Did you spot a fish? Press the Fish Doorbell
31 comments
·March 24, 2025throw310822
Nice idea submerging a camera into an erwtensoep. Hey, I think I saw a rookworst swimming by!
dddw
This is the most Dutch comment ever on HN
morphle
Erwtensoep is called pea soup in English.
Actually this canal used to be a stinking city sewer and was less murky green than fecal brown for most of its 2000 year existence.
The fish came back when the sewage was removed in the last 35 years. The green color is from the healthy algal soup.
The stench in the summer was so bad that for hundreds of years the rich build beautiful country houses and castles in the woods east of the town.
https://www-quest-nl.translate.goog/maatschappij/geschiedeni...
MrMcCall
Let's hope we don't see any 'brown trout' in there :-)
Seriously, though, I love a nice green algae for some good old oxygen.
I just saw some all along the shore of a small tributary at a local park that had tons of little (but not tiny) bubbles all over it. I thought it might be oxygen.
Such a lovely florescent lime green.
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7
Discussed a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39800678
frizlab
Unrelated but why did they have to highjack the scrolling on this page…
MrMcCall
That's cool, but what I want is an ROV that will let me prowl around a lake or stream or the ocean and see what's in there.
Of course, not getting snagged on something is a problem, as is losing power, as is murkiness, but I'm not gonna build the thing -- I just want to use it.
I wanna see what's/who's down there!
rapnie
I did see fish fly by so fast that it would be really tricky to snapshot them.
stavros
Me too, and then I pressed the doorbell but the page said "there's no fish in this image" (because it swam away), so I didn't send the photo. Am I supposed to wait for a fish that will hang out in the frame? It's a bit unclear.
bell-cot
Guess: It's not useful to open the door for a fish that is not (in effect) waiting around to get through, hence the additional "check image for a fish" requirement.
stavros
Yeah but I don't know what the place is like (or how big), so the fish may very well just be waiting around just off-camera.
morphle
Depending on the smell of the day the fish will hover (hang around, linger, float?) in the frame.
cyanf
This is delightful.
_giorgio_
[dead]
null
cluckindan
How much would it cost to fine-tune an AI to recognize fish and do this automatically instead of crowdsourcing?
Maybe some one-shot object detection model would work even without fine-tuning?
dmbche
"People do so enthusiastically every year. In 2024, the Fish Doorbell attracted around 2.7 million viewers, from America to Brazil! The project has gained global recognition, helping people worldwide learn about fish migration and Utrecht’s underwater world."
I don't think solving the problem is the goal, it's attracting attention while solving the problem, which is a different goal
henrikschroder
*sigh*
"I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do laundry and dishes."
This thing is whimsy and fun, it's not a chore to be automated away.
__alexs
This is about teaching people about waterways and local wild life. Hiding it behind the an AI would defeat the point.
schoen
I bet it was a conscious decision to crowdsource it instead of automating it in order to get people more interested in the fish. It seems like it's drawing a pretty substantial fan base!
brian-armstrong
Eager to abandon your observation duties already? But you just got here.
cluckindan
I like watching cats more than cat food.
amelius
This would come into existence almost instantly if there was money to be made with pressing the doorbell at the right moment.
hhh
probably low, but then it would be boring instead of a community event full of whimsy and fun
vasco
This is more about community engagement and education than anything else.
I was born and grew up in sight of this lock where the fish doorbell is, 61 years ago.
I never knew we had this many fish swimming by until this camera perplexed me.
My boat was moored 30 meters away.
My ISP offices where a little further upstream.
2000 Years ago the city of Utrecht grew around this river branch, now called the Kromme Rijn/Vecht but originally it was the main river Rhine. It started out as a Roman frontier fort at the river crossing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kromme_Rijn
The Oude Gracht is the second most famous canal monument in the Netherlands after the Amsterdam canal system.