Quakescope

Quakescope (Seismic)

Your Valar Scope can also run as a live earthquake radar. It's built on the same polar view as Blipscope (the Aviation edition), but instead of aircraft it plots earthquakes by bearing and distance around your location — straight from the keyless USGS feed.

It's a separate firmware build for the same Valar Scopes hardware: flash the Quakescope firmware and the device boots into the quake radar instead of the flight radar. Everything else you already know carries over — Wi‑Fi setup, the web config page, persistent storage, over‑the‑air updates, and ntfy alerts.

Where the data comes from. Quakescope talks directly to the USGS earthquake API (the FDSN event query service) — there is no backend and no API key, USGS data is open. It runs two bounded queries: a worldwide "recent" sweep (everything at or above your configured minimum magnitude, default M2.5) and a radius‑bounded "near me" query (with a lower, fixed M1.0 floor, so small local quakes still populate the radar). A large quake on the far side of the planet and a small one down the road both show up. Each query is capped at 60 results and (once the clock is set) scoped to the last 7 days to keep responses small; both poll about every 2 minutes, one request in flight at a time, with exponential backoff to a 10‑minute cap that keeps the last good readings on screen through a hiccup. An optional feed‑base URL can be set in config, but it's empty by default — the device goes direct to USGS.

🖥️ The screens

Quakescope mirrors the Aviation radar (Blipscope): three swipe‑able screens with a tap‑to‑inspect detail card. Swipe left / right to move between them; on the radar or list, tap a quake to open its card.

Screen	What it shows
🌐 Radar	A polar plot of recent earthquakes around your location, by bearing and distance, sized and coloured by magnitude (blue micro → red strong), with a "You" dot and crosshairs at centre and a contact count in the corner. It uses static range rings rather than a moving sweep — quakes are events, not contacts to track — with the outer ring set to your radius. Quakes at M5.0+ get an extra ring around their blip, blips fade as they age, and a bottom readout names the single nearest quake (magnitude, distance, bearing).
📋 List	A scrollable table of quakes. With a location set the header reads NEARBY and rows are sorted by distance, each showing magnitude, place, and distance + bearing. With no location it reads RECENT — the worldwide feed, newest first, showing a relative age instead. Tap a row to open its detail card.
📊 Stats	A worldwide 7‑day summary: the biggest quake in the window (magnitude, place, depth, and age), the total count of quakes, and the time since the last M4.5+ event.
🔎 Detail card	Tap any quake (on the Radar or List) for a card with its magnitude, depth, place name, distance and bearing from you, and how long ago it occurred. A tsunami flag is called out when USGS marks the event.

🚨 Alerts

Quakescope can push phone notifications via ntfy (see Alerts and Watchlist for how ntfy works). Set a topic and pick which triggers fire — each independently toggleable, and all seeded at boot so the existing backlog of quakes never pings you, only fresh ones:

• Big quake worldwide — any quake at or above a magnitude you choose (default M ≥ 6.0), anywhere on Earth.
• Quake near me — a quake at or above a lower magnitude (default M ≥ 4.0) inside your radius. (Needs a location set — it rides the "near me" feed.)
• Tsunami‑flagged — any event USGS tags with a tsunami advisory.

Leave the topic blank to disable all alerts.

⚙️ Configuration

Everything is set from the same web page as the radar — Configuration Reference explains how to open it. The Quakescope build's page offers:

Setting	Description
Location	Latitude / longitude — the centre of the radar, the centre of the "near me" query and alert, and the basis for the day/night auto‑dim. Without it you still get the worldwide List and Stats, but no radar or near‑me alerts.
Minimum magnitude	The smallest quake the worldwide feed fetches (default 2.5) — raise it to cut noise. (The "near me" feed uses its own fixed M1.0 floor, so local micro‑quakes appear on the radar regardless of this setting.)
Radius	How far the "near me" query reaches, in km (default 500, clamped 50–20000) — also the radar's outer‑ring distance scale.
ntfy.sh topic + triggers	Phone‑alert topic and the three per‑trigger toggles, each with its own configurable magnitude threshold (big worldwide M≥6.0 / near me M≥4.0 / tsunami).
Feed base URL	Optional backend to poll instead of USGS. Empty by default — the device goes direct.
Brightness / Auto‑dim	The same backlight and night‑dim controls as the radar (dims to ~1/5 at night when the sun is below the horizon at your location).

Changes apply live on Save, with no reboot — same as the radar.

⬆️ Getting it & updates

Quakescope is its own firmware image on its own update channel, so a device set up as Quakescope only ever pulls Quakescope firmware (and a radar device only pulls radar firmware) — the products never cross. Over‑the‑air updates otherwise work exactly as on the radar; see Firmware Updates.

Related

• Configuration Reference — opening the web config page
• Alerts and Watchlist — how ntfy phone alerts work
• Screens and Gestures — the swipe/tap model this edition shares with the radar
• Clock and Brightness — the auto‑dim this edition honours
• Network and Setup — Wi‑Fi setup
• Orbitscope · Quillscope · Reelscope · Missileer — its sibling editions