Simon Willison’s Weblog

30th September 2024 - Link Blog

Bop Spotter (via) Riley Walz: "I installed a box high up on a pole somewhere in the Mission of San Francisco. Inside is a crappy Android phone, set to Shazam constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's solar powered, and the mic is pointed down at the street below."

Some details on how it works from Riley on Twitter:

The phone has a Tasker script running on loop (even if the battery dies, it’ll restart when it boots again)

Script records 10 min of audio in airplane mode, then comes out of airplane mode and connects to nearby free WiFi.

Then uploads the audio file to my server, which splits it into 15 sec chunks that slightly overlap. Passes each to Shazam’s API (not public, but someone reverse engineered it and made a great Python package). Phone only uses 2% of power every hour when it’s not charging!