Selecting stations and channels¶

Four settings control what FDSN Rush downloads:

station_selection and station_blacklist: which stations.
channel_priority and min_channels_per_station: which channels per station.
min_sampling_rate and max_sampling_rate: which sampling rates are acceptable.
time_range: which days.

Stations¶

Stations are written as NET.STA.LOC codes, following the SEED convention. Parts you leave empty match anything:

Selection	Matches
`"GE"`	every station of network `GE`
`"GE.APE"`	station `APE` of network `GE`, all locations
`"GE.APE.00"`	location `00` of `GE.APE`
`"GE.A*"`	all `GE` stations whose code starts with `A`
`"*.STU"`	station `STU` in any network

Codes can contain shell-style wildcards: * (anything), ? (one character) and [...] (one of a set of characters).

"station_selection": ["GE", "2D.ST0?", "Z3.A*"],
"station_blacklist": ["GE.UGM", "2D.ST05"]

station_blacklist uses the same syntax. A station is downloaded if it matches any entry in station_selection and no entry in station_blacklist.

How the server is queried

FDSN Rush sends one station query per network in your selection. It asks for the channel-level inventory and then applies the selection and blacklist locally. Keep the network code explicit ("GE.A*" rather than "*.A*") so the server returns only what you need.

Channels¶

Stations often record several channel groups, for example a broadband seismometer on HH? and a strong-motion sensor on HN?. channel_priority is an ordered list of channel patterns. For each station and each day, FDSN Rush takes the first pattern that matches at least min_channels_per_station channels and ignores the rest:

"channel_priority": ["HH[ZNE12]", "EH[ZNE12]", "HN[ZNE12]"],
"min_channels_per_station": 3

With this configuration:

A station with HHZ, HHN and HHE gets its three HH channels.
A station with only EHZ, EHN and EHE gets the EH channels.
A station with HHZ alone and no complete group is skipped. With min_channels_per_station set to 1, it would get HHZ.

Because the decision is made per day, a station that was upgraded from short-period to broadband mid-campaign gets EH before the upgrade and HH after it.

Patterns use the same wildcard syntax as stations. "HH?" matches all HH channels, "HH[ZNE]" only the standard orientations, and "*Z" every vertical component.

State-of-health channels are ignored

Auxiliary channels, such as voltages, temperatures, mass positions and LDO pressure, are filtered from the inventory. They are never downloaded, even if a pattern would match them.

Sampling rates¶

Channels outside [min_sampling_rate, max_sampling_rate] (in Hz) are skipped. A warning names each skipped channel. The defaults (100–200 Hz) suit local and regional seismology. To download long-period LH? channels at 1 Hz:

"channel_priority": ["LH[ZNE]"],
"min_sampling_rate": 1.0,
"max_sampling_rate": 1.0

Set either value to 0 to disable that bound.

Time range¶

time_range is a pair [start, end] of UTC dates. FDSN Rush downloads whole days from start up to, but not including, end.

`time_range`	Days downloaded
`["2026-09-01", "2026-09-03"]`	September 1 and 2
`["2026-01-01", "today"]`	January 1 up to and including yesterday
`["yesterday", "today"]`	yesterday only

Downloads always cover whole UTC days. A channel is only requested on days that fall within its epoch in the station inventory.

Checking a selection without downloading waveforms¶

Run with --metadata-only to fetch the inventory and StationXML only:

fdsn-rush download config.json --metadata-only

Inspect metadata/<NET>.xml to check which stations and channels your selection covers before you start a large download.