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General Issues > Power Supply

Welcome to the Future: an Invisible Station

There is at least one application where purely battery-powered operation would be an attractive option: the design of an autonomous seismic underground station that could be completely embedded in soil or rock. It would have a hinged cover that would normally be flush with the ground. The housing would be so rigid that even a car could park on it without damaging the station.

The radio antenna would be a patch antenna invisibly integrated in the cover. The station would exhibit low-profile to vandalism, being to thieves as unattractive as a modern underfloor hydrant. This construction may be another step towards solving the problem of installing seismic early warning sensors under open skies—even in a state park.

A differential GPS would be helpful towards revisiting the "invisible" station; that way, when the grass has grown high, it won‘t take hours to locate the exact site.