Distributed Earth/Ionospheric Signals Analysis Project

[Hakasays]

Theory/History:

There's a cavity in the sky called the ionosphere, which protects the Earth from harmful radiation and reflects radio waves of certain frequencies. Everything that happens in the sky or on Earth bounces back and forth between this cavity.  The lowest-frequency signals circumnavigate the planet at a frequency range known as Schumann resonance.

There's also a process called the "piezoelectric effect," in which changes in pressure on crystals generate electricity. Conversely, applying electricity can also deflect crystals. If you've ever heard a beeping sound from an electronic device, that's usually a piezoelectric speaker.

Just like in the sky, constant electric currents and signals flow inside the Earth, among other things leading to its magnetic field.

Before an earthquake, significant stress builds up underground, and this stress causes rock and crystal formations to generate electric currents underground. This is due to the piezoelectric effect.

These currents are reflected back into the sky, altering the signals we receive before an earthquake. From a few hours before to about a week before, the signals become louder and more chaotic.

This is according to colleague Eric Dollard, who conducted these experiments in Northern California in the 1980s and 1990s.

Current Status:

Eric Dollard's EPD team recently in 2024 finally finished the main section of the long-line antenna field in middle-of-nowhere Nevada with the purpose of listening to these earth+ionospheric signals.  Almost 3,000 feet of wire and a 10yr project restoring a right-of-way, replacing poles, crossarms, etc.
I then spent time developing the infrastructure to actually record, log, and transmit these signals so we can begin long-term analysis.

The finishing touches were added recently to perform a long-term test in late August 2025, where we successfully demonstrated live signal transmission from the site across a cell feed to an Internet host for live reception.
https://hakasays.com:3448/EPDAntennaField.ogg
(As of early Sept the station is currently offline repeating previous signals recorded from the site)

A few improvements have to be made in the short-term, but we expect the station to be brought back online as a permanent fixture within the next couple months.

In addition, now that the infrastructure is in-place I intend on deploying a modified short-whip antenna variant to multiple sites throughout the country/planet so we have a clearer picture and some rudimentary ability to triangulate large perturbations in these signals.
The whole thing was an interesting and entertaining set of design challenges+considerations, and I'm glad that the bulk of the problems were able to be addressed.

I will be posting some high-quality audio samples to be analyzed as time permits, and eventually posting links to additional stations as they come on-the-air.
The great thing about this is that because they are Raspberry Pi-based units, they can be upgraded to receive almost any type of data, whether it be whether station, air quality, geiger counters, magnetometers, etc.   I will talk a bit more about this as I start integrating them into the system.

Stay tuned!


(ps: thanks, Chet for reminding me to write this )

[PhysicsProf]

  Thanks for posting.

[Hakasays]

Thanks PhysicsProf, it's so good to see such a long-term project finally starting to bear fruit.


The last couple weeks has been figuring out a good, weathertight solution to begin deploying the simpler electrostatic receivers around the country/planet.
I settled on 3in ABS pipe with PETG printed caps on both ends, and 3d-printed risers that support the boards internally.  Power can be 12-42v and stepped-down by a low-noise DC-DC converter.   All fittings weathertight because these are meant to sit permanently outdoors.
Power can be delivered by barrel-plug or by RJ45 PoE, and the pi itself can utilize wifi or ethernet for connection to the home server(s).

The receiver stage I call 'HAARP-1, which is basically an upgraded evolution of Steve McGreevey's WR-3 receivers.   While his units tend to be massively overwhelmed by local powerline noise/interference, mine is specifically designed to filter that out.  Meaning these units can be deployed to suburbs without substantial loss in quality.

I need to doublecheck thermals once the first one is in operation, and may need to add some cooling fins/fan if it gets too hot.  But since the pi only uses a couple watts I think(hope) it will be OK.

One last upgrade I need to experiment with is attaching a GPS-diciplined oscillator to one audio channel.  My past tests confirmed that GPS-diciplined oscillators will to self-synchronize to within about 600-1000nS (IE: within 1000 light-feet) which would give us the ability to run these on an absolute global time standard.
That would give us the ability to not only triangulate lightning strikes and whistlers and other disturbances, etc, but it also gives us the ability to create 'stereo' feeds where a different station is fed into each ear.   I don't know what this will even sound like but I bet it will be pretty neat


I like the form but the unit seems quite dull/underwhelming.  May end up laminating some graphics to the case just to spice things up a bit 

[JimBoot]

Wow I wondered what happened to that project! Great to see mate. Cool project, nice work. I'm down in Melbourne so love to be a part of the wireless grid.

[Hakasays]

Wow I wondered what happened to that project! Great to see mate. Cool project, nice work. I'm down in Melbourne so love to be a part of the wireless grid.

Thanks for the offer, Jim   I'll DM you when we get to that point.  Hopefully soon .  Power is negligible (2-3 watts) and can run off 12-42v DC and bandwidth is generally low, estimating around ~50gb/month usage, wifi or ethernet.

The GPSDO worked beautifully in the last test (one audio channel atmospheric, the other channel 1pps synchronization pulse) but $100/ea is pretty steep to integrate into every unit.   I just found a decent, cheaper (sub-$20/ea) solution that should serve just as well, fingers crossed.  https://www.qso.com.ar/datasheets/Receptores%20GNSS-GPS/BN-280%20GPS%20Module%20Datasheet.pdf

[Hakasays]

We worked out a few bugs since the last postand Conner helped to re-deploy the datalogger at Eric's site over the weekend.


http://hakasays.com:8443/EPDAntennaField.ogg
http://hakasays.com:8443/EPDAntennaField.mp3
https://hakasays.com:3448/EPDAntennaField.ogg
https://hakasays.com:3448/EPDAntennaField.mp3

It's always a 'fingers-crossed' when working with long cascades of digital technology like this, but hopefully it will be online and stable for a good long time to come:)


I had some delays/detours for the mass-deployment dataloggers (working on a deep vacuum chamber), but they're both getting close, and the tests using a GPS-diciplined time-base worked beautifully.
So we will indeed have absolute universal time standard to within 1000 light-feet with this next batch of units that get deployed


Note:  to all that haven't heard the 'magic popcorn' sounds before, the best time for listening is after sunset (Nevada, Pacific timezone)

[JimBoot]

We worked out a few bugs since the last postand Conner helped to re-deploy the datalogger at Eric's site over the weekend.


http://hakasays.com:8443/EPDAntennaField.ogg
http://hakasays.com:8443/EPDAntennaField.mp3
https://hakasays.com:3448/EPDAntennaField.ogg
https://hakasays.com:3448/EPDAntennaField.mp3

It's always a 'fingers-crossed' when working with long cascades of digital technology like this, but hopefully it will be online and stable for a good long time to come:)


I had some delays/detours for the mass-deployment dataloggers (working on a deep vacuum chamber), but they're both getting close, and the tests using a GPS-diciplined time-base worked beautifully.
So we will indeed have absolute universal time standard to within 1000 light-feet with this next batch of units that get deployed


Note:  to all that haven't heard the 'magic popcorn' sounds before, the best time for listening is after sunset (Nevada, Pacific timezone)

What are those popcorn sounds?

[Hakasays]

What are those popcorn sounds?

Global lightning activity (or at least a few thousand miles depending on the receiver)

[Hakasays]

Aaron's been working to get some documentary videos published on the long-lines project.   It really is a massive project, over 10 years in the making.   A lot of the heavy lifting and logistics are thanks to Justin Miller, Conner Fisher, and of course Eric Dollard.

Part 1 (eric talking about the setup and other active projects):
https://youtu.be/Af7pwwMMClM

Part 2 (me mostly talking about the receiving setup):
https://youtu.be/VADNtbYyuCw

Part 3 (Justin Miller managing a new pole installation at the shack):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkhBwvlv2cs

Part 4 (Justin Miller and Conner Fisher doing work on the line):
https://youtu.be/-PBwEUsHzMY

Part 5 (Aaron demonstrating the signals and summarizing the project):
https://youtu.be/dqz76OTvFNY