Author Topic: Seismograph  (Read 5059 times)

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Offline Jáchym

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Seismograph
« on: July 22, 2016, 08:55:54 PM »
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.

Offline vreihen

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #1 on: July 23, 2016, 08:05:57 AM »
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/, 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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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #2 on: July 23, 2016, 09:04:57 AM »
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.

Offline BigOkie

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #3 on: July 23, 2016, 10:08:02 AM »
Given where I live at now (Oklahoma) this might be interesting....
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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #4 on: July 23, 2016, 11:04:59 AM »
Quote
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.

Offline SpringHillWeather

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #5 on: July 23, 2016, 04:24:26 PM »
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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Offline DaleReid

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #6 on: July 23, 2016, 09:07:46 PM »
That's only effective at detecting approaching T. Rexs after they get out of the electrified cage.
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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #7 on: July 23, 2016, 09:09:56 PM »
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

Offline DaleReid

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #8 on: July 23, 2016, 09:10:55 PM »
Staten Island:  What's a LAMP server?  The acronym doens't find anything interesting. Dale
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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #9 on: July 23, 2016, 09:14:08 PM »
Staten Island:  What's a LAMP server?  The acronym doens't find anything interesting. Dale

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Offline DaleReid

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #10 on: July 23, 2016, 09:15:30 PM »
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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Offline DaleReid

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #11 on: July 23, 2016, 09:16:17 PM »
Jachym, all that runs on a puny RaspPi?  Holy cow.
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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #12 on: July 23, 2016, 09:19:40 PM »
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.

Offline lrosenman

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #13 on: July 23, 2016, 09:23:47 PM »
I don't consider quad-core, 1.2Ghz, built-in WiFi/BTLE, 1G Ram puny. :)

Offline DaleReid

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #14 on: July 23, 2016, 09:30:11 PM »
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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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #15 on: July 23, 2016, 09:33:10 PM »
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

Offline lrosenman

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #16 on: July 23, 2016, 09:34:56 PM »
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.

Offline DaleReid

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #17 on: July 23, 2016, 09:39:03 PM »
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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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #18 on: July 23, 2016, 09:40:52 PM »
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....

Offline SpringHillWeather

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #19 on: July 23, 2016, 09:44:08 PM »
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  and was pretty straight forward.

I have Meteotemplate running on it with the MySQL server there too.  mypi

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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Offline DaleReid

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #20 on: July 23, 2016, 09:45:56 PM »
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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Offline DaleReid

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #21 on: July 23, 2016, 09:49:42 PM »
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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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #22 on: July 23, 2016, 09:50:28 PM »
You will 3d print your custom chip in a few years time

Offline lrosenman

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #23 on: July 23, 2016, 09:50:45 PM »
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
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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.

Offline SpringHillWeather

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Re: Seismograph
« Reply #24 on: July 23, 2016, 09:54:53 PM »
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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