• Antelope Release 5.10 Linux CentOS release 7.6.1810 (Core) 3.10.0 2020-05-12

 

NAME

antelope - Introduction to the Antelope Environmental Monitoring Software

DESCRIPTION

The software from Antelope provides a wide variety of tools for managing and working with seismic data. In addition, it provides documented interfaces for developing new tools in C, TCL/Tk, shell script, Fortran, Perl, Python, and MATLAB. This man page provides a brief overview of the more important programs. Please refer to hier(5) for a description of the filesystem hierarchy, and to antelope(3) for an introduction to the programming interface. The man page antelopeenv(5) documents the environment variables.

Most of the Antelope programs are built upon a relational database, using a variation of the CSS 3.0 schema. The underlying Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is Datascope, and is part of the system.

Datascope represents tables as fixed-format, plain ASCII text files. Waveform data is kept in external (outside the database) binary files which may have a variety of formats. A tutorial introduction to Datascope (in the doc directory of the distribution) has a lot more detail.

LICENSE

Antelope is licensed commercial software. The software license agreement for Antelope may be found in the file

$ANTELOPE/license.txt

Antelope ships with several software elements derived from freely-available sources. The licenses for these open-source elements may be found in the directories

$ANTELOPE/data/licenses/
/opt/antelope/perl5.26.1/licenses/
/opt/antelope/python3.6.5/licenses/
/opt/antelope/tcltk8.4.19/licenses/
/opt/antelope/tcltk8.6.0/licenses/

where $ANTELOPE is the root directory for the Antelope installation (see antelopeenv(5)).

THIRD PARTY TOOLS

Every Antelope distribution includes a distribution of Perl and a distribution of TCL/Tk. Antelope uses both of these freely available programming languages in various parts of the system. TCL/Tk tends to be used where a complex GUI is required (eg, dbe(1) and dbevents(1)). Perl is often used for administrative tasks (eg, rtexec(1) and rtdbclean(1)), and increasingly in GUI tools like rtdemo(1).

Perl

The Perl distribution is version 5.26.1, with the following extensions:

TCL/Tk

The current distribution includes TCL/Tk 8.6.0, without any extensions. The TCL/Tk distribution version 8.4.19 from previous Antelope releases is also included. The following extensions are available for 8.4.19:

Although these extensions are used in a variety of programs within Antelope, our ultimate goal is to eliminate these extensions, because of the maintenance problems they create.

Python

For details on the Python interpreter included with Antelope, see the man-page notes_python(5).

CONTRIBUTED CODE

Members of the Antelope User Community routinely develop additional programs and libraries based on Antelope and designed to work in conjunction with Antelope utilities. Source-code and compiled binaries for these programs and libraries may be downloaded separately from Antelope User Community sites, as described in the man-page contrib(5).

PROGRAMS

Antelope programs fall into a few broad classes. This introduction mentions some of the more important programs. Most programs have man pages which should be consulted for more information. You should also try running

% man -k

to find programs of interest.

Real Time System Programs

Most of these programs interact with an orbserver(1), reading or writing packet data or other messages to a ring buffer. A less capable relation is a diskserver(1) which provides an orb(3) interface to a collection of packet files created using orb2disk(1). An orb2disk/diskserver packet ring buffer can be much larger than an orbserver(1), but does not provide the performance or some of the utility of an orbserver(1).

rtexec(1) supervises the operation of a real time system, while rtm(1) provides a visual interface for monitoring and manipulating the system.

q3302orb(1), dbreplay(1) and stream2orb(1) place data packets onto an orb. orb2orb(1) and orbxchange(1) copy from one orbserver(1) to another. orb2db(1) and orb2wf(1) assemble data packets from an orb into waveform files in a CSS database. orb2dbt(1) copies database rows from an orb into a database.

Some processing programs both read and write to the orb: orbdetect(1), and orbassoc(1) form the basis of real time detection and location. orbevproc(1) can calculate magnitudes (and other general purpose waveform processing) and leave results back on the orb.

orbrtd(1) is useful for continuously viewing waveform data in the orb. orbstat(1) provides a means of monitoring the status of a ring buffer, as well as a method for interactively examining specific packets; it is very useful for debugging certain kinds of processing problems.

There is the q3302orb(1) program for Quanterra dataloggers.

Similarly, for Kinemetrics K2 dataloggers, there is altus2orb(1).

For commanding Kinemetrics or Quanterra dataloggers, the program dlcmd(1) is used. For monitoring datalogger status, the program dlmon(1) presents a generalized interface which can be utilized by any program which reads data from a datalogger and puts it onto an orb.

Import

These programs simplify the process of creating a CSS database from the commonly used SEED format: miniseed2db(1) and seed2db(1). In addition, for users who download and install the Antelope contrib(5) code, various additional programs such as sac2db, ah2db and segy2css are available for importing SAC, AH and SEGY formats.

pde2origin(1) and qed2origin(1) convert PDE and QED bulletins to CSS origin tables; however, the sources of these bulletins regularly change the format of the data they provide, so it is difficult to keep the programs up to date.

Waveform Display and Manipulation

The primary program for waveform display and interactive picking is dbpick(1). This program has a wide range of viewing options, allows filtering, measuring amplitude and period, association with existing catalogs, and the display of predicted arrivals from an associated event.

dbap(1) performs array processing, including filtering and stacking, the generation of beams, slowness-time grids, and a variety of display options.

dbspgram(1) generates spectrograms.

The contributed program dbheli(1) (part of the separate contrib(5) software package) creates plots that are similar to helicorder recordings and may be useful for quick screening of data.

dbrsec(1) generates record section plots.

trexcerpt(1) segments data, typically for excerpting sections of interest from a continuous data stream.

The contributed program dbdec(1) (part of the separate contrib(5) software package) decimates data.

dbdetect(1) is an automated arrival picker with an onset estimation; it adds arrival picks to the arrival table.

dbevproc(1) calculates magnitudes from amplitude measurements.

dbloc2(1) is an interactive program for bulletin preparation. It allows interactively picking, grouping and associating arrivals, finding locations and displaying waveforms and residuals.

Database Display and Manipulation

The primary tool for database manipulation is dbe(1), which allows displaying, modifying and manipulating database tables. It can generate graphs, and waveform and response displays, and can be extended to run other display programs. An associated program, dbhelp(1), is used to explore a database schema. The dbe(1) has been rewritten, with the original available as dbe_dep(1).

Command line tools for performing common database operations are dbcp(1), dbjoin(1), dbsubset(1), dbsort(1), dbdelete(1), dbcrunch(1), dbtheta(1), dbselect(1), dbunjoin(1), and dbnojoin(1).

dbset(1) can be used to perform global changes in a database.

dbconvert(1) converts a database from one schema to another.

dbverify(1) checks on the internal consistency of a database.

dbdiff(1) compares two databases.

Export

Antelope directly supports exporting from CSS databases into SEED, using db2sd(1). Contributed programs (separately downloaded, see contrib(5)) support export into SAC and AH: db2sac and db2ah. trexcerpt(1) segments waveforms and can output various formats, including SAC and AH. dbwfexcerpt_dep(1) also has an option to generate SAC files.

Miniseed

There are a host of programs for dealing with miniseed (SEED data with only waveform data, no parameter information like station location and responses). miniseed2days(1) splits miniseed files into station/channel day volumes. miniseed2orb(1) splits miniseed files into individual SEED blocks, and puts those blocks as packets onto an orb; orbmsd2days(1) reads such packets and writes them into station/channel day volumes, ala miniseed2days(1). log2miniseed(1) creates miniseed from log files. msdd(1) allows inspecting miniseed in some detail, and extracting specific blocks. patch_miniseed(1) can correct reverse integration constants in miniseed; alter_timestamps(1) can change the time stamps in miniseed. db2msd(1) compresses the integer waveform files created by orbmsd2days(1) into miniseed. In addition, there are C interfaces for reading and writing miniseed.

Utility

The CSS database uses epoch times throughout; it's common to need to convert from epoch time to a more readable format. The program epoch(1) is useful for this purpose.

pfecho(1) and pfwhich(1) are useful for investigating parameter files.

gsregion(1) is an interactive program for finding seismic and geographic region numbers from latitude and longitude. dbsetrgn(1) sets region numbers in origin tables, and the Datascope expression calculator dbcalc(1) also has geographic and seismic region functions.

ENVIRONMENT

Please refer to antelopeenv(5).

LIBRARIES

The programs above are based upon an extensive set of libraries, most of which are documented. These provide a powerful basis for developing new tools. Please refer to antelope(3) for more information.

BUGS AND CAVEATS

Please report bugs and questions to support@brtt.com.

Please bear in mind that a complete description of the problem, including an example of how to generate it, what you expected and what you actually saw, and any error messages generated is essential to diagnose and fix problems. See bugs(5) for further suggestions on how to report problems.

Do not send problem reports to individual email addresses at BRTT: they will not be answered. To receive a response, only use support@brtt.com. Requests sent to support@brtt.com are read by multiple people and will be responded to in a timely manner.

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