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Wired is running a story about Andy Meira, a man who decided that there was a business opportunity producing earthquake detectors:
The morning of Good Friday 2014 found Andy Meira standing outside his apartment in Mexico City with his wife and baby, waiting for the shaking to begin. He was one of the few people in a city of 25 million who knew an earthquake was coming, thanks to an early warning alarm, called the Grillo (Spanish for “cricket”) he’d spent the last two years building. This was the first time the prototype had gone off. If everything went well, Meira knew he should have between 60 and 90 seconds before the quake hit the city.
As soon as the Grillo chirped, Meira hurried his family to the park across the street from their building. “It was so exciting, because it was the first time it had gone off,” Meira says. “Up until then it had all been maths and coding.” When the ground actually started swirling underneath his feet in what would be a 7.2 quake, Meira and his wife were actually smiling, standing amid scared neighbors who had rushed out of their buildings after the shaking had already started.
Even though the Good Friday quake didn’t do any damage in Mexico City, earthquakes are not something residents take lightly. An 8.0 temblor in 1985 killed as many as 30,000 people and destroyed hundreds of buildings, including a major hospital. But the ’85 earthquake also motivated Mexico City to take action. No one knows how to predict when or where an earthquake will strike, but it’s possible to get advance warning when one is on its way. Seismic waves ripple outward from a quake’s epicenter in two forms: the p-wave, which oscillates up and down, and the s-wave, which moves horizontally. P-waves are weaker and faster; sense p-waves and you can be pretty sure that more dangerous s-waves are coming.
[...]
A softball-sized black or white box with rounded corners, the Grillo fits the soothing aesthetic of alarms in our post-Nest age. The electronics inside come from China, and the plastic shell is from a small factory in the heart of Mexico City. For a few weeks now, Meira has spent his days helping to solder wires in place inside each Grillo, while other workers carefully fit the boxes together by hand—a process he and the factory owner, José Cappón Flores, hope to make more efficient just as soon as they raise enough money to invest in a better mold.
Meira initially hoped to sell the Grillo for 400 pesos, or about 26 dollars, though now that he’s deep into the the trials and tribulations of electronics manufacturing, he expects the finished product to cost twice that. As the next cheapest competitor costs around $1300, he may hold a more-than-competitive edge.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by toygeek on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:23AM
Twitter, Facebook, etc. Let everyone have warnings. This goes beyond making someone buy one. It could be argued that not making the information available to others would be unethical.
"When the ground actually started swirling underneath his feet in what would be a 7.2 quake, Meira and his wife were actually smiling, standing amid scared neighbors who had rushed out of their buildings after the shaking had already started."
Seems very sad. Why was he not yelling in the streets "Earthquake coming!"
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:33AM
Because it was the first time he received a notification and he wasn't sure it's not a false positive?
Smiling because he had confirmation his receiver is functioning correctly? What else could he be doing before the earthquake ended?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:39AM
Why? You think the people of Mexico city are that hooked on Twitter/FB?
TFA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:18AM
From what I've read - yes, people in Mexico City are hooked on all of the modern contrivances that US citizens love so much. The Mexicans I work with all have their smart phones and gadgets. Why do you think Mexico is drastically different from the US in this respect? The richest man in Mexico made his money off of cell phones.
http://www.richestlifestyle.com/richest-people-in-mexico/5/ [richestlifestyle.com]
Also, the ninth richest person in Mexico made his money from telecoms.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:47AM
Not all of them.
Besides, compare the price of a "earthquake warning receiver" in TFA (double $26=$52) with the price of a smartphone (including service fees). Think that TFA also mentions using a smart-mobile app doesn't quite cut it when you have 60-90 seconds until the next big one hits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Thursday June 25 2015, @06:58AM
Why should it require a smartphone? The telcos could send a text message to all phones in the predicted areas, warning them of a potential disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast [wikipedia.org]
I'm pretty sure at least 50% of people in Mexico City that have phones that can receive such messages.
http://www.statista.com/statistics/183604/mobile-phone-user-penetration-in-mexico-since-2009/ [statista.com]
FWIW a high percentage have smartphones:
http://www.latinpost.com/articles/6946/20140206/mexico-tops-smartphone-mobile-market-latin-america-50-percent-growth.htm [latinpost.com]
I'm not going to shed tears over Governments forcing Telcos to spam people with warning messages.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 25 2015, @10:04AM
Keeping into account that:
I suspect enough inhabitants of Mexico City - or even at country side - don't have a habit of staying hooked to social media all the time.
Besides, SMS-es, Twitter and Facebook are used for heaps of other purposes, you are very likely to take a bit of time until you take a look; so until you do so most of the 60-90sec of reaction time will be gone. But... if you have a dedicated device that all it does is shouts when there's an Earthquake, I guarantee you you'll be hitting the door every time it beeps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 25 2015, @10:09AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @05:04AM
> The richest man in Mexico made his money off of cell phones.
Not really. Carlos Slim made his money by exploiting a telco monopoly.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Thursday June 25 2015, @07:06AM
Then it could be argued that it's unethical for the Government to not force the Telcos to provide such warnings and make such devices mostly redundant in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_%28Japan%29#Mobile_phone_networks [wikipedia.org]
http://www.one2many.eu/en/portfolio/emergency-alerts/ [one2many.eu]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast [wikipedia.org]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6852-text-message-broadcasts-could-provide-disaster-alerts.html [newscientist.com]
The mobile phone market penetration in Mexico is above 50%. Do it right and neighbours could alert neighbours too even if some families don't have phones or their phones weren't on etc.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:29AM
Title is correct, the above quoted is not.
In fact, it's a Specific Area Message Encoding [wikipedia.org] receiver, using the Mexico's Seismic Alert System (SASMEX) - a "quake early warning system" closer the the fault lines which generates the quakes dangerous to Mexico City; it is SASMEX that act as detector.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 25 2015, @11:08AM
So what he has produced is a SASMEX generated warnings receiver ..?
How are these sent out btw? (subcarrier FSK?) and is there any live page? And how come the competition is at 1300 US$ when his unit only cost 52 US$ ?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 25 2015, @12:22PM
Wiki to the rescue: SAME [wikipedia.org] - that's the protocol. Cited passages to estimates the frequency spectrum needed.
Emergency Alert System [wikipedia.org] - one system using the protocol:
SASMEX in particular [iitk.ac.in] (PDF warning) uses radio relays between sensors and the central system, then radio to broadcasters (see page 2)
.
Found their FB page [facebook.com] - seems live enough for me, but I don't know the lag introduced by relaying through FB.
I guess the competition lacked competition until now.
In US, you'd be able to find similar receivers from $20 up to about hundreds [noaa.gov]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:19AM
Set it up to automatically NUKE the city. We don't need anymore wetbacks coming to the US!