This Spresense-Powered Landslide Early Warning System Lives in Upcycled Photo voltaic Backyard Lights

Pseudonymous maker “Airpocket” has put collectively a easy early warning system for landslides, cleverly housed in an upcycled photo voltaic backyard gentle — and put in as merely as sticking it into the soil.

“Most of Japan’s land space is mountainous and characterised by extraordinarily heavy precipitation. Due to this geographical issue, yearly in the course of the storm season, large-scale disasters happen all through the nation,” Airpocket explains. “One of many disasters that may trigger main injury is a landslide. Earlier than a landslide happens, slight modifications happen within the topography, and these modifications might be noticed as varied precursor phenomena. If these precursor phenomena might be detected upfront and result in evacuation, it might be doable to scale back human struggling.”

That is the place the DIY early-warning system comes into play. The thought is easy: a Sony Spresense microcontroller growth board with an I2C accelerometer added is put in into the housing of a photo voltaic backyard gentle together with a Wi-SUN long-range low-power radio. When inserted into the bottom — merely a case of pushing the sunshine’s stake into the soil — it begins monitoring for modifications in angle, which might point out floor motion.

If floor motion is detected, the Wi-SUN radio is used to ship an MQTT message to a Raspberry Pi single-board pc by a suitable Wi-SUN USB dongle. When acquired, alerts might be despatched out — together with to am M5Stack Fundamental, which acts as a conveyable show for the system.

“The outcomes of the sector check confirmed that the system is able to detecting indicators of a landslide and issuing an alarm,” Airpocket notes. “Nevertheless, energy financial savings and battery capability are nonetheless inadequate, and additional enhancements are wanted.

“As for the communication perform, Wi-SUN communication alone has limitations when it comes to communication space, and we really feel that networking with a mom gadget utilizing LoRa or different applied sciences could be efficient, however this could require additional examine as it might complicate the system.”

Full directions on constructing your individual landslide sensors, together with supply code for the venture, can be found on Airpocket’s Hackaday.io web page.