Sunday, December 27, 2015

Accelerometers can save lives

I got my Raspberry Pi stuff for Christmas.  I hope to make a really cheap and effective accelerometer, using the raspi zero and distribute the design.  Nobody would actually pay me anything.

This has been done before, but the projects always died.  In California they are throwing all their eggs at stupid early warning, since this is the most glamorous.  But their earthquake physics is completely wrong, and this can only be fixed with accelerometers.

You need accurate timing, and calibration.  It's quite easy now to keep a loop in the cloud with Google, so that when a big one hits, it will be recorded before everything goes down.  Much better than the twit-thing!

With a raspi and a 14 bit accelerometer chip, it should be only $20 to build.  I'll be experimenting if I need a chain of $10 accel. chips to reduce thermal noise.  Up to now all such things for seismic have had large custom seismic proof masses to reduce thermal noise.

The key improvement to life will be to read velocity on the base slab, and maybe higher up if people are rich.  Right now, engineers are obsessed with peak acceleration which is completely wrong.  A bunch of these things in OK could change that.  Right now, there isn't one in the whole place.

The other thing to change is the view on soil amplification.  It's totally wrong right now, and it will kill people.

BRING ON THE ACCELEROMETERS!

To avoid the USGS, I'm going to call my device the "Happy Happy Shake Meter" and put in EM.

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