Creating an earthquake warning system with littleBits

Maker replicates California’s earthquake warning and monitoring system using littleBits, Ruby and PubNub.

In the wake of the tragic 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Maker Anmol Agrawal decided to create a mini earthquake warning and monitoring system using littleBits, Ruby and PubNub.

“My initial approach was to get some data through online resource like meteorological survey websites, as they are the ones with access to all the sensors, devices, machines, seismographs etc. to keep track of Earthquake activities. I planned on getting that data continously and running the logic continously like if earthquake is more than 5.3 richter scale, send the warning,” Agrawal writes.

The Maker decided to take this one step further by creating a system specifically for India. This was accomplished by acquiring the data of seismic activity for the country, which was completed by crawling the India Meteorological Department’s earthquake report every 10-20 seconds. He adds, “Although that is a very inefficient method but I still wrote the…