No doubt earthquakes have tremendous power – for: break things. It would be much smarter to use the brute forces of nature for something meaningful. This though in mind, a student of the New Zealand Victoria University developed a seismic sensor, which is driven by the force of the earthquake that he just studied and documented.

In buildings, in which earthquakes have the potential toshake heavily, the sensor should be used. It uses the kinetic energy of the shaking house to to power itself with energy. At the same time it measures the forces acting on the building loads and acceleration, constricts data packets which are transmitted wirelessly to a computer.

Still, the prototype is in development. Initial tests in the “Earthquake House”, a small hut in the Museum of New Zealand, which is exposed to the artificial stresses of an earthquake, the sensor has already passed successfully.