AnyShake Explorer is a relatively affordable, open-source hardware seismic monitoring system that offers an alternative to the Raspberry Shake earthquake monitoring solutions.
The device supports up to three 3-axis geophones and integrates a 3-axis accelerometer and a 32-bit ADC for measurements. You just need to connect it to a host like a laptop or an SBC such as a Raspberry Pi, an Orange Pi, a Radxa ROCK, or a NanoPi over a USB to RS232 cable to get started.
Anyshake Explorer specifications and key features:
- MCU – STMicro STM32F103CBTx Arm Cortex-M3 microcontroller
- Sensors
- Geophone
- 3-axis 4.5 Hz velocity geophone (100 V/m/s sensitivity)
- Three geophone inputs
- Capture through a high-resolution 32-bit ADC
- IMU – 16-bit 3-axis accelerometer (±2 g full scale)
- Geophone
- Data acquisition
- Modes – Accelerometer-only mode, geophone-only mode, and simultaneous sampling (6 channels)
- Sampling rates – 50/100/200/250 SPS
- Networking – SeedLink protocol support, TCP raw data forwarding
- Host interface
- 2x RS-232 – Baud rate: 57,600 – 460,800 bps
- 1x RS-485
- Misc
- GPS/NTP time sync
- OLED information display
- Power Supply – 9 to 12 V DC via terminal block
- Power Consumption – About 0.6 Watts
- Dimensions – 135 x 135 x 104.5 mm (full kit)
- Weight – 650 grams (full kit)
The AnyShake Explorer needs to be connected over RS232 or RS485 to a host running AnyShake Observer open-source, cross-platform server written in Go. It offers a Web-based interface with an overview of the system, a real-time waveform display, multi-channel support, historical data query, an earthquake detection engine with alerts sent via MQTT, the ability to export data to MiniSEED, SAC, TXT, and WAV for further analysis, support for PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite databased, and the ability to integrate with seismic tools like SeisComP or other professional seismic networks. Supported platforms include Android (arm64), macOS (amd64 / arm64), FreeBSD, Windows 7 and later, and Linux.
The seismic monitor is fully open-source hardware with KiCad (and PDF) schematics and PCB layout, Gerber files, BoM, and STM32 firmware are all available on GitHub. You’ll also find the source code for the AnyShake Observer software on a separate repository. If you want to find out more technical information and instructions to get started, the documentation on the Anyshare website looks pretty good. You may also want to watch the video embedded at the end of this post for a quick overview in less than three minutes.
SensePlex, the company behind the project, also provided a comparison table between AnyShake Explorer and Raspberry Shake RS1D, RS4D, and RS3D monitors. Since all are offered in a range of DIY kits to fully assembled products, the comparison is not that straightforward.
The price comparison above is not exactly fair, as while the price lists are for indoor full kits, the Raspberry Pi Shake models ship with a Raspberry Pi SBC, which is not included in the Explorer. Nevertheless, even if we add $50 to the AnyShake Explorer to take into account the price of a single board computer, it’s still quite cheaper than the RS3D with three geophones.
SensePlex has just launched the AnyShake Explorer on Crowd Supply with a lowly $1,000 funding target that has already been surpassed. Rewards start at $345 for a DIY Kit with the board, serial cable, and power adapter, but no enclosure or geophones. The full kit with an enclosure, three geophones, and a GPS antenna goes for $585. All prices include shipping, and deliveries are scheduled to start by the end of November 2025.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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