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Pseudonymous maker "Airpocket" has put together a simple early warning system for landslides, cleverly housed in an upcycled solar garden light — and installed as simply as sticking it into the soil.

"Most of Japan's land area is mountainous and characterized by extremely heavy precipitation. Because of this geographical factor, every year during the typhoon season, large-scale disasters occur throughout the country," Airpocket explains. "One of the disasters that can cause major damage is a landslide. Before a landslide occurs, slight changes occur in the topography, and these changes can be observed as various precursor phenomena. If these precursor phenomena can be detected in advance and lead to evacuation, it may be possible to reduce human suffering."

That's where the DIY early-warning system comes into play. The idea is simple: a Sony Spresense microcontroller development board with an I2C accelerometer added is installed into the housing of a solar garden light along with a Wi-SUN long-range low-power radio. When inserted into the ground — simply a case of pushing the light's stake into the soil — it begins monitoring for changes in angle, which would indicate ground movement.

If ground movement is detected, the Wi-SUN radio is used to send an MQTT message to a Raspberry Pi single-board computer through a compatible Wi-SUN USB dongle. When received, alerts can be sent out — including to am M5Stack Basic, which acts as a portable display for the system.

"The results of the field test confirmed that the system is capable of detecting signs of a landslide and issuing an alarm," Airpocket notes. "However, power savings and battery capacity are still insufficient, and further improvements are needed.

"As for the communication function, Wi-SUN communication alone has limitations in terms of communication area, and we feel that networking with a mother device using LoRa or other technologies would be effective, but this would require further study as it would complicate the system."

Full instructions on building your own landslide sensors, along with source code for the project, are available on Airpocket's Hackaday.io page.