N.B. This home page is just a quick first pass that gives me something easy to share, and will get some of the stuff here into search engines.

Introduction

I 2021 I bought a Raspberry Shake & Boom intending to use it to record infrasound from industrial wind turbine, which turn out to be terrible devices for nearby birds, bats, and people. So far I haven't gone out to record a single IWT.

I included the Shake part because I thought it might make a curious toy. A week after I set it up there was a moderate earthquake off the coast of Panama, home to Raspberry Shake development. Much to my amazement, my RSB recorded it. I quickly realized this was not a toy and was soon to discover that even professional seismologists are equally amazed. Professional gear can record a few octaves lower, but that's about it.

The RSB community is happy to share what these little marvels record, and that's what this web page will grow into. In the meantime:

My RSB presentation

For the 2024 New Hampshire Mensa Regional Gathering, a weekend with socializing, food, games, food, and various presentations, I wrote a presentation about what RSBs can record and how they open new avenues to citizen science.

By then I had a second RSB that has gone to my sister. I brought it along and used it for a realtime show and tell. "When I count to three, let's all jump." "Congratulations - we made the Earth move!".

Here are a few versions, with updates since then:

• For printing: rsb.pdf
  This is the presentation for printing. Most slides include notes that reflect what I would say about the page during the presentation.

• For web browsing: web/rsb.html
  This is decent for viewing online, especially going back to pick particular slides. LibreOffice generated this set of thumbnails, a redundant list of slides (both sets are link to the particular slide), and a title that links to the first slide. Whew.

• The presentation: rsb.odp
  Show it where you want, give me credit. Twist my arm and I might make a slide for one or two of your local interests.

Other web pages

• Helicopters, Doppler, and Velocity
  This is just the helicopter slides, reformatted and expanded as a web page that goes into details about the frequencies to velocity formula I derived. It's the first web page I've done that uses TeX! In particular, MathJax. Easier than I expected.

Other Resources

This was going to reference several sources, but the Raspberry Shake folks have a lot of really good stuff, so all but one of the links go to them.

• Raspberry Shake home page
  If you want to learn more or if you're ready to buy, go here. Look for the generous non-professional discount.

• Raspberry Shake StationView
  This is an interactive map of all the Raspberry Shakes initialized to the American northeast.

• Raspberry Shake DataView
  This is my Raspberry Shake & Boom. You can get here from StationView.

• Concord [NH] Monitor article about my RSB
  David Brooks discovered there were three units in NH. So he called town libraries to try to find them. The Sutton librarian called me because I know a lot of geeky stuff and might know something about it. David wrote a good article. They saved it for a slow news day and soon ran it on the front page - it was a very slow news day.

• Raspberry Shakes And Booms Record The Darndest Things
  This is from Prof. Alan Kafka, Weston (Seismic) Observatory, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Boston College. A high school chum of his introduced me to the RSB. It seems a lot of us succumb to the urge to share what our RSBs record. I'll be posting my presentation on the Raspberry Shake forums myself soon.

• Scientific Posters
  These are posters created for display geophysical conferences. You have to enlarge them a lot on a desktop computer, and I won't try on my cell phone. Alan Kafka and his associates are behind several of the posters. Hey guys - include my helicopter math this year!

• "Airwolf" in Brittany as RS Detects Helicopters!
  I just found this. It's another look at helicopters, but I think the author's math is wrong.

Coming soon?

Ultimately, I want to make this directory link to different sections (quakes, meteors, helicopters, weather, etc.) and add new traces soon after the events. Then occasionally adjust the presentation accordingly.

Contact Ric Werme or return to his home page.

Written 2024 Feb 22, last updated 2025 Mar 29.