5 ms·

There is something along those lines, but accessible to anyone: Raspberry Shake[0]. I follow a ton of amateurs on mastodon and occasionally notice them postin

There is something along those lines, but accessible to anyone: Raspberry Shake[0]. I follow a ton of amateurs on mastodon and occasionally notice them posting their screenshots of detected seismic activity as such events occur. Pretty cool! It uses seismic and infrasound sensors rather than RF, though -- pretty different from what the HN story is discussing. [0] https://raspberryshake.org/ https://raspberryshake.org/

hilbert42 3y ago
Right, that, no doubt, is an excellent idea but it's somewhat uncertain how useful it would be to forewarn people before an earthquake began as often there doesn't seem to be any significant forewarning shakes. Whenever there's a major quake tragedy there never seems to be sufficient warning. I got the idea that amateur radio could be useful with monitoring the changes to RF transmissions several decades ago after I read a paper that transmissions in the ELF band (3 - 30kHz) were affected by the stresses built up in the earth before an earthquake commenced. These EM effects are thought to be caused by stresses in heavy rock such as granite which generate a piezoelectric-like field and or that distortions of the earth's magnetic field occur around areas under stress. The ELF band is suggested because it's extremely stable with almost no effects from the ionosphere, thus changes to any RF carrier in this band would be due to fields generated by quakes (and the signal generated by stress buildup wouldn't be lost in the ionospheric noise as it is with higher frequency bands). My reasoning went thus: amateurs are spread widely across the globe and if they set up a mesh network of ELF transmissions amateur stations could then monitor the mesh transmissions for changes in signal strength, etc. This would be done automatically 24/7. Any deviation would set off a trigger, and given the mesh nature of the network, the location where the path distortion occurred could then be triangulated. It's also my understanding that the EM effects caused by stressed rock can occur days or perhaps weeks before a quake, thus it could be an effective early warning system. It seemed to me that geological services such as the USGS have probably thought along these lines but haven't done much further research because it would be necessary to set up thousands of monitoring stations across the globe and given that the science is still inconclusive and not fully settled then funding would likely not be forthcoming. That could be solved if amateurs became involved as their stations are already established. I envisioned amateurs forming a sort of loose partnership between geological services such as the USGS for the purpose (many countries have such a service). Even before any monitoring service was established, radio amateurs could be involved in the research, Establishing experimental tests etc. would be comparatively straightforward given their network of stations. I passed the ideas by the local amateur group, VK2, where I am on several occasions, the last time was after the 9.1 magnitude quake/tsunami in Sumatra Indonesia on Boxing Day in 2004 but I got little interest which left me somewhat disappointed. Incidentally, I used to have an amateur license so that's what gave me the idea to link amateurs with geological services. I still reckon it's a good idea, even if the research is inconclusive (at least there's little doubt that earthquakes do actually cause electromagnetic effects—witness this story (and there are many more such instances), Thus if EM effects exist then it seems logical to me that we ought to be able to detect them as we do with other EM phenomena).
- will5421 3y ago
  Was the VK2 group in an earthquake zone? If not that might explain their disinterest.
  - hilbert42 3y ago
    VK is the amateur callsign prefix for Australia, 2 is for the state of New South Wales, 3 for Victoria and so on. So the callsign of any radio amateur whose station (QTH) is located in NSW would begin with VK2. Australia covers an enormous area almost the size of the US or Europe and even the state of NSW is huge so seismic activity varies widely from place to place. Generally though Australia is very lucky in that its seismic activity is very low—unlike New Zealand which is the next landmass in the Pacific which is very high. In recent years the only significant earthquake in NSW was in the coastal city of Newcastle in 1989 and over a dozen people were killed. When I was a kid decades ago I lived in the Blue Mountains of NSW which is about 120 miles from Newcastle and I experiencd an earthquake and I thought the house would collapse but luckily it did not (I was in bed and when it started I had difficulty walking across my bedroom the floor shook so much). It's the earthquake in the list in the link below marked 'Robertson and Bowral' with a magnitude of 5.5. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Newcastle_earthquake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Newcastle_earthquake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Australia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Austr...
  - sebcat 3y ago
    VK2 is New South Wales, not sure what the seismic activity is there but they do appear to get earthquakes according to Wikipedia.
    - hilbert42 3y ago
      Re activity, see my reply to will5421.
- will5421 3y ago
  Maybe the amateurs didn’t see what was in it for them. Perhaps if it was the geological services approaching them about it, they’d sign up for the glamour.
teleforce 3y ago
Raspberry Shake is great. Back in 2019 USGS conducted test comparison between Raspberry Shake 4D sensors and more costly seismic sensors, and the results are comparable but nor as good [1]. We need more places with seismic sensors to provide more comprehensive data on earthquake and other seismic events. The more sensors we have, the better chance we have monitoring the events, i.e big data seismology [2]. At the moment we have good results for predicting earthquakes (not forecasting) that should be able to warn the residents a few days before the impending major earthquake. Surprisingly, the results are consistent based on offline seismic sensors data of the recent Turkeys, New Zealand, Indonesia and Philippines earthquakes. Hopefully we can reliably repeat the early detection capability with the real-time data, if fundings are available. If anyone know how to approach Japan government (or Turkish, NZ, etc) for funding the system please let me know in the comments. [1]Do low-cost seismographs perform well enough for your network? An overview of laboratory tests and field observations of the OSOP Raspberry Shake 4D: https://raspberryshake.org/news/peer-reviews/do-low-cost-seismographs-perform-well-enough-for-your-network/ https://raspberryshake.org/news/peer-reviews/do-low-cost-sei... [2] Big Data Seismology: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2021RG000769 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2021...
- ozgung 3y ago
  Turkey: Not my field but I would approach serious academics first. I know Cenk Yaltirak has a hacker mindset and working on a project to create a sensor network for Istanbul. Prof. Naci Gorur may also help, he's retired but dedicated himself to this issue. ITU Geology, and Kandilli are the two main institutions genuinely working on the expected Istanbul earthquake: https://jeoloji.itu.edu.tr/en/staff/academic-staff https://jeoloji.itu.edu.tr/en/staff/academic-staff http://www.koeri.boun.edu.tr/new/en http://www.koeri.boun.edu.tr/new/en
  - teleforce 3y ago
    Thanks for the leads to potential collaborators in Turkey. I've been to ITU once before around ten years ago but not to the Geology Engineering department. If I remember correctly, at the time they're building a new HPC cluster mainly for earthquake forecasting and prediction. Will try to contact them, perhaps next time I go to Istanbul I can pay them and Boğaziçi Kandilli Institute a visit. Also if there's person or company outside academia interested on the research it'll be good because Tübitak has funding for international research and innovation. Perhaps we can have joint industry and academia collaboration to built real-time monitoring systems for testing the new earthquake prediction scheme.
ourlordcaffeine 3y ago
Raspberry shake is ok for seeing if there was a quake, but there are in fact several improvements I've wanted to make if I had the time. Starting with adding a long range wireless or cellular connection so it can be away from human activity, also I've wanted to improve the timestamp accuracy to well beyond +-10ms and I'm pretty sure it can be done with a tcxo and a GPS receiver. I also think an actual raspberry pi isn't strictly needed and so the power consumption can be reduced a bit by sticking to microcontrollers
squarefoot 3y ago
> [0] https://raspberryshake.org/ https://raspberryshake.org/ The geophone sensor used is really interesting, although I guess by being so small it could miss very low frequency oscillations. Can experts confirm? Might be this or a very similar one: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/DTCC-Vertical-Geophone-4-5hz-Sensor_1600579088657.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/DTCC-Vertical-Geophon...

hilbert42 3y ago

Right, that, no doubt, is an excellent idea but it's somewhat uncertain how useful it would be to forewarn people before an earthquake began as often there doesn't seem to be any significant forewarning shakes. Whenever there's a major quake tragedy there never seems to be sufficient warning. I got the idea that amateur radio could be useful with monitoring the changes to RF transmissions several decades ago after I read a paper that transmissions in the ELF band (3 - 30kHz) were affected by the stresses built up in the earth before an earthquake commenced. These EM effects are thought to be caused by stresses in heavy rock such as granite which generate a piezoelectric-like field and or that distortions of the earth's magnetic field occur around areas under stress. The ELF band is suggested because it's extremely stable with almost no effects from the ionosphere, thus changes to any RF carrier in this band would be due to fields generated by quakes (and the signal generated by stress buildup wouldn't be lost in the ionospheric noise as it is with higher frequency bands). My reasoning went thus: amateurs are spread widely across the globe and if they set up a mesh network of ELF transmissions amateur stations could then monitor the mesh transmissions for changes in signal strength, etc. This would be done automatically 24/7. Any deviation would set off a trigger, and given the mesh nature of the network, the location where the path distortion occurred could then be triangulated. It's also my understanding that the EM effects caused by stressed rock can occur days or perhaps weeks before a quake, thus it could be an effective early warning system. It seemed to me that geological services such as the USGS have probably thought along these lines but haven't done much further research because it would be necessary to set up thousands of monitoring stations across the globe and given that the science is still inconclusive and not fully settled then funding would likely not be forthcoming. That could be solved if amateurs became involved as their stations are already established. I envisioned amateurs forming a sort of loose partnership between geological services such as the USGS for the purpose (many countries have such a service). Even before any monitoring service was established, radio amateurs could be involved in the research, Establishing experimental tests etc. would be comparatively straightforward given their network of stations. I passed the ideas by the local amateur group, VK2, where I am on several occasions, the last time was after the 9.1 magnitude quake/tsunami in Sumatra Indonesia on Boxing Day in 2004 but I got little interest which left me somewhat disappointed. Incidentally, I used to have an amateur license so that's what gave me the idea to link amateurs with geological services. I still reckon it's a good idea, even if the research is inconclusive (at least there's little doubt that earthquakes do actually cause electromagnetic effects—witness this story (and there are many more such instances), Thus if EM effects exist then it seems logical to me that we ought to be able to detect them as we do with other EM phenomena).

will5421 3y ago
Was the VK2 group in an earthquake zone? If not that might explain their disinterest.
- hilbert42 3y ago
  VK is the amateur callsign prefix for Australia, 2 is for the state of New South Wales, 3 for Victoria and so on. So the callsign of any radio amateur whose station (QTH) is located in NSW would begin with VK2. Australia covers an enormous area almost the size of the US or Europe and even the state of NSW is huge so seismic activity varies widely from place to place. Generally though Australia is very lucky in that its seismic activity is very low—unlike New Zealand which is the next landmass in the Pacific which is very high. In recent years the only significant earthquake in NSW was in the coastal city of Newcastle in 1989 and over a dozen people were killed. When I was a kid decades ago I lived in the Blue Mountains of NSW which is about 120 miles from Newcastle and I experiencd an earthquake and I thought the house would collapse but luckily it did not (I was in bed and when it started I had difficulty walking across my bedroom the floor shook so much). It's the earthquake in the list in the link below marked 'Robertson and Bowral' with a magnitude of 5.5. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Newcastle_earthquake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Newcastle_earthquake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Australia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Austr...
- sebcat 3y ago
  VK2 is New South Wales, not sure what the seismic activity is there but they do appear to get earthquakes according to Wikipedia.
  - hilbert42 3y ago
    Re activity, see my reply to will5421.
will5421 3y ago
Maybe the amateurs didn’t see what was in it for them. Perhaps if it was the geological services approaching them about it, they’d sign up for the glamour.

teleforce 3y ago

Raspberry Shake is great. Back in 2019 USGS conducted test comparison between Raspberry Shake 4D sensors and more costly seismic sensors, and the results are comparable but nor as good [1]. We need more places with seismic sensors to provide more comprehensive data on earthquake and other seismic events. The more sensors we have, the better chance we have monitoring the events, i.e big data seismology [2]. At the moment we have good results for predicting earthquakes (not forecasting) that should be able to warn the residents a few days before the impending major earthquake. Surprisingly, the results are consistent based on offline seismic sensors data of the recent Turkeys, New Zealand, Indonesia and Philippines earthquakes. Hopefully we can reliably repeat the early detection capability with the real-time data, if fundings are available. If anyone know how to approach Japan government (or Turkish, NZ, etc) for funding the system please let me know in the comments. [1]Do low-cost seismographs perform well enough for your network? An overview of laboratory tests and field observations of the OSOP Raspberry Shake 4D: https://raspberryshake.org/news/peer-reviews/do-low-cost-seismographs-perform-well-enough-for-your-network/ https://raspberryshake.org/news/peer-reviews/do-low-cost-sei... [2] Big Data Seismology: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2021RG000769 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2021...

ozgung 3y ago
Turkey: Not my field but I would approach serious academics first. I know Cenk Yaltirak has a hacker mindset and working on a project to create a sensor network for Istanbul. Prof. Naci Gorur may also help, he's retired but dedicated himself to this issue. ITU Geology, and Kandilli are the two main institutions genuinely working on the expected Istanbul earthquake: https://jeoloji.itu.edu.tr/en/staff/academic-staff https://jeoloji.itu.edu.tr/en/staff/academic-staff http://www.koeri.boun.edu.tr/new/en http://www.koeri.boun.edu.tr/new/en
- teleforce 3y ago
  Thanks for the leads to potential collaborators in Turkey. I've been to ITU once before around ten years ago but not to the Geology Engineering department. If I remember correctly, at the time they're building a new HPC cluster mainly for earthquake forecasting and prediction. Will try to contact them, perhaps next time I go to Istanbul I can pay them and Boğaziçi Kandilli Institute a visit. Also if there's person or company outside academia interested on the research it'll be good because Tübitak has funding for international research and innovation. Perhaps we can have joint industry and academia collaboration to built real-time monitoring systems for testing the new earthquake prediction scheme.

ourlordcaffeine 3y ago

Raspberry shake is ok for seeing if there was a quake, but there are in fact several improvements I've wanted to make if I had the time. Starting with adding a long range wireless or cellular connection so it can be away from human activity, also I've wanted to improve the timestamp accuracy to well beyond +-10ms and I'm pretty sure it can be done with a tcxo and a GPS receiver. I also think an actual raspberry pi isn't strictly needed and so the power consumption can be reduced a bit by sticking to microcontrollers

squarefoot 3y ago

> [0] https://raspberryshake.org/ https://raspberryshake.org/ The geophone sensor used is really interesting, although I guess by being so small it could miss very low frequency oscillations. Can experts confirm? Might be this or a very similar one: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/DTCC-Vertical-Geophone-4-5hz-Sensor_1600579088657.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/DTCC-Vertical-Geophon...