Zalmotek
Problem/Opportunity
Earthquakes are an everyday reality, since as The United States Geological Survey estimates that around 50 earthquakes can be located daily worldwide. Irrespective of their magnitude, one of the main issues regarding this kind of phenomena is the uncertainty. Specifically, it takes up to 5 or 6 seconds for people to realize that an earthquake is occurring. Moreover, because of not being able to realize immediately what is happening, people start to panic, thus becoming “earthquake sensitive” or even more developing the so-called “seismophobia”.
Value Proposition
This natural disaster lasts, in general, for only a minute or so. If you did not feel the first replica you might not be ready for the next ones. This product transforms panic into certainty.
Tech solution
The technology is simple and robust and that’s what you look for in this scenario. The gadget is fixed firmly on a wall. There is a very sensitive vibration sensor (mercury tilt switch) that once triggered it sends a signal to the development board that checks tweets in your region for the hashtag earthquake or any other word that you decide is relevant in your language. In turn this enables the red color of the main RGB and an audio warning that an earthquake has started. You can grab the device from the wall and use it as a flashlight with the white color of the RGB at full strength if you choose so. It’s time to act!
Use case
It can be also be seen as an opportunity for hospitals, public institutions or companies in order to help people not to panic. In time data can be gathered and could become an important asset to create a mapped area with the information from the sensors.
Even though at the moment it has only one sensor in order to demonstrate that this concept is feasible, other sensors can also be investigated for a higher sensitivity and other online services apart from twitter (like official seismic institutes) could be used to crosscheck and validate the information or to improve the reaction time.
Bharat Kumar
Marek
Luca Sasselli
Matthias Kampa
Thank you for asking,
I was just what we had on hand at the moment, it behaves "digital" so we only get a On or Off based on vibration, we are considering building 2 more prototypes one with accelerometer and one with a sensitive vibration sensor to further calibrate and test the system.