How it’s built
A short, honest look under the hood.
Boom Tracker started as a simple idea: people kept hearing booms around the Tri-Cities and had nowhere to put them. So I built a place to map them, and then kept going.
The stack
It runs on Next.js and Postgres, with a live map (MapLibre), pulls in real USGS earthquake and PulsePoint 911 data, and is hosted on my own hardware. No page builder, no template. I wrote it.
Clustering the reports
When a few people report around the same time and place, the site groups them into one event. That sounds easy until two separate booms happen the same night, so it also watches for quiet gaps in time and keeps them apart.
Guessing where it came from
This is the part I’m proud of. The site triangulates a likely origin three different ways: the directions people point, how loud it was where they stood, and (when people tap the exact moment they heard it) the tiny differences in arrival time, the same trick you use to place a thunderclap. When those agree, the guess gets sharper.
Keeping it clean
Reports run through a moderation pass before they go public, so the map stays trustworthy without me sitting on it all day.
This is the kind of thing I build. If you need a site or a tool, here is how to reach me.