Different location in Stationview and GoogleMaps

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Introduction, Am really new to this thing, would say amateur. :grinning: I did not found answer to questions by fast browsing through FAQ and forums. And I today installed RS. Any help would be appreciated.

When I copypaste my RS Boom coordinates to Googlemaps, location goes really close where my RS i really located.(not exactly where it is but 10~ meters away, how big tolerances there are for RS?). When I view my RS through Stationview it pin my RS to 500-750~ meter to different location.

I took coordinates and elevation with My Elevation app(Android). I know there can be differences in GPS tolerances especially even when coordinates are took with smart phone. Dedicated handheld GPS made for hikers, hunters etc. or Professional GPS can measure location more precisely.

Then another question I have is - Can I shut down my computer which runs Swarm or does it need to run 24/7? I have “somewhat” stable connection and rarely getting electricity interrupts, though UPS would not do harm?

Hello @ukkoaedro and welcome to the community. In short: we intentionally obscure publicly-reported station locations for user privacy reasons.

The longer answer of why we can do this is interesting but perhaps slightly more than you bargained for when asking this question. Feel free to ask about anything confusing.

The obscured locations we expose to the public are not obscured enough to affect earthquake solutions, as seismic waves travel anywhere from 2-8 km/s near earth’s surface. Seismology is a very imperfect science, and Earth is a very imperfect place to study seismic wave propagation because we know so little about it. Depending on the geologic material (clay, sand, granite, basalt, etc) seismic waves can change speed very frequently and typically do so without our knowledge. Because of this, introducing a few hundred meters of error into station locations is a relatively small source of error in the grand scheme of things.

We are working on a way to allow users to expose their “real” location to the public if they are interested, as well as a way for seismic data consumers to tell which station locations are “real” and which ones are obscured. My guess is that this will happen towards the end of this year or the beginning of next.

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