I never cease to be amazed at the ingenuity of some people, but once in a while someone comes along that blows me away.
Sebastian Alegria, a 14-year-old from Santiago Chile is one such person. He has put together a Tweeting earthquake detector @AlarmaSismos and already has over 29,000 followers.
Having experienced the quake that shook Chile in 2010 he decided to produce his own warning system so he bought a domestic quake detector and then hacked it with an Arduino and routes the warning onto Twitter via his server.
It has so far correctly detected all the recent tremors in the Santiago area.
It appears that the Chilean government is still in the process of putting a similar system together but its not live yet.... perhaps they should offer Sebastian a job !
Someone in Chile should offer this young man some support to persue this ideas further.
I hope you found this blog informative & useful , I welcome your comments either below or via twitter @peterjfrancis
alan.chong
kids this days are thinking so complex till we couldn't keep up with them!
turn back the time 10+ years back, how many teenagers are holding onto cellphones? not much as far as i could remember..
Ongytenes
I read some time back about how the Japanese had developed an early warning system for earthquakes. It works by detecting shock-waves of a different frequency that travels ahead the shock-waves that causes the damage. It is only a few seconds warning but it can automatically open firehouse doors so they can pull the fire engines out before they become trapped by falling debris. If this system was tied into the twitter system it may mean that you may have time to move to a safer location. At least a mechanic can slide out from under the car that is sitting on stands. I believe it is a good idea. Too many kids today are so tuned out, we need to nurture any promising talent that comes along.
LStacey
I agree. It certainly wouldn't hurt to have a system like this send a tweet when it notices a change.