Chipper

Chipper is a software (with a GUI) for semi-automated segmentation and analysis of birdsongs or other acoustic signals.

Documentation

Full documentation is available as a Chipper Manual on GitHub. For associated publication see Searfoss, Pino, Creanza 2020 (Under Review) or preprint at bioRxiv.

Download Chipper

1. Download the correct version of Chipper for your operating system.

2. Unzip the folder, extracting all files.

3. Run the application file.
   

   • Windows

     • Navigate into the start_chipper folder and double click the Application file (.exe) named start_chipper, which may have a bird as an icon.
     • The first time you try to open the file, you may receive the message "Windows Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk." Click "More info" and then select "Run anyway".
     • You will now see a terminal window open.

   • Mac

     • Navigate into the start_chipper folder and double click the Unix executable file named start_chipper.
     • The first time you try to open the file, you may receive the message "start_chipper can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer". If so, right click on the file and select "Open". Click "Open" again on the popup to confirm.
     • You will now see a terminal window open.
     • If you continue to receive pop-ups indicating the developer cannot be identified or verified, you will need to update which apps you allow. (Common for macOS Catalina.)

       • Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General. Under “Allow apps downloaded from:” select “Anywhere”. If this is not an option, continue to the next step.
       • Open Terminal and enter $ sudo spctl --master-disable
       • Reopen System Preferences. The third option "Anywhere" should now be available. Click the lock, type your password, and select this option.
       • Try again to click and run the executable file named start_chipper.
       • Once you successfully run Chipper, you can change the “Allow apps downloaded from” setting back to the default to restore security.

   • Linux

     • Open the terminal and type $ /path/to/start_chipper/start_chipper", replacing "/path/to" with the full file location.
     • Hit enter.

4. The Chipper landing page will soon open. Note, this can take some time to load the first time. If it does not open, close the terminal and try opening the start_chipper file again. For best performance, we recommend using Chipper in full-screen mode, especially if you are working on a low resolution display. You are ready to go!

Install from source

This is recommended for developers.

1. Install Anaconda

   Our recommended approach is to use Anaconda, which is a distribution of Python containing most of the numeric and scientific software needed to get started. If you are a Mac or Linux user, have used Python before and are comfortable using pip to install software, you may want to skip this step and use your existing Python installation.

2. Next, download our code, including the requirements.txt file. From within a terminal or command prompt window, create a conda environment.

   $ conda create -n chipper_env python=3.7
   

   • For Mac and Linux, install packages with conda:

     $ conda install -r requirements.txt
     $ conda install pypiwin32 kivy.deps.sdl2 kivy.deps.glew kivy.deps.gstreamer kivy.deps.glew_dev kivy.deps.sdl2_dev kivy.deps.gstreamer_dev
     

   • For Windows users, you may need to use pip:

     $ pip install -r requirements.txt
     $ pip install pypiwin32 kivy.deps.sdl2 kivy.deps.glew kivy.deps.gstreamer kivy.deps.glew_dev kivy.deps.sdl2_dev kivy.deps.gstreamer_dev
     

3. Install kivy packages

   $ garden install --kivy graph
   $ garden install --kivy filebrowser
   $ garden install --kivy matplotlib
   $ garden install --kivy progressspinner