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Weather Station Hardware => Other Weather Station Hardware => Topic started by: Jáchym on July 22, 2016, 08:55:54 PM
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Now this looks like an interesting addition to one's set of sensors:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/raspberry-shake-seismograph
probably useless for me, but Im sure many of you living in other places of the world would find this useful.
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Should we expect a MeteoTemplate block by tomorrow morning? :lol:
Seriously though, there's already crowd-sourced PWS networks, lightning, aircraft tracking, and ship tracking services out there, and I'm surprised that nobody has started a similar setup with personal seismographs that I can find in a quick web search. There is http://quakecatcher.net/ (http://quakecatcher.net/), but it seems to be more focused on academia than going mass-scale. I have exposed bedrock in my backyard, and would gladly contribute to a personal earthquake network if one was available.....
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I think I also looked at this in the past, in my case purely out of interest because I live in an area that has practically no EQ at all and I dont think such device would be able to detect earthquakes thousands of km away. But I was just interested if there is something at all and I think I found a few, but those were just devices meant for professionals and that was also reflected in its price, which was basically a multiple of what you paid for all your other weather equipment. And I thought that if it was possible to make this in a more affordable way, someone would have done it already, given we have similar stuff for lightnings etc.
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Given where I live at now (Oklahoma) this might be interesting....
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Raspberry Shake is sensor-digitizer that records earthquakes from about magnitude 2 and higher within a radius of 50 miles, and a magnitude 4 and higher in a radius of 300 miles.
Thats actually pretty good, considering this should only cost 50-150 dollars, I can imagine that a network of users that would cover completely a large area (similarly to eg. Blitzortung) could easily be created.
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Nice find Jachym.
I recently got on the band-wagon with a Raspberry PI and I wish I had done so sooner.
I'm now running a LAMP server with the templates on it and can't believe how well it runs.
This is another project that looks interesting. I would go for the $149 starter since that has all the functioning parts minus the PI.
So for around $200 you'll have a Seismograph that will be part of network which will share the data worldwide.
Very tempting... All these kickstarters are starting to add up, just can't let the wife know :twisted:
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That's only effective at detecting approaching T. Rexs after they get out of the electrified cage.
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That's only effective at detecting approaching T. Rexs after they get out of the electrified cage.
LOL.... I actually saw a documentary about that movie - behind the scenes - and they explained how difficult it actually was to create that effect :D
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Staten Island: What's a LAMP server? The acronym doens't find anything interesting. Dale
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Staten Island: What's a LAMP server? The acronym doens't find anything interesting. Dale
Linux OS + Apache server + MySQL + PHP
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I know that the Blitzortung folks work a lot on reducing electric noise in their systems.
I have heard of Universities having a fit about having very expensive, sensitive and unmovable equipment jeaprodized by the construction of new roads or railroads near some of their laboratories. I can only imagine how the two gravity wave detector installations would be affected by nearby construction or a freeway. I remember the first holograms that were made and the long exposures needed to get the film to be exposed and to remember how platforms were big blocks of granite, floating on mercury to help reduce environmental effects.
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Jachym, all that runs on a puny RaspPi? Holy cow.
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The Pi is no longer what it used to be....
It has the same RAM size as the computer on which the entire Meteotemplate was/is being made :D
The new version has 1GB of RAM and can do quite interesting stuff and some Linux versions are really lightweight. I am using the Lubuntu distribution and the Pi has even smaller ones. One is Puppy linux, though Im not sure if this one in particular is used by the Pi. But some Linux distributions really require very little resources.
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I don't consider quad-core, 1.2Ghz, built-in WiFi/BTLE, 1G Ram puny. :)
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I forgot the winking emoticon.
I've got two of them and the latest B still amazes me with it idling away furnishing data to the flight24 place.
And to think that it does almost as much as the room full of Univac 1108 I used to run when I was at the University a few decades ago. We were thrilled with a few megabytes of disk storage on the Amperex spinning platter things that they installed just before I left. I do wish I had one of those tape drives just to watch it run once again.
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Yes... it is always funny to look back at what technology looked like in the past... things like that the computer responsible for landing on the Moon was way less powerfull than today's smartwatch :D
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Yes... it is always funny to look back at what technology looked like in the past... things like that the computer responsible for landing on the Moon was way less powerfull than today's smartwatch :D
It's amazing to me since I've been involved with computers since 1971. Amazing where we are today. It'll be interesting to see where we are in another 30 years.
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I live near Chippewa Falls, WI, USA where they make/made Cray computers. One of my friends was involved with the memory designs originally. Some of the stuff he worked on were the old ferrite core arrays which were all strung by hand in an even smaller town near Chippewa Falls. 4,096 bit ram was really hot stuff. But then almost all the very low level stuff was written in assembler, and even the 1108 operating system was assembler, which ran ALGOL and COBOL, FORTRAN and SNOBOL on top of that. I know when the thing crashed we did a memory dump and for amusement on long runs late at night when there wasn't anything else to do, we'd look over the printouts that would go to the programmers in the morning for analysis. It was indeed meticulous, step but step but very compact. Rebooting was taking a tape and mounting it on the first drive on the channel and booting about six instructions to get the program to load a loader, and we were back up. usually.
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They say there will be computers as smart as humans within 20 yrs so what will be in 30 yrs pretty much depends on what the computers will want us to look like and do... it is scary... but once they become more intelligent than us, it will be "them" who will invent the even more intelligent things and only a matter of time before they find out they dont need us....
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Staten Island: What's a LAMP server? The acronym doens't find anything interesting. Dale
DaleReid as Jachym mentioned it stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP.
There are many hits on Google for "PI Lamp server" tutorial (https://www.element14.com/community/community/raspberry-pi/raspberrypi_projects/blog/2014/02/24/raspberry-pi-as-a-lamp-server) and was pretty straight forward.
I have Meteotemplate running on it with the MySQL server there too. mypi (http://mypi.webhop.net)
I'm now playing around weewx to see if I can get that working for a secondary weather station I have running.
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Irosenman: I think we lived at the golden age of computers. I remember when, I think it was Byte magazine, published the first 8080 kit schematics. At the time I knew enough to trace through and see just how it worked, was able to do a little low level programming to interface a few things, and loved the DEC 8 when we finally got one at work.
then things jumped to higher level languages, and the chips became very intensely concentrated. I guess someone has to learn that and keep the development up, but I would think that now only a handful of exceptionally specialized designers know how it works, and maybe not all of it.
I understand now that you can pretty much order whatever logic you want, and a standard chip set can be sort of burned to make the kind of system you want, even wasting some potential on the chip because it is easier to make a complex one cheaply and use those than design various ones for specialized use.
I hope to see the world in twenty years but will be lucky to do so. I'm lucky to have had exposure as I have, and still amazed at the advancements in not only the electronics but the computer science in discovering fast, reliable ways to, for example, do indexes and searches. The self hovering drones that take helicopter like videos now and 'almost' self driving cars are no doubt going to get fine tuned in another decade.
What kind of systems did you work with?
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StatenIsland: Oh crap, now another thing to read about! I'm going to have to live to 200 to get all these things done.
That sequence was more helpful than my short search, and I think it took me right to the one tutorial that steps me through it. I'll go read more in a bit.
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You will 3d print your custom chip in a few years time
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DEC PDP-8/L was my first computer in High School running FOCAL the first year, then Basic the 2nd. Then we moved to a HP-9000(?) running basic. Punched Paper Tape, ASR-33 teletype. We were impressed when we moved to 300 Baud ADM-3A Screens.
I've also worked on:
Data General Nova/Eclipse
IBM System/36
IBM System/370, 390
Amiga (under both AmigaDOS and SVR4 Unix).
I've worked on everything from Micro, Mini, and Mainframes.
I've also worked up and down the stack in Apps, Network, Database, Systems, and OS Extensions in IBM MVS.
I'm a bits/bytes person but I feel that makes me better as a support/admin person understanding what's going on when stuff goes bad.
It's my hobby as well as my occupation.
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You will 3d print your custom chip in a few years time
There going to put the database on the chip shortly, so less programming in the future. LOL :-P
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StatenIsland: Oh crap, now another thing to read about! I'm going to have to live to 200 to get all these things done.
That sequence was more helpful than my short search, and I think it took me right to the one tutorial that steps me through it. I'll go read more in a bit.
I just finished telling my family that I need to live I long time to complete all the projects I want to accomplish :D
I see that RPI has many kits so I'm hooked already. I did see one for Aviation traffic Vilros Raspberry Pi Aviation Weather & Traffic Receiver Kit (https://www.amazon.com/Vilros-Raspberry-Aviation-Set--Micro-Pre-loaded/dp/B01BX1QSFK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469325712&sr=8-1&keywords=vilros+kit+antenna) but not sure if its just for aircraft and if it works well on the ground, more research.
Thanks for the info.
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Irosenman: I remember the frustration of loading the BASIC onto the -8, and having the old teletype fail. We had the less advanced model and still remember the sound it made and the funny font it used on the yellow continuous roll. Then did some programming on the -11 with reel to reel tape and thought that was heaven. How I had the time (in school, no wife, no kids, etc) maybe less need for sleep.
I deviated from the math/physics before I graduated but never lost my interest in computers, what they can do and the hardware (far beyond my comprehension now) to do it.
I still have an old Wang display box like we had for chemistry calculations, but no brains to hook it too. My wife thinks I need t clear out some of that junk but it is a reminder of what's gone on.
That's why I hope schools are using Rasp PIs and other stuff to teach kids how to run, rather than use it. Otherwise we'll be at the mercy of those who do know how to design and run it.
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SI: I have the flight radar 24 set up, and in the first stages when I got the little USB receiver did download a program that talked to the chip to make it a frequency agile radio. I tuned in a local FM station, and could select many options, including bandwidth, display, etc. I was overwhelmed, and basically for $20 plus some free software that developers and hobbiests had already developed. I still am stuck in the world of resonate circuits and those approaches to receiving signals, which my ham radio and advanced electrical technicians say will still be the basis of stuff, but the new approaches are way beyond that now.
If you have a RPi, then the little USB thing is very easy to get for $18 to $20 and I had enormous fun playing with it before dedicating it to listening to the transponders of the aircraft flying over, now it is sort of an appliance feeding info like Jachym mentioned with the seismographs .
Oh, thinking a 'cheap' radio like the chip would give 'cheap' sound, I was equally amazed at the quality of the sound that my comuputer generated though a good set of earphones plugged into my sound card. A local university has a low power station that does a lot of classical music in the evenings and I got caught up enjoying all the clarity and bandwidth my old ears can pick up. It made listening to FM very enjoyable. Much different than the limited .mp3 quality that I have gotten used to tolerating. So if you haven't played around, it is a great thing to do.
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DaleReid,
Thank you very much for all the info you provided. It was very helpful and points me in the right direction now.
Nice to reminiscence of the old days :D
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Thanks for pointing this out, I have been looking for something like this.
Living in California should provide some decent results, I just hope nothing too big.
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Yes, I guess your location is definitely one in which it might be useful.
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Just letting everyone know that there is a new Kickstarter campaign for an updated version of the Raspberry Shake.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1158786437/raspberry-shake-4d-detect-earthquakes-and-invisibl?ref=user_menu
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Hi all, if you're interested there are still 2 days to get a Raspberry Shake 4D at a discount through the Kickstarter campaign.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1158786437/raspberry-shake-4d-detect-earthquakes-and-invisibl?ref=discovery
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So for $300, I can get everything I need, minus a computer to hook it up to?
Are they eventually going to host a web site like Weather Underground to everyone can see the data from the thing?
Here in the Thumb of Michigan, earth quakes are not a big threat, but what an interesting thing to monitor and see. Would be even nicer if the USGS stood up and took notice. It is only free value added to their existing sensors.
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Yes... it is always funny to look back at what technology looked like in the past... things like that the computer responsible for landing on the Moon was way less powerfull than today's smartwatch :D
It's amazing to me since I've been involved with computers since 1971. Amazing where we are today. It'll be interesting to see where we are in another 30 years.
Which did you have? Apple I or II, Commodore PET, TRS-80, KIM1?
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Which did you have? Apple I or II, Commodore PET, TRS-80, KIM1?
Still have this one, but haven't started it for many years...
Enjoy,
Paul
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Which did you have? Apple I or II, Commodore PET, TRS-80, KIM1?
Still have this one, but haven't started it for many years...
Enjoy,
Paul
That's the FIRST model with the "chicklet" keyboard, later models had normal keyboards.
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Yep, and I wanted the numeric pad for my love of numbers :)
and also the built-in tape drive...
Haven't looked at for quite a while but think it says 1977 inside of it. Bought it used in about 1981.
Enjoy,
Paul
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Gawd now I feel old
First computer I had was an Atari 800XL, and my fathers Osborn.
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Gawd now I feel old
First computer I had was an Atari 800XL, and my fathers Osborne.
The Osborne was a nice compact portable unit in that you could actually hand-carry it from one place to another sorta like an over-grown briefcase.