Development of a Low-cost Seismograph with Trigger System for Geoscience Education

Young geoscience students in developing countries, using Nigeria as a case study grow up with little or no idea on the working principle behind expensive and imported seismographs during fieldwork. To proffer solution to this problem, seismographs need to be designed locally using low-cost materials. The proposed seismograph is made up of a single channel. It uses Arduino microcontroller which controls the data acquisition system and trigger system to initiate the seismic data acquisition. A user-friendly application was designed using LabVIEW to monitor the seismic waveforms on a personal computer. The cost of the seismograph was as low as 70 US dollars. Its applications are to promote geoscience education among young geophysicist, and can even be extended to Physics laboratory experiments. The seismograph is not recommended for seismic exploration, but rather it is a template for understanding its working principle.