Station LCIL -  (Under Development)

The location of the station is in Lisbon Center, Illinois, which is a rural area about 65 miles SW of Chicago. There is a state highway about 300 from the station. Most of the noise seen on the helicorder is caused by trucks on that highway. Here is a Google Earth Placemark  showing the location of Lisbon Center (population 11).

Instrument is an Infiltec KQM-4.5-L15B seismometer. Sensor is a Mark Products 4.5 HZ Geophone. Information on the seismometer can be found at http://www.infiltec.com/seismo/. (The "K" in KQM means it was a kit.  It's the same as the QM-4.5)

The seismometer is in the bottom of a 3 1/2 foot long 4" diameter PVC pipe which is buried with the top about 2 inches below grade, placing the sensor about 3' 8" below grade. The sensor orientation is E/W. The rest of the pipe is tightly packed with small cell bubble wrap with a jar of silica gel desiccant on top. (My original plan was to place a heavy mass on top of the seismo case in order to  couple it securely to the bottom of the pipe, but just before installation I noticed that the unit seemed to be sensitive to acoustic noise, so at the last minute I decided to use something that would both provide noise insulation and hold the seismo tightly to the bottom of the pipe...bubble wrap.  So far it seems to be working ok, but I'll have to monitor it for artifact caused by expansion and contraction of the bubble wrap during temperature changes.)

The seismometer's serial data cable runs underground into an unheated shed and plugs into a Lantronix UDS100 (superceeded)  "CoBox" RS-232/Ethernet converter.  The UDS100 is connected to a Buffalo WLI-TX4-G54HP WIFI/Ethernet converter running in ad-hoc mode and paired with an identical unit in the building that houses the monitoring computer about 300 feet away.

The computer doing the monitoring is an old IBM 7587 Industrial Computer. The machine has no local keyboard, monitor, or mouse and is controlled remotely over the network using Access Remote PC. The processor is a 200MHz Pentium, it has 31MB of RAM, and is running WindowsME for an operating system. It is dedicated to the task of monitoring the seismometer via Amaseis.  It has 2 NICs, one for connection to the main LAN, and one connected to the LAN dedicated to linking the serial data from the seismometer. (Second NIC now removed to try fixing BSODs.)  A CoBox/WIFI converter pair identical to those at the seismometer end of the link feeds the serial port of the PC. Over the main LAN it is serving up TCP data for local monitoring, 1 per 10 minute screen captures to this site for web viewing, and hourly raw data uploads to this site (not publicly accessible) for remote Amaseis use outside the firewall.  The machine is running About Time to keep the real-time-clock accurate, Snag-It version 7.2.5  (old) for screen capture and upload to this site, AutoFTP v 2.04 for hour file upload to this site, and an AutoHotKey script to automate the startup of the upload sequences performed by Snag-It and AutoFTP.

Future plans include moving the seismometer 1700 feet further from the state highway to reduce the amount of "cultural" noise it is recording.

Click HERE for some pictures of the seismo vault during a recent maintenance job.  I'll take some better pictures when I get time...these aren't very good.

Comments or Questions?  Contact steve at stormspire.com