HI Barry,

I might have to take this in parts.  I think that there are some very 
easy steps we can take that cost nothing.  We can follow the channel 
naming convention.

All of the modern softwares and mainly earthworm and seiscomp refer to 
channels as SCNL

Station
Channel
Network
Location

STATION  name can be up to 5 characters, letters and numbers, no special 
characters and can not start with a number.  My main station for the 
last 12 years is BRU2.  If the station name are to be shared the need to 
be unique.  There is an agency that keeps a big station book.  We could 
probably come up with a scheme that was unique to us, for example all or 
our station names would end in 99  so maybe a new site for me would be 
ALR99.

CHANNEL name is a bit harder but but more or less defined here.

http://www.iris.washington.edu/manuals/SEED_appA.htm

NETWORK code we would have to apply for one, if we haven't, I could do 
it, it would be easy, They are assigned by the FDSN, Federation of 
Digital Seismic Network.  We might ask for one, maybe "WE", as far as I 
can tell numbers are allow in this field, so maybe we could get a pair 
of numbers.

http://www.fdsn.org/station_book/

LOCATION is just a two character field, numbers and letter. Normally 00 
for the main station.  The usefulness is that if we have many 
instruments co-located we can tell them apart.  Dave has many vertical 
at the same place so they would all have the same station name, the same 
channel name and the same network code and we could tell them apart by 
the location code. So...

My main station has SCNLs as follow

BRU2 HHZ PA 00
BRU2 HHN PA 00
BRU2 HHE PA 00

Dave's might be

DFN99 HHZ WE 00
DFN99 HHZ WE 10
DFN99 HHZ WE 20

This would be the SCNL for three co-located vertical high gain 
broadbands from the station DFN99 sampled at more than 80 samples per 
second in the network WE.

Other easy things we can do is to have our station coordinates
Then the time thing, GPS is best but WWV if fine and cheap and there is 
NTP network time which I also think is ok as long as we can regulate the 
computer time to less than 100 milliseconds for regional locations. 
Small tight networks need better time.

Many latin american country networks have nothing more, They only pick P 
and S report coda magnitudes.  You do not need to calibrate your 
instruments to do that.  To calculate other magnitudes we would need to 
calibrate our instruments.

Most of use have Larry's digitizer which easily integrates into 
earthworm and once we had our data in earthworm sharing our data in real 
time would be easy.  We would need an earthworm ID but that would be 
easy and we could all share the same ID.

More latter, questions and comments welcome.  Who wants to be our 
registrar??

Saludos,

Angel




On 07/17/2012 02:19 AM, Barry Lotz wrote:
> Angel & Dave
>  I agree. How do we move forward?
> My 2 cents:  I work for a structural testing and inspection lab. Our 
> lab and inspectors comply with certain standards so that our 
> results/inspections are credible ( eg NIST, ASTM, AWS, ICC). Maybe it 
> would be possible to have an accepted protocol for our stations with 
> sensor(s). I would like to comment on  the items you mentioned.
> >"We have noisy instruments"
>    It seems possible to determine the instrument noise by maybe 
> "nesting"? Site noise could be evaluated over "X" time during 
> day,night or both. Could it mirror the evaluation of professional 
> systems? It seems a  threshold could be determined for credibility 
> station/sensor noise limits. Do we use the NLNM graph with an envelope 
> of limits?
> >"We do not calibrate"
>    Could a accepted standardized procedure be described for horizontal 
> and vertical sensors, that all could use? I am familiar with methods 
> that Dave and Brett use for our FBV's.
> >"We do not have accurate time"
>     Would , as an example, larry's SDR program and ADC unit with GPS 
> time be sufficient? What would be an accepted variational allowance?
> >"We do not use a standard format for data exchange"
>      Could a documented conversion program(s) be used to convert from 
> say psn to an "standard"  format? Maybe it already exists.
> > "We do not use standard naming conventions"
>      Should we have a described procedure for this?
> I think Dr Weilandt has programs which could address some of the noise 
> and calibration issues above. I haven't completely read it but is the 
> NMSOP what professionals use? Could we have something similar with 
> more nuts and bolts procedures and info?
>       General agreement maybe the biggest hurdle, but I agree we 
> should make an effort to have more credible stations and sensors if we 
> desire. Maybe we just needs some agreed upon documented standards to 
> try to achieve.
>
> Regards
> Barry
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* "sismos@.............." 
> *To:* psnlist@..............
> *Sent:* Sat, July 14, 2012 12:48:51 PM
> *Subject:* Re: diamagnetic levitation seismometer possibility
>
> On 07/14/2012 12:38 AM, Thomas Dick wrote:
> > On 7/13/2012 5:55 PM, Dave Nelson wrote:
> >> The number of possible seismic instrument configurations which will 
> provide some response  to seismic motions is vast. The question is the 
> practicality/utility of a given configuration.
> >> The key figure of merit for any instrument configuration  is the 
> instrument self noise and response as a function of frequency. This 
> directly determines the minimum seismic motion the instrument is 
> capable of detecting and then providing useful data for analysis.
> >> If one is willing to wait for that rare magnitude 7 or 8 event the 
> simplest / noisiest instrument may do the job in some contexts, such 
> as classroom demonstrations .
> >> The amateur astronomer community has evolved to the point where it 
> provides useful  ( if not essential) information to the astronomy 
> scientific community. I believe the amateur seismology community could 
> do a similar service but not with inadequate instrumentation.
> >>  The goal should be to develop amateur instruments with 
> characteristics near the performance of professional instruments and 
> then operating  them in reasonably low noise sites. (An instrument in 
> a residential basement  will work reassembly well if carefully done.)
> >> Larry Cochrane has  already provided us with excellent equipment to 
> handle the sensor data and connect it to a network. Some work needs to 
> be done in this area but we have a good start.
> >> _*My challenge is to include instrument self noise and generator 
> constant, both as a function of frequency, as a FIRST PRIORITY when 
> evaluating  the utility of an instrument concept. *_
> >> Just another gadget that will respond if you shake it is not where 
> we want to spend our efforts and resources.
> >> I do  NOT  mean to imply there are not some truly innovative and 
> possibly revolutionary ideas out there but we should  look at each of 
> them  carefully to determine early whether they justify significant 
> effort or belong in the "that was interesting" stack.
> >> Just where determination is made is a personal choice but it should 
> be based on some form of analysis and/or test.
> >> Comments Please.
> >> Dave Nelson
> >> Rolling Hills Estates, California
> > My impression is that most academia and professional seismologists 
> hold the amateur in very low esteem.
>
> Yes, they do hold us in low esteem and this is our own fault.
>
> We have noisy instruments
> We do not calibrate
> We do not have accurate time
> We do not use a standard format for data exchange
> We do not use standard naming conventions
>
> The academic and professional seismologists can already locate and 
> characterize (within a few minutes) all events over about 4.2 Mb, They 
> don't need us for that.  Where we could excel and make a meaningful 
> contribution is in the seismicity of our own backyards, the small 
> events less than one degree from our instruments. Recording those is a 
> bit harder than picking up the squiggles from a 6.5 Mb 10 degrees away.
>
> These are just a few things we do and do not do and until we do we 
> will just be amateurs.
>
> Just my two cents
>
> Angel
>
>
>
>
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