Geophone - sensing earthquakes and other seismic vibrations

[alowhum]

I couldn't really find anything on the forum about creating a seismic/geophone sensor.

These are sensors that listen to earth vibrations. See Wikipedia.

Why?
Close to my 17th century house there will be a large construction project. I'm curious how hard it would be to have alternative 'citizen science' data if the house is damaged in some way.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

.

There seem to be a lot of ways of measuring low frequency vibrations

Classic geophone sensors
Basically microphones to listen to the earth.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ZF-4-5-Geophone-Element/32795805788.html

Subwoofer hack
Nice hack. Turn your subwoofer into a geophone.

MEMS sensors
These are tiny sensors. More noise.
Here's a great video that explains how these sensors work.

Accelerometer sensors
Cheap as chips.

Piezo sensors
A nice hack. By attaching a weight to a cheap peizo sensor you can record tremor data.
Arduino Seismic / Vibration Sensor – 03:17
— Steve Spence

Other sources
https://hackaday.com/tag/seismometer/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLpKnx0pUEE

[NeverDie]

@alowhum I've heard of geophones being used to detect footsteps outdoors. Cost was around $60/sensor IIRC.

http://www.kr4.us/Geophone-SM-24.html?gclid=CjwKCAiAoNTUBRBUEiwAWje2lqjbwf7gdzmiPalzIry4JBhZ-L-kqX6qqSt4UV0atkOPNGlab9Q5ZxoC_H8QAvD_BwE