No after reboot

[hpk60]

From time to time, I have no audio device in BirdNET-Go after a reboot.
This might be a question of timing, eg BirdNET-Go is ready before the audio device is fully loaded by the OS.
Is there a way, to improve that, for example by delaying the start of the docker container or by a setting in BirdNET-Go?

[birdnet-go-bot]

Automated message from birdnet-go support assistant.

There isn't a setting built directly into BirdNET-Go to delay its own startup. The most reliable way to handle this is to delay the container from starting until the OS has finished loading the audio devices.

How you do that depends on how you installed it. Are you using the install.sh script (which uses systemd to manage the container), or are you running docker-compose manually?

If you let me know your install method, I can give you the exact steps to add a startup delay.

[hpk60]

I used the install script install.sh

[birdnet-go-bot]

Automated message from birdnet-go support assistant.

Since you used install.sh, BirdNET-Go is managed by systemd. You can add a startup delay by editing the service configuration.

Run sudo systemctl edit birdnet-go on your host. This will open a text editor. Add these two lines at the top:

[Service]
ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 30

Save and exit the editor, then run sudo systemctl restart birdnet-go. This will make the service wait 30 seconds before starting the container, which should give your audio devices enough time to load.

[hpk60]

I've configured it as you suggested. Hope, this helps, thank you

[birdnet-go-bot]

Automated message from birdnet-go support assistant.

Glad it worked! Let the maintainer know if you run into any other issues.

[hpk60]

It happened again, therefore I sent a support package.
When this happens, I need to go in settings and add an audio device, in my case a USB Audio Device from ugreen

[birdnet-go-bot]

Automated message from birdnet-go support assistant.

Thanks for the support dump. Looking at the logs, the 30-second delay gave the OS time to load the devices, but it revealed the real problem: ALSA card index shuffling.

Your config tells BirdNET-Go to look for the microphone at a specific hardware index (card 3). On the reboot where it failed, the logs show Linux assigned your USB device to a different index. BirdNET-Go looked for card 3, couldn't find it, and stopped capture. When you go into settings and re-select the device, it grabs the new index and works again.

This is a known quirk with how Linux enumerates USB audio devices. Since BirdNET-Go currently saves the device by index, the startup delay won't prevent it. You can force Linux to always assign the same index to that USB device using ALSA modprobe rules, but I'll leave this for the maintainer to see if there's a better workaround in the app.