Your Laptop Could Be an Earthquake Detector
Thinkpads and MacBook Pros working together to help save lives.
While all new smartphones today have accelerometers, it's still a rarity for laptops; but researchers are putting those laptops, as few as there are, to use by turning them into tremor detectors.
PC laptops such as ThinkPads and all Apple MacBook Pro laptops feature an accelerometer that's used to park the heads of hard drives in case of sudden movement. It's a safety feature that helps to keep your data from a scary hard drive crash, but researchers are putting that technology towards earthquake detection.
A report from NPR has put the spotlight on Quake-Catcher Network, a project from StanfordUniversity that uses the combined data from accelerometer-packing laptops that are connected to the internet.
A user of a ThinkPad, MacBook Pro, or anyone with an external USB detector, can download the software for free to help aid in earthquake detection. Of course, the sensors inside a laptop aren't designed to pick up minute movements in the earth – in fact, they can only pick up tremors of about magnitude 4.0 and above – but it would still be valuable information for warning surrounding areas.
"If you can detect an event fast enough, then you can potentially provide advance alert to surrounding areas, and those areas could react in several seconds and get to safety," one of the researchers explained.
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My laptop already is an earthquake detector.
If it falls off my desk because everything is shaking,
there might be an earthquake.
well it's stanford so no need to worry about this, your ip and packages can be traced to see where are they from so you have a geographical view of the event+ i'm pretty sure you need a group of events in the same geographical zone to trigger a possible alert.
get 1000 people to rattle their laptops at once and lets flash mob them
With laptops being designed to be used on the move, any number of laptops moving simultaneously may well trigger this. A bus load of kids surfing on the school bus going over a speed bump may trigger an alert. I'm not sure that I would trust this as a primary indicator, but as a point to reconcile the effect after the event this could help get better maps of where a quake hit, and the effect over that area. It would be a way to map out entire counties rather than points where they THINK there may be a quake.
Could be really interesting around San Fran....