Consumer Electronics Accelerometers Could be a Quake Catcher Network

Posted on Apr 2, 08 10:25 AM PDT

Many devices like laptops or game consoles have an accelerometer, an embedded device that can tell what motion the host device has. It can be used to protect a hard disk before a shock, or to sense the motion of a game player. Seismologists would like consumers to join a giant network of devices that could provide a “big picture” of an incoming earthquake.

By transmitting the motion data back to a centralized location (when a shock is detected), each device could act as a local sensor, while leaving the interpretation to the seismology system. In theory, that could work, but without regular quakes to test it on, it will just take a long time to fine-tune and debug.

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