Laptop Computers Detect and Monitor Earthquakes

Pickens writes "Live Science reports that 1,000 people from 61 countries have signed up with the Quake-Catcher Network to take advantage of built-in accelerometers in newer laptops that transmit data about earthquakes to researchers at UC Irvine and Stanford University. 'It's providing additional data that can be fed into the seismic networks,' says Elizabeth Cochran, a UC Irvine geoscientist. 'It also allows us to record earthquakes at a scale that we haven't been able to before because of the cost.' Cochran came up with the idea for the Quake-Catcher Network when she learned that most new laptops come equipped with accelerometers designed to switch off the hard drive if the laptop is dropped. 'I figured that we could easily tap into this data and use it to record earthquakes.' While traditional seismic monitors can detect earthquakes of magnitude 1.0 or less, the lowest magnitude the Quake-Catcher Network can detect is about 4.0, a moderate quake much like the one that hit LA on March 16. But what the network lacks in sensitivity, it makes up for in price as traditional seismic sensors cost $5,000 to $10,000 apiece. 'Ideally we would have seismometers in every building, or at least on every block. And in tall buildings, we'd have multiple sensors [on different floors],' says Cochran. 'That way, we would be able to actually get much higher detail images of how the ground shakes during an earthquake.'"

Comments

How about using Wii hardware?

[tomhudson]

There was a report here on slashdot that the balance board hardware was actually VERY good. Maybe the MotionPlus could be useful.

Re:How about using Wii hardware?

[Bakkster]

The balance board uses strain guages, which can't detect earthquakes to my knowledge. Similarly, motionplus is gyroscopes, which in this case are not accurate enough to determine the very small displacements from an earthquake.

However, I'm very surprised they're not just going for a bulk purchase of unlocked smartphones, it must be cheaper and just as accurate as laptop accelerometers. Laptops seem very roundabout...

Re:How about using Wii hardware?

[TubeSteak]

However, I'm very surprised they're not just going for a bulk purchase of unlocked smartphones, it must be cheaper and just as accurate as laptop accelerometers. Laptops seem very roundabout...

Price, Quality, Speed. Pick two.

Laptops are "free", have "free" internet, get recharged for "free", are usually on a solid surface, and the reporting software is downloadable. And by "free" I mean "free to the scientists"

OTOH, do you want to be the guy who has to get permission from XYZ building owners in order to distribute and plug in an endless number of smart phones?

Software on laptops seem to be a lot better than smartphones when it comes to price and speed.

Call from Quake-Catcher

[natehoy]

[phone rings, Quake-Catcher volunteer answers]
Volunteer: "Hello?"
Quake-Catcher Scientist: "Hi, Mr. Jones. We'd like to ask you some questions about a highly-localized event last night."
V: "What?"
S: "We clearly read a 8.8 Richter reading in your apartment last night around 10PM, but we can't confirm this with any other data."
V: [puts hand over handset] "HONEY?! DID YOU LEAVE THE LAPTOP IN THE BED LAST NIGHT?!"

Re:Call from Quake-Catcher

[furby076]

S: "We clearly read a 0.1 Richter reading in your apartment last night around 10PM, but we can't confirm this with any other data."

fix't

Re:"$5,000 to $10,000 apiece"?

[oodaloop]

From not having to buy them at all. Users would buy them and sign up to install software and send back data. And not everyone uses a Mac, BTW. Shocking, I know.

Re:Take this!

[Jeng]

And that is why they no longer use "Etch a Sketch" as a means of recording earthquakes.

Flash-Group Earthquakes are fun!

[uncledrax]

I can't wait for Facebook group 'laptop drops' to simulate earth quakes.. the winner being hte person that can get the highest on the Richter scale w/o braking their laptops..

Re:Take this!

[FooAtWFU]

In all seriousness, they use the laptops to provide supplementary data to model the shaking of the ground and the buildings, not as primary earthquake detectors. People deliberately shaking their laptops are their least concerns. (Normal shaking, like from typing, is more important.)

Nah. Mobile phones

[Colin Smith]

Many mobiles have accelerometers these days in addition to gps. So you can get the gps positions of the wave as well as the gps timestamp and the accelerometer values.

They are even connected to a network. The tricorder in startrek... Mobile phone...
 

Re:Nah. Mobile phones

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect, though, that substantially fewer mobile phones are well coupled to the earth at any given time.

Laptops aren't fantastic in that regard; but they are substantially better. Most of a laptop's "on time" is spent sitting on some more or less solid piece of furniture. There are the "user wandering around holding the thing" and "sitting in user's amply padded lap" and "on top of cushion on top of pile of blankets on top of bed, overheating" data points that you have to be able to filter out; but those are the exceptions.

With phones, they spend most of their lives in a pocket or bag, or in somebody's hand. Amount of time spent sitting, laptop like, on a solid surface is pretty small. And, when there is a human between you and the ground, you lose a lot of detail at the low and high ends of intensity(and, perhaps even more serious, since resolution depends on accurate detection of low intensity stuff, you always lose that). The body of a standing human is really good at compensating for small vibrations. Our balance depends on it. On the high end, the accelerometer trace of "falls over, runs around screaming" is probably pretty dramatic; but ill correlated with what the ground is doing.

One other advantage

[damn_registrars]

They are also taking advantage of the fact that most laptops seldom (if ever) move much. Many people buy them more to save physical space on their desk than they do to actually go somewhere with them.

Re:Take this!

[troll -1]

1) FTA: "[t]he Quake-Catcher software program ...... runs in the background on the laptop and becomes active when the user is idle."

2) The data is supplemental and used only for additional info gathered at the time of an earthquake.

Re:Easily?

[penguinchris]

Well, it is actually quite easy... there is a lot of software available that will capture the data from accelerometers and display it to you. The hardware is pretty simple and I guess the APIs are easy to use (I'm not a programmer I'm just assuming based on the software I've seen). When I first got a computer with an accelerometer (a Thinkpad from a couple years ago) I was even able to set it up to use the accelerometer input as a joystick in linux. Not practical, but kind of amusing to try to play a flying game by moving the whole computer around :) There are also several programs for iphones and Android devices that will output all of the accelerometer data to you (on android I recommend the free "Tricorder" program, it shows you data from all the sensors and more than you probably thought possible).

Therefore it should be - and apparently was - fairly trivial to set up a program to run in the background logging and monitoring the data

The neat thing is that the accelerometers really are quite high-resolution, and there is one measuring each direction (x, y, and z) which real seismometers also do.

Re:"$5,000 to $10,000 apiece"?

[Tekfactory]

What is with the Mac hate?

IBM/Lenovo ran an ad a long time ago talking about his new Thinkpad stopping the drive when the laptop was falling. The other guy grabs the laptop drops it on the ground and says so the hard drive is fine.

The other guy says that's not my Thinkpad, hilarity ensues.

But if all you need is an accelerometer, somebody needs to tell this guy to write an app for the iPhone, iPod Touch, my Droid, and probably a lot of other phones.

Re:Take this!

[YrWrstNtmr]

You're in a coffee shop. Try it at McDonalds, and I think you'd find a different level on the scale.

unanswered questions

[frovingslosh]

most new laptops come equipped with accelerometers

So how do I determine if my laptop has one? And if it does, how can I get access to it by software? Even if the is one or more accelerometers in there for protection of the hard drive, it will require a presence in the I/O address space, I assume, for it to be used by this or any other software. Apparently this exists, or the software would be as useful as Duke Nuken Forever, but I have not found any insight in the articles on how accelerometers can be accessed. Can anyone provide some technical details? I would like to use this for other applications, but would gladly share any earthquake data that the system captured while it was idle if I had the hardware.