Wiggles visualizes Earth's ground motion recorded by seismic stations.
The App is a native iOS application built entirely with Swift, designed for near-realtime seismic waveform visualization and analysis. It provides researchers, educators, and seismic enthusiasts with direct access to global seismic data through public FDSN web services, offering an intuitive way to explore detailed station information, earthquake events, and interactive waveform charts.
Select your preferred data source and station networks - from global to local arrays - accessing one of the highest-quality geophysical measurement systems ever built. These sensors can detect motions at nanometer scale, the size of molecules.
If you're using this tool for research or education, feel free to reach out with suggestions!
My main curiosity was to find out how current ground motion looks like around where I live. Thus, I was trying to see if there is a way to find a nearby seismometer of the national seismic network and get a visual on its waveform recording on my phone. Something like a weather app, but for seismics. The best I could find was a webpage of the IRIS station monitor. And, bummer, the mobile app installation doesn't work for my region. So, I set out to code my own little tool, getting some experience with Swift programming along the way. The result is Wiggles, an iOS app, available for free on the App Store :)
This endavour wouldn't have been possible without the openly accessible FDSN web services. All these FDSN servers provide public access to high-quality seismometer informations, waveform data as well as seismic events - pretty incredible.
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FDSN Network Selection: Tailor your data sources by selecting from various FDSN clients and applying specific network filters to focus on regions of interest.
Currently supported FDSN web clients are:
Client Center IRIS IRIS Data Management Centre AusPass Australian Passive Seismic Server ETH Swiss ETH Data Centre GEOFON German GEOFON (GEOFOrschungsNetz) program GeoNet-NRT New Zealand National Seismograph Network Server (near-realtime server) INGV Italian INGV Data Centre NCEDC Northern California Earthquake Data Center SCEDC Southern California Earthquake Data Center NOA Greece National Observatory of Athens (NOA) NRCAN Canadian National Data Centre (CNDC) ORFEUS Observatories & Research Facilities for European Seismology (ORFEUS) RESIF French RESIF (Reseau sismologique & geodesique francais) Each client comes with a set of predefined networks to select from, giving you access to global and local seismic stations.
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Location-Aware Station Discovery: Easily locate nearby seismic stations using your device's geographical position, facilitating on-the-go exploration of local seismic activity. Allow the Wiggles App to access your location and you can search for the closest seismic stations around you.
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Detailed Station Information: Explore comprehensive data for each seismic station, including its location and sensor type.
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Interactive Waveform Charts: Dive into detailed seismic waveforms with highly responsive, interactive charts. Customize your observation window from 30 minutes up to 24 hours, or view data from the start of the day and look at a day plot.
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Global Earthquake Monitoring: Access and display the latest global seismic events from the USGS FDSN event server, visualizing their location, magnitude, pager alert. This helps to figure out what kind of signals you see in the waveform chart.
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Station Widgets: Widget support to add preferred stations for displaying updated waveform charts. You can add multiple widgets, showing all your preferred station's waveforms, updated regularly in the background on your phone. At the moment, this is restricted to stations with LH* channels to limit your daily data downloads to a reasonable amount.
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Swift: Developed purely in native Swift for optimal performance and a seamless user experience on iOS and iPadOS platforms.
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FDSN Web Services: Fetches near-realtime seismic data, including station metadata, waveform data, and event information through FDSN web service queries.
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StationXML Parser: Station information is retrieved in StationXML format. The Swift implementation efficiently parses StationXML data for detailed seismic station metadata.
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miniSEED Parser: Waveforms are retrieved in miniSEED format. The App has a native Swift implementation and decodes miniSEED formatted waveform data for accurate seismic signal visualization.
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GeoJSON Parser: Events are retrieved in GeoJSON format and the App processes GeoJSON data to display earthquake event information.
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FDSN Web Services: All FDSN service providers for providing open access to near-realtime seismic data.
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Seismic Network Providers: And major thanks for all seismic network data providers, for installation, maintenance and public access to the following seismic networks:
Code Network AU Australian National Seismograph Network (ANSN) BK Berkeley Digital Seismic Network (BDSN) CH Switzerland National Seismic Network CI Southern California Seismic Network (SCSN) CN Canadian National Seismograph Network C4 CERN Seismic Network DK Danish National Seismic Network FR France National Seismic Network (RESIF) G GEOSCOPE (French Global Network) GB Great Britain National Seismic Network GE GEOFON (German Global Network) GR German Regional Network HC Seismological Network of Crete (NOA) HL Hellenic Seismic Network (National Observatory of Athens) HT Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Seismological Network II Global Seismograph Network - IRIS/IDA IS Israelian Broadband Seismological Network (GII-Net) IT Italy (Strong Motion Network) IU Global Seismograph Network (GSN IRIS/USGS) IV Italy National Seismic Network JP Japan Meteorological Agency Seismic Network KO Kandilli Observatory & Earthquake Research Institute (KOERI) M8 Australian Semi-Permanent Support Network (MATE) MN Mediterranean Very Broadband Seismographic Network (MedNet) MX Mexican National Seismic Network NC Northern California Seismic Network (NCSN) NL Netherlands National Seismic Network NP United States National Strong-Motion Network NZ New Zealand National Seismograph Network OE Austria National Seismic Network S1 Australian Seismometers in Schools (AUSiS) TU National Seismic Network of Turkey (DDA) TW Taiwan National Seismic Network US United States National Seismic Network 2I INGV temporary seismic network of Osservatorio Vesuviano -
USGS Earthquake Service: A primary source for earthquake event information.
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Swift Community: For continuous inspiration and resources.
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Push Notifications: Implement mobile alerts for significant seismic events and custom station thresholds.
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Advanced Data Analysis Tools: Introduce more sophisticated tools for in-depth waveform analysis directly within the app.
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AI signal detection: Add AI for detecting earthquakes, blasts, landslides, storms, and other exotic signals.
- daniel, September 2025
