Get me going, please!

I’m new to ObsPy. I have a jAmaSeis setup through Wine64 on Ubuntu 20.04 with three years of data from an Infiltec QM-4.5LV seismometer.

My immediate goal is to learn how to read the .sac files with ObsPy, generate png files, and ftp the files to my website every 5 minutes. Later, I would like to learn how to analyze the data for resonance.

If someone could just point me to a clear tutorial or manual that directly addresses my interests, it would be much appreciated. :slight_smile:

The most relevant Tutorials to start with are pointed out at the top of the Tutorial section of our documentation: https://docs.obspy.org/tutorial/index.html

You probably want to start with these notebooks or with the youtube video. The notebooks are conveniently packed together in a github repository: https://github.com/obspy/docs/tree/master/workshops

If you dont have ObsPy installed yet, these notebooks are on seismo-live, too

Hi and thanks for the response.

I do have ObsPy already installed and I am ready to go. I also came across the YouTube video you linked to in my search for information; I tried listening to the video, but I cannot understand the speakers due to my hearing loss. I tried reading the ObsPy tutorial page, but apparently it assumes a knowledge of Python, and I am new to Python.

What I need is a template relevant to my equipment and installation so I can see what is happening, and then follow up by reading relevant material. For the simple setup I am seeking, I cannot justify giving a week or month of my full time to learn the entire Python language, and how it works with seismometers. I’m hoping that the thrill of seeing an operational system on my own computer will draw me in.

I have just read the notebooks you linked to. Although they seem promising, key data from the notebooks are missing.

As for the notebooks being “conveniently packed together” on GitHub, I must be missing something. There is nothing convenient about the files, at all. Apparently, there is something else I need to know in order to be able to use these files.

It may be that I am just not qualified to use ObsPy. I have read glowing articles about ObsPy, and about how easy and powerful it is to use, but the articles must also have assumed a certain amount of knowledge about something that is not readily available to people discovering ObsPy for the first time.

If there are no templates available that could get me up and running right away, then maybe I need to find a different solution. And if that is the case, I would suggest putting a disclaimer on key landing pages to the effect that you need to have a certain skill set before even considering to use ObsPy. I have already spent several hours just getting to this point, and I still don’t have a clue about how to access or utilize ObsPy with my data. I have programming skills in visual basic, Unix, and a few other light programming languages, so I should be able to pick up the Python language when I see it working.

It is not my intention to be critical; I’m giving feedback from the perspective of someone who is approaching ObsPy for the first time.

You would want to either install Jupyter Notebook on your computer to work with them on your own machine or you could go to seismo-live, like mentioned before and work with them there, although seismo-live will not save your changes, you would have to download them if you want to preserve your changes.

If you already have ObsPy installed you can simply copy paste code from our online Tutorials or seismo-live. For example if you have a sac file it is three lines of code to read and (preview-)plot the data:

from obspy import read
st = read("my_file.sac")
st.plot()

Hi Tobias,

Thank you for your patience with me. I have the Notebooks figured out and loaded. It turns out that Jupyter is a package available through the Ubuntu Software Manager. It did not take long to realize how it works. I will see what I can learn about ObsPy.

Good to hear you made good progress. Good luck with your projects!