p-waves physical feedback
on march 11 my apartment in tokyo was shook by an earthquake of magnitude 9.0:
since i don’t have a mobile phone (i must be the only one in japan without a keitai) i wasn’t aware of the incoming earthquake and my software was useless (being alert 10 minutes after the earthquake):
by detecting the primary waves we know in how many seconds (depending on the epicenter location) an earthquake will occur. i don’t know if it’s possible to build a p waves monitoring device (anyone?), but for now i’m using a free software (windows & japanese only) that send me an alert (no hardware required).
connecting the software to a microcontroller was not that hard, but since i don’t want to boot in windows just for monitoring the p waves i had to hack little. grosso modo: virtual box (windows in linux) -> autoit (checking for a p waves popup) -> create file <- linux bash checking for new file -> send serial command to arduino -> physical feedback.
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