Can I just put the RaspberryShake 4d on my garage floor or do I have to bury this thing in my yard somewhere?
You don’t HAVE to do anything. Your RS will work wherever you put it.
One of my RSs is in town with a busy thoroughfare on one side and a railway line on the other. No matter where I put the machine it will be affected by traffic noise and trains, so I have it in a cupboard where there is power and ethernet access. Most of the time, all I see is noise, but when there is a nearby EQ of magnitude 3 or greater, that swamps the noise. Anything less than mag 3 and the noise dominates, but that’s life. A nearby accelerometer run by GeoNet, our government EQ agency, has the same features.
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Hello @ericandlil, welcome to the community!
As also TideMan said, your RShake will work everywhere, I know of people who have it on shelves, inside cupboards or other places. However, to give you more context, the better the placement the better the results it will yield.
The garage floor, if it’s made of concrete, would be a good solution. The basement too, if you have one, could be a good place, and it will allow you to have less response from inside the house (like for example walking, stomping, or closing doors hard) and thus less noise.
You will be able to register quakes if they are above your average noise level (you will be able to see this as soon as you will start to get your data and your first seismic events), so the better the position the weaker (or farther) the earthquakes you will be able to catch will be.
There are some users who also built a proper seismic vault, with humidity controls and waterproofing, but that could be a project for further on if you want.
If you have any doubts instead on anchoring or leveling the RaspberryShake, I’ll give you the link to the apposite setions in our manual: https://manual.raspberryshake.org/commonlyAskedQuestions.html#installation