Consumer Electronics Accelerometers Could be a Quake Catcher Network

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.