My Blog

This project began with a simple idea: what if I could visualize earthquakes as they happen, in real time? ⚡

That curiosity turned into RVSU Earthquake Monitoring System — a live platform designed to track and display seismic activity from data streams in motion.

The system listens to seismic feeds coming in over UDP 📡, parses the incoming data into structured event logs, and instantly highlights any significant tremors on an interactive Leaflet.js map 🗺️. Every blip, every shake — right there on the screen, as it happens.

But real-time data is only as good as its stability. To keep things reliable, I built a heartbeat mechanism ❤️ that continuously monitors the system's health and data flow. Whenever an alert is triggered, it's logged — creating a full historical record of every event and system status change.

Originally, the backend relied on Flask, but I wanted something leaner and more resilient. So I re-engineered it into a serverless-style architecture 🧠 — no Flask, no heavy dependencies.

Now, the system periodically generates lightweight static JSON snapshots of the latest seismic data every five seconds. These are served directly by nginx, resulting in faster load times, better scalability, and fault tolerance even under network stress.

It's not just a monitoring tool — it's a living system that reflects the pulse of the planet, one tremor at a time. 🌐🌋

It all started with a simple Python script 🐍 that checked for price changes on eMag.ro and sent Telegram notifications 💬.

Since then, it's evolved into a full-featured multi-platform price monitoring system:

🔹 Initially, it searched for products by item code — but I found out the same code is reused for refurbished items… not great 😅

🔹 Switched to using direct product links (copy & paste)

🔹 Added Telegram bot integration for product management 🤖

🔹 Built a modern web interface with interactive charts 🌐

🔹 Multi-user support with individual watchlists 👥

🔹 Expanded to support both eMag.ro and Altex.ro 🛍️

🔹 Enterprise-grade security: bcrypt hashing, rate limiting, audit logging 🔒

🎉 Latest addition: Official Firefox browser extension! Now you can add products to your watchlist with a single click directly from product pages. The extension automatically detects product information and integrates seamlessly with your account.

It's a private project — not meant for the public, and it doesn't use email, phone numbers, or anything like that.

👉 Just create an account (username + password), and in the settings you'll find instructions on how to activate Telegram notifications.

📆 Price checks run automatically every full hour, tracking prices across both eMag and Altex.