Last year I created the seisMeowmeter project which unfortunately didn’t see full completion and so it collected dust as a prototype while I continued on with other projects. However, while building the seisMeowmeter, the geophone showed me that the ground was, in a way, a lot like jello than something completely rigid. The geophone picked up footsteps from upstairs, it picked up cars driving by my house and it even picked up the tiny vibrations that were coming from the transformer in my oscilloscope. The fact that the ground could transfer movements over a considerable distance was something very, very profound to me.
Given how amazed I was over what a small can with a magnet inside could do, it persisted in residing in a spot in my mind as I worked through other projects. I couldn’t let this one go and I just had to do something more with it.
What I really wanted to do was to take the seisMeowmeter with me wherever I went. All of seismic recording that was previously done was either indoors or in very close proximity to my house. The setup wasn’t very portable and all of the graphical output was done over the web which is great if the seisMeowmeter stays in one spot with internet access. I wanted to be able to take the seisMeowmeter hiking with me where there was no cell reception, let alone internet. I needed a local ‘scope’ on my computer to see data.
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