:30PM EST for me atm, yet it's showing UTC below:

After changing it it's still going to show the "latest" as that ~6:30 bird until that time passes me by.

[Suncuss]

thanks for rasing this issue. i got another feedback / bug report on relying on host timezone info. i made some changes to use the timezone info from the weather API, you can actually see it in one of the logs you posted

[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Timezone cache updated: None -> America/New_York
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Timezone cached to settings: America/New_York
[15:37:10] INFO     [main] Weather updated | temp=-4.7 | code=0

but there are still some conner cases i need to sort out. working on it.

[slmingol]

Your weather comment made me think of this issue as well - #10

[Suncuss]

just pushed a new version. i remove the host TZ dependency, now TZ is set inside container based on location data. give it try. thanks for all your feedback so far. really appreacite the bug reporting effort!

although i am still not sure about the way you run it. there are still some fucntion that depends on interaction with birdnet-service.sh running on the host, like system update, or update settings. you might still run into problem with those if you are on a standalone docker setup.

one of the future goal is to have a fully standalone docker version without "crutches" from the host side, so that it can be made into a home assist add-on.

[slmingol]

Yeah I run dozens and dozens of homelab containers for things at home as well as manage large infrastructural k8s clusters at work, the pattern(s) I always see are to provide a docker-compose.yaml OR a Helm Chart.

I appreciate there being a lot of pre-dependencies with a project/software such as this I'm happy to help you tease them apart if you want to go in that direction, but it's definitely unusual to have a single script "prepping" the node ahead of time, and to such a specific degree, before starting the containers.

That just feels very limiting in terms of which OS' this project can be run on, which kind of defeats one of the tenants of why you're using containers in the first place.

Updates should really just be something like this for the app:

$ cd <birdnet compose dir>
$ docker compose up -d --build --pull always

I've never run into a project that leverages its own Systemd unit file, for e.g., the Docker Daemon already does the management of docker containers so that one feels very jarring on first blush.

Some of the other bits, building the containers, CI/CD should be handling that already for you, you could push the finished containers to GH's ghcr.io service and merely pull them down.

Here's an example of the RPi5 where I'm running your software atm, I also deploy Diun and Hawser to my nodes so I can then manage my "fleet" via Dockhand.

Your approach completely short-circuits someone from integrating your software into their entire management scenario. I might be the extreme but I have in my home >10 nodes of Docker containers and managing this one atm is much more time consuming than any of the others, for comparison.

[slmingol]

FYI I attempted to run it on my system that I setup w/o your install script and it appears to have not worked.

pi@birdnet-pi-01:~/docker_apps/birdnet-pipy $ sudo ./install.sh --update
[INSTALL] BirdNET-PiPy Installation Script

[INSTALL] Detected platform: Debian GNU/Linux
[INSTALL] Detected timezone: America/New_York
[INSTALL] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[INSTALL] BirdNET-PiPy System Update
[INSTALL] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[INSTALL] Target branch: main
[INSTALL] Stopping Docker containers...
 Container birdnet-pipy-icecast-1  Stopping
 Container birdnet-pipy-frontend-1  Stopping
 Container birdnet-pipy-main-1  Stopping
 Container birdnet-pipy-icecast-1  Stopped
 Container birdnet-pipy-icecast-1  Removing
 Container birdnet-pipy-icecast-1  Removed
 Container birdnet-pipy-frontend-1  Stopped
 Container birdnet-pipy-frontend-1  Removing
 Container birdnet-pipy-frontend-1  Removed
 Container birdnet-pipy-main-1  Stopped
 Container birdnet-pipy-main-1  Removing
 Container birdnet-pipy-main-1  Removed
 Container birdnet-pipy-api-1  Stopping
 Container birdnet-pipy-model-server-1  Stopping
 Container birdnet-pipy-api-1  Stopped
 Container birdnet-pipy-api-1  Removing
 Container birdnet-pipy-api-1  Removed
 Container birdnet-pipy-model-server-1  Stopped
 Container birdnet-pipy-model-server-1  Removing
 Container birdnet-pipy-model-server-1  Removed
 Network birdnet-pipy_default  Removing
 Network birdnet-pipy_default  Removed
[INSTALL] Fetching latest code from origin/main...
From https://github.com/Suncuss/BirdNET-PiPy
   77f6a22..5ce2f87  main       -> origin/main
[INSTALL] Update available: 2 commits behind origin/main
[WARNING] Local modifications detected - these will be discarded:
 M docker-compose.yml
[WARNING] Note: The install directory is not intended for local customizations
[INSTALL] Syncing to origin/main...
Already on 'main'
Your branch is behind 'origin/main' by 2 commits, and can be fast-forwarded.
  (use "git pull" to update your local branch)
HEAD is now at 5ce2f87 fix: improve update timeout message and simplify timezone service
[INSTALL] Building application...
[INSTALL] Building BirdNET-PiPy application...
[INSTALL] Building as user pi (UID:1000, GID:1000)...
[BUILD] Starting BirdNET-PiPy build process...
[BUILD] Generating version information...
[BUILD] Version info: 5ce2f87 (main)
[BUILD] Detected RAM: 8063MB
[BUILD] Building Docker images...
docker: 'compose' is not a docker command.
See 'docker --help'
[ERROR] Application build failed!

I had to tweak your install script to do docker-compose instead of docker compose. Assuming that's a local issue to me but figured I'd share regardless. After that one change I was able to rerun sudo ./install.sh --update.

However it doesn't appear to be well, see a fair amount of errors in the compose logs for frontend-1 and api-1.

[slmingol]

I ended up biting the bullet and doing a sudo ./uninstall.sh I had to replace all the docker compose with docker-compose throughout your scripts. I also ran into a set of problems with docker:

$ sudo groupadd docker
$ sudo usermod -aG docker root
$ sudo usermod -aG docker pi

[slmingol]

Rerunning the install.sh was able to re-lay things down and I'm able to access by existing library of captures.

[slmingol]

Looking at th TZ issue I'm still confused with how you're processing the system's date into the containers. The main still showed a default of UTC, is the apps acquiring this on their own or depending on the container for TZ still?

root@birdnet-pi-01:~/docker_apps/birdnet-pipy # docker exec -it 5732aabfe600 bash
birdnet@5732aabfe600:/app$ date
Tue Feb  3 04:51:27 UTC 2026

I went into your docker-compose.yaml and reapplied TZ to most of the containers:

$ grep -E '^  [maif]|TZ' docker-compose.yml
  model-server:
  api:
      - TZ=America/New_York
  main:
      - TZ=America/New_York
  icecast:
      - TZ=America/New_York
  frontend:
      - TZ=America/New_York