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Comment by togume | Hacker News Reader

It’s so great this app is getting attention. Hopefully the devs/PMs come here and pay attention.

The sound ID works very well, especially in the jungles/forests of Colombia with zero network availability.

The rest of the app needs a lot of love, though. Buttons don’t work often, screens are inconsistent, results get lost, and more issues.

Features: I’d love an iNaturalist bridge. Going back into a previous recording shows “No matches” when the original capture did. Many times we’re with groups in nature, and we ID something, but it’s gone by the time we show it to someone.

A quick starting point would be to add a quick feedback button vs opening a web form, so issues can be reported conveniently.

And a resounding thank you to everyone making this app possible!

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> Buttons don’t work often, screens are inconsistent, results get lost, and more issues.

What device are you using, out of curiosity? I use this app almost daily for months at a time across several generations of the Google Pixel, I haven't had any of these issues even one time. I'm not even sure what you mean by "we ID something, but it’s gone by the time we show it to someone". Like, it shows a match while you're recording, but the ID disappears after you've stopped the recording?

I've found the app starts hiccuping when I'm making a very long recording, but I've learned to just cut it off and start a new one after about 10 minutes.

Going to second this opinion. I use this app almost daily as well on an iPhone 15 Pro. I have zero problems with responsiveness. I have seen a small lag when I start to get to 45m-1hr recordings, but even that isn't all too bad.

The only problem I had was when I had a OnePlus phone. It would show the little circles of "I found a bird" but not actually identify anything, and as far as I know it was a OnePlus specific bug. I have a Pixel now, and it works perfectly.

When I was in Aruba there was no bird pack which covered the island, but the one for Venezuela seemed to work for most birds that I heard.

> I've found the app starts hiccuping when I'm making a very long recording, but I've learned to just cut it off and start a new one after about 10 minutes.

What phone are you using? I record ten hours a day and never get any issues whatsoever, so I'm not even sure what you mean by "hiccups".

Not them, but I had it crash on a three hour recording.

Works very well on my iPhone as well.

> The sound ID works very well, especially in the jungles/forests of Colombia with zero network availability.

Interesting. I find that the sound ID works well if:

- I have my phone out of my pocket and exposed to the air (obviously, if the microphone is muffled, it may cause problems).

- I'm not moving (my footsteps seem to interfere no matter how loud the bird is)

- The Merlin App is running with "focus" (i.e., if Merlin sound ID is running in the background, it seems less likely to detect songs and calls). I don't know if this is really true or if I have a subconscious bias.

- There are also weird effects where it will sometimes fail to notice really loud obvious birds nearby (e.g., baltimore orioles directly above me) but it will nail a faint and distant song.

It would also be nice if it could show the part of the sonogram that forms the basis of its ID call. It is especially difficult for me to examine a sonogram when there are multiple birds singing at once.

> The rest of the app needs a lot of love, though. Buttons don’t work often, screens are inconsistent, results get lost, and more issues.

I have the opposite experience, but that may be a phone-specific issue??

Nevertheless, it's a fantastic app.

Love the app!

But it crashes for me every 255 seconds after start-up on Android. Yes, I timed it.

Is there a way to submit bug reports?

Android app store says merlinhelp@cornell.edu

Definitely submit full OS and hardware details, and adb logcat crash logs if you can. There's a million possibilities of the cause of the problem, with all the different android hardware out there.

That's a really funny sounding bug. I'm curious what's causing that!

I tried adding a 2nd region when I was in Europe and it locked up. I had to reinstall the app to get it back to a usable state. Adding region packs is totally broken on iOS.

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