Raspberry Pi enthusiasts looking for a new project, may be interested in this professional grade personal seismograph development board which has been created by Angel Rodriguez and can easily be plugged into your Raspberry Pi mini PC.
Once setup the Raspberry Pi seismograph allows you to watch the earth move and records earthquakes from about a magnitude of 2 and higher within a radius of 50 miles and a magnitude of 4 and higher in a radius of 300 miles.
The data is then displayed using the open and free software SWARM written for the USGS Alaska Volcano Observatory. Check out the video below to learn more.
The Raspberry Shake is for any person who would like to “see” the vibrations that are all around us but are generally not felt. ANY felt vibration whether it is a truck or a tremor will be detected by your Raspberry Shake. It’s fun to make, fun to program, fun to watch the tremors and fun to review all of the recorded vibrations of the day on one screen. Raspberry Shake has two main components:
1) The main sensor is a geophone, a microphone for the vibrations of the earth. Geophones have been used for decades in the geophysical and oil exploration business. A geophone is a small can about the size of a salt shaker. There is a coil that moves in relation to a magnet and creates a small current.
2) The Amplifier, digitizer and ARM processor.
The small current mentioned above is then amplified with some ultra-quiet state of the art op amps. Once amplified, the signal is digitized, then that data are shipped to the ARM processor and bundled into one-second packets that are shipped to your Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi time-stamps the data and stores it in a seismic industry standard format and sends it in answer to client requests. Those requests are displayed on your smartphone or computer monitor. The complete system is called a seismograph.
For more information on the new Raspberry Pi Seismograph development board jump over to the Kickstarter website for details and to make a pledge from $49, by following the link below.
Source: Kickstarter
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