Quake-Catcher Network Seismic Monitoring

April 21, 2009
A few QCN participants caught the recent M5.1 quake in Hawaii. Also as of today I am removing the 'alpha test' status of the Quake-Catcher Network, although the URL will remain the same so you do not have to reconnect/reattach. The credit stats should now be tracked by boincstats.com

March 30, 2009
At least four QCN participant's machines detected today's San Jose earthquke. Also for the first time the external USB JoyWarrior sensor was used to detect a quake (it's previously just been Mac laptops). So keep running QCN and thanks for participating!

January 14, 2009
QCN's USB sensors are now available for order. The sensors are $5 for K-12 teachers, and $49 for everyone else. With your help, we can grow the network larger, better, and faster! Thanks for your support!

November 22, 2008
The 'ScienCentral' channel has posted a short (two minute) video-clip regarding the Quake-Catcher Network featuring an interview with Prof. Jesse Lawrence of Stanford.

November 7, 2008
New version 4.25 is up for all platforms - this version perturbs some of the sensitivity algorithm used to detect triggers. It will hopefully lead to less 'false positive' triggers/trickles as well as help us 'fine tune' our algorithm.

November 4, 2008
New version 4.22 is up for all platforms. This has improved error handling. If you are using the JoyWarrior 24F8 external USB accelerometer, you will want to upgrade the QCN USB driver software for Intel Mac or for PowerPC Macs.

October 30, 2008
In honor of my hometown team the Philadelphia Phillies winning the World Series, I put up a new version (4.00) that will track how much time you've run QCN, and grant BOINC 'cobblestone' credits accordingly. This new version also has some improved graphics in the screensaver (in my biased opinion :-).
The 'bouncing cube' now shows a plot of your accelerometer on each cube face, the earth view has a nice multitexture of the earth at day and night (if your graphics card supports it), and in screensaver mode it will cycle through these different scenes so you will get some variety. Also I have made workunits shorter - that way after a 'day' of run-time on QCN, you will get a new workunit and new software versions. This is an 'optional' upgrade now if you 'Abort' your current workunit or 'Reset Project.' Once we have a few people running 4.00+ for a few days I will send out an automatic message to upgrade.

October 24, 2008
We now have maps to show the recent triggers recorded by participants of the Quake Catcher Network - click here to see the triggers recorded for the past day, week, or month - then click again on a region to see further details on Google Maps!

October 21, 2008
The server was down a few hours tonight for some routine maintenance, sorry for the inconvenience!

October 16, 2008
There are new versions (3.70) for Intel & PowerPC Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and (yes!) Linux. The Windows version supports the MotionNode Accel USB accelerometer, and all versions support the JoyWarrior24F8 USB accelerometer (Mac requires the driver for the JoyWarrior - see below). To get a new version hit the 'Reset Project' or 'Task / Abort' button on your BOINC Manager client.

October 4, 2008
There are new versions (3.47) for Intel & PowerPC Mac OS X and Windows that should fix some problems with stability and graphics. Also, support for the JoyWarrior 24F8 sensor is in place as well. If you are running BOINC on a Mac, you will need to download a small driver program and install it so that the QCN software running under BOINC can read the JoyWarrior sensor (this is not needed for 'built-in' laptop accelerometers). The Intel Mac driver is here and the PowerPC Mac driver is here . The Intel Mac driver is a hopefully 'easy to follow' installation program; unfortunately the PowerPC Mac driver is a simple shell script you will need to unzip and run in a 'Terminal' window. JoyWarrior 24F8 support on Windows is also in place, and should not require a separate driver program (at the current time!). As usual, please report problems/questions in the Message Boards.

September 25, 2008
This week's issue of 'The Economist' (Sept. 25th '08) has an article on QCN written by Francois Grey of CERN. You can read it online here

August 9, 2008
Please note if your BOINC running QCN seems to hang or crash. There is a bug in BOINC for long account files > 64KB -- basically if the historical earthquake list gets too large then BOINC will not start and may seem to hang. Unfortunately the only solution is to quit BOINC, and remove this file 'account_qcn.stanford.edu_sensor.xml' which is located (on Macs) at /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data (or Windows check c:\program files\BOINC). You should then be able to start BOINC and you will have to reattach/relogin to the QCN project. Sorry for the inconvenience!

July 29, 2008
There was a magnitude 5.4 earthquake east of Los Angeles, detected by about 15 machines running QCN. Click here for more details. Most machines reported back to the servers with 2-4 seconds of the initial detection trigger. These results (in addition to the previous quake in Reno a few months ago) show great promise for the QCN software! So thanks and keep running QCN!

July 11, 2008
New versions (2.81) have been put up for all platforms supported by QCN (Mac Intel, Mac PPC, Windows). This version fixes some bugs and adds some enhancements to the SAC data produced by the software. It also adds support for the codemercs.com JoyWarrior 24F8 External USB accelerometer on Mac and Windows. To get the new software, just click 'Reset Project' of the 'Project Tab' on the 'Advanced' menu on BOINC.

May 30, 2008
An alpha version of the QCN software for Windows has been created which will work on Lenovo Thinkpad laptops. If you have a Thinkpad please try it out and post any comments in the 'Windows' newsgroup. Thanks! Also thanks to Ben Suter, Stanford alum, for helping 'crack the code' for the Thinkpads on QCN!

May 14, 2008
We are happy to report that two QCN alpha test participants who live in and near Reno Nevada detected vibrations from the recent Magnitude 5.1 earthquake in Reno using QCN software. We're very excited and are currently preparing a paper to show these preliminary results, i.e. that the QCN software seems to detect real seismic events and report to our servers within seconds. Hopefully this is the start of a real system that can be used for advanced warning someday! We're also happy to report that both participants and their laptops are fine! :-)

March 27, 2008
There's a short article about QCN in Nature News Online

February 28, 2008
Thanks to all those taking part in the alpha test! New versions have been uploaded (version number 2.46) for the Intel and PowerPC Macs, and Windows. Note the Windows version is still 'graphics only' as the accelerometer work has not begun. Next stage will be server side analysis to see if triggers match any known seismic events.

February 3, 2008
We are now in alpha testing mode -- currently support Intel and PPC Macs running OS X. Development under way for Windows (HP laptop accelerometers).

December 15, 2007
QCN personnel (Jesse, Elizabeth, and Carl) attended the American Geophysical Society conference this week, and had a poster and demo session showing the current state of the QCN software which will run under BOINC

December 5, 2007
Thanks to Dennis Michael of Stanford for procuring and setting up three servers for the project (web, upload, and database).