Our “seismic dancers” idea was based on a kitschy dashboard hula dancer. Using the data available to
us, we decided to focus on US Territories, as they had almost real-time alerts while other countries
around the world only updated daily or not at all. One was trying to ï¬nd ridiculous memorabilia that
represents each US territory:
Alaska = bobble-head moose
Washington = Seattle Space Needle light-up sculpture
California = stuffed palm tree
Hawaii = hula dancer
We used 1 Arduino Decimilia board to translate the digital inputs obtained from the PHP to control the
movements of the 4 “seismic dancers”. We had to use 2 external power supplies; 12 VDC to control the
2 solenoids & 3 VDC for the vibrating DC motor. The LED inside the Space Needle was powered by the
Arduino.
The data is collected from the USGS website and run through a Processing sketch that determines the
geographical region of each seismic event based on the Latitude and Longitude coordinates. It then
determines the level of movement of each of the ï¬gures based on the magnitude of the most recent
seismic activity in that region. This results in the ï¬gures moving 1 minute per magnitude point on the
Richter scale (i.e.- a 4 rated magnitude earthquake would result in the appropriate ï¬gure moving for 4
minutes). The microcontroller uses four separate pins, each corresponding to a LED, motor or solenoid
(depending on the ï¬gure).
The Processing sketch uses the Arduino Library to communicate with the Arduino Decimilia board,
which has been loaded with the Standard Firmata ï¬rmware.
AD 409 - EV: Senior Project, Prof. Daniel Sauter
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