Working with the archive¶

FDSN Rush writes a standard SDS (SeisComP Data Structure) archive with StationXML metadata next to it. Every major seismology toolkit reads it directly, with no import step.

Layout¶

data/                                 ← writer.sds_archive
├── 2026/                             ← year
│   └── GE/                           ← network
│       └── APE/                      ← station
│           └── HHZ.D/                ← channel, D = data
│               └── GE.APE..HHZ.D.2026.244
└── remote_errors.log                 ← see "Resuming and updating"
metadata/                             ← metadata_path
└── GE.xml                            ← StationXML, one file per network

• File names follow NET.STA.LOC.CHA.D.YEAR.DOY, with the day of year zero-padded to three digits. An empty location code leaves two consecutive dots, as in GE.APE..HHZ.
• Each file holds one channel for one UTC day, cut at midnight and stored as STEIM-compressed MiniSEED records.
• Each metadata/<NET>.xml holds the full instrument response of all channels of the selected stations in that network, for the requested time range.

Reading waveforms¶

from obspy import UTCDateTime, read_inventory
from obspy.clients.filesystem.sds import Client

client = Client("data")
inventory = read_inventory("metadata/GE.xml")

t = UTCDateTime("2026-09-01T12:00:00")
stream = client.get_waveforms("GE", "APE", "", "HH?", t, t + 600)
stream.remove_response(inventory=inventory, output="VEL")

from pyrocko import util
from pyrocko.squirrel import Squirrel

sq = Squirrel()
sq.add(["data", "metadata"])

tmin = util.str_to_time("2026-09-01 12:00:00")
traces = sq.get_waveforms(codes="GE.APE..HH?", tmin=tmin, tmax=tmin + 600)

scrttv -I sdsarchive:///path/to/data

Indexing new files with Squirrel¶

If you work with Pyrocko Squirrel, FDSN Rush can register each day file in a Squirrel environment as soon as it is written. Later Squirrel queries then need no re-scan:

"writer": {
  "sds_archive": "data",
  "squirrel_environment": "."
}

The path must point to an existing Squirrel environment, which you create with squirrel init.