Raspberry Shake

Very cool idea. I ordered a couple Raspberry Pi single-board computers two months ago and have been playing with them - a lot of fun! The reason was for an amateur radio project but I am interested in several branches of science and geology is a major one.

Just ran into Raspberry Shake - a full fledged seismograph using a Raspberry Pi for the data processing and user interface. They had run a Kickstarter campaign and blew past their wished-for funding and are now in full production. From their website:

Raspberry Shake Shop is live now!
Raspberry Shake is a professional grade personal seismograph. It uses a geophysical sensor coupled to a modern digitizer and ARM processor that stacks onto any of the Raspberry Pi boards.

About Raspberry Shake
Raspberry Shake is novel seismograpgh that can:

• • Record earthquakes magnitude 2 and up within a radius of 50 miles.
  • Record earthquakes magnitude 4 and up in a radius of 250 miles.
  • Record earthquakes of larger magnitudes farther away but it will miss some of the subtleties and some of the lower frequencies.
  • Share data with seismic observatories world wide in standard format.
  • Show all activity for the last week.
  • Send alarms and warnings to your cell phone.
  • See and plot the data from any other Raspberry shake.

It outputs the standard file format for seismographs and the data can plug into the world-wide network of stations.

Needless to say, one of these is coming out here to live with me. I'll need to sink a concrete pier but since the house is built on a stone outcropping, this will not be a difficult task - some cinder blocks and I already own a cement mixer - an afternoon of shovelwork and a couple bags of RediMix will do it. The hardware will live out in the radio room. The cost was reasonable - the sensor plus the signal conditioning circuit board (this is what plugs into the Rasp Pi) and a memory card with the required software and a copy of the guy's book was right around $200.

Worst case scenario it will become Rocky's favorite scratching post and my unit will be constantly sending out data about Mag 9 quakes happening in our area...