Scream! 4.6 released

Güralp Systems are delighted to announce the release of version 4.6 of Scream! the leading software application for Seismometer Configuration, REaltime Acquisition and Monitoring. The new version offers improved spectrograms and WaveView windows, integration with Google Maps/Google Earth and a host of other features.

Scream! 4.6 optionally includes version 3 of ART, Güralp Systems’ Analysis and Research Tool, a Windows program for processing and analysing strong motion records from Güralp Systems’ instruments. ART works closely with Scream! to make analysing seismic data easy. Scream! visualisation and filtering capabilities allow you to view time series and quickly identify events. Strong-motion records can then be directly imported into ART by selecting the appropriate portion of the record in Scream! and using the right-click context menu, which will automatically start ART with the selected data pre-loaded. Previously recorded data in Güralp Compressed Format (GCF) can also be read in from files and analysed with any of the rich selection of sophisticated processing techniques. Click here for more details about ART 3.

In common with previous releases, Version 4.6 will be offered as a free download. This release represents the culmination of nearly seven years of development effort and incorporates support for newer GSL equipment as well as valuable suggestions from our customers. Existing Scream! users will be notified by email of the new release; new customers should send an email to for instructions for accessing the free download, stating any institutional affiliation and the type(s) of equipment with which the software will be used.

Highlights

• Introduction of support for Affinity and Minimus digitisers, with direct access to their configuration web pages.

• Clearer, smoother WaveView windows with instant measurements, Google Maps / Google Earth integration, additional sorting options and more keyboard controls.

• Automatic detection of nearby network servers and support for broadcast addressing.

• Seamless exchange of calibration values between connected copies of Scream!.

• Custom phrase highlighting in terminal windows and status streams.

• A major re-organisation and re-write of the manual, reflecting the way that Scream! usage has changed with developing technology. Over two hundred brand new screen-shots and illustrations provide clear guidance throughout.

A WaveView window with streams spaced by “distance from a set-point”

Detailed release notes

Main Window

• Introduction of support for Affinity and Minimus data sources:

  • In instrument popup menu, suppress options that Affinity/Minimus do not support - mainly around Forth terminal command compatibility (config/control/terminal/etc).

  • Overhaul of mass position determination, to introduce Affinity and Minimus types and ranges. This improves the status display of the sensor mass position icon.

  • Added Open Web Browser option for Computer devices, for quick access to EAM/NAM/Affinity/Minimus web pages. The constructed URL can be customised with URLPrefix (default http://) and URLSuffix (default empty) read-only scream.ini file options, to allow non-standard ports or protocols to be used.

• Added asterisk (Yes*) to Rec column to indicate that data recording is deferred.

• Added Flush to Disk option for forcing write of deferred data.

• Added purple colour-code for instrument icons, meaning "Trimmed" (requires supporting digitiser firmware).

• Added AutoDeleteStale ini option. If greater than zero, this specifies number of seconds of timeout for an Instrument, after which the Instrument will be deleted. Useful in test labs, where instruments are frequently changed.

WaveView

• Added right-click (rmouse) on Date to toggle between YYYY/MM/DD and YYYY/JJJ date format.

• Sort options updated: Added System ID, added sort by location sub-menu (N→S, S→N, E→W, W→E), changed Sort By → Alphabetical text to Stream ID.

• Added Station Map in Google Earth option in context menu.

• Added Show Lane lines option, including time-line grid.

• Added key 0 to zero offsets of active stream and ctrl + 0 to zero all streams in window.

• Added key 1 to set scale of active stream to 1x, and ctrl + 1 to set all streams in window.

• Added ctrl + plus and ctrl + minus to work on all displayed spectrograms. (We already used P to toggle individual, spectrograms and ctrl + p to toggle all, so this change extends the ctrl+? concept to plus and minus).

• Added persistence of measurement cursor positions on stop/start.

• Added persistence of Save As options (directory, file-format, single-file)

• Allow two streams to be selected simultaneously for filter design.

• Added "alt-key" measurements: hold alt whilst clicking on a trace to display the max/min/avg at that sample/pixel.

• Added some more stream colours for the black background scheme.

• Re-worked Scale dialog box to add option - all streams in this window

• Enable smooth scroll by default. (Add SmoothScroll=0 to the [custom] section of scream.ini to disable.)

Config/Control

• Modified Configuration window to support CD24E1 digitisers (EDU-V)

• Add variable-baud GNSS option in Timing Source (DM24-Mk3 option).

Network

• Added Detect Servers window in the My Client side of the networking. This automatically detects instruments by the DHCP broadcasts from DCMs, EAMs, netDMs, Minimus, Fortimus, Certimus, Lantronix etc.

• Enabled mouse-click (lmouse) on headers to sort for the Client and Server lists.

• Added client and server sides for requesting calvals.txt section for an instrument.

• Added -txFiles command line option to enable network transmission of replayed or auto-loaded files. (Intended for testing purposes only.)

Terminal

• Log file names now have a source-dependent suffix to separate entries for different sources into different files. Allows for multiple terminals to be open and logging without the logs interleaving.

• Added logging of terminal events (with timestamp) when user-defined phrases are received. Phrases are defined in the [custom] section of the scream.inifile with termEvStrs=<SDF>.

• Added timestamp in logging of open/close events.

• Added Clear option to reset the terminal.

Recording

• SEG-2: added first pass support. Currently only saves one channel per file, but SEG2 is intended for active source experiments where data from a string of sensors is stored in a single file.

• UFF: extended format to include milliseconds in the timestamp, potentially needed for sample rates greater than 250 samples-per-second.

• Added RetryTimeout to allow automatic retry and restart of recording if it should be on, but an error had occurred. The default is 30 seconds, but it can be changed or disabled.

Playback/View

• Added viewing of status text in "View" mode, if text blocks are found in viewed gcf files.

• In File Replay, Instruments are now shown as children of the file-name.

Status

• Added custom keyword highlighting to status windows (user configurable keywords can highlight lines in red or green)

• Added context menu entries for "common" operations (select all, copy, keyword selection).

Other

• Added feature to keep the PC awake when in real-time mode (prevent PC going to sleep).

• ViewInfo - esc now closes the window.

• Email - Added Mass Position no longer out of range message.

• AcceptInstruments - Add option to match on a SysID only

Fixes/Improvements

• Main Window:
  • Added check for Control OFF and not syncd" GPS status to turn icon yellow.
  • Added forced flush of deferred data when user stops recording of a stream.
  • Map plotting reports google maps or google earth as appropriate (Maps URL for single instrument, Earth KML for multiple).
• WaveView:
  • Duplicating a window now also copies measurement cursor positions, stream offsets, Axis Spacing, reference point, caption.
  • Ensure Filter Window is always fully on screen when opened (a skinny WaveView at the top of the desktop could cause the FilterDesigner form to be partially off the top)
  • Fixed cursor changing when pointing at measurement cursors, and mouse clicks /not/ on the cursor itself go through to the window behind.
  • Fixed autoScale when a trace is blank (was defaulting to 1)
  • Fixed Save As recording in MiniSEED where random small time offsets may be introduced.
  • Fixed overflow at huge timescales, and added days display when the window exceeds 24 hours.
  • When using Save As for Matlab export, use sample-rate at start of selection rather than start of data.
  • Forced Matlab export to use '.' as the Decimal Separator because Matlab expects this regardless of regional setting.
  • The Matlab export now pads gaps in time series with NaN samples - keeps the later samples in the correct place.
  • When filter presets are changed, save them immediately back to the .ini file, so that changed in View mode are saved.
• Status:
  • Fixed a possible Stack Overflow when a new GPS position is received.
  • Fixed invalid filename error when selecting "plot with google" if the %TEMP%\scream directory does not exist.
  • Accept upper or lowercase S and W for Latitude/Longitude input.
  • Fixed sizing of y-axis in status window plots for large numbers.
• Network:
  • Increase the UDP receive buffer (OS default is small)
  • Added more network packet validity checks to prevent corrupt packets resulting in erroneous backfills.
  • Removed check on valid hostname before updating GCF commands - was preventing disabling invalid hostnames with GCFSTOP.
  • Add UDP/TCP client now forces selection, focus and view of newly added server entry.
  • Multicast addresses with GCFSEND active will auto-start on re-boot.
  • Tweaked DNS lookup code to fix hostnames being used (sequences and backfilling were being logged by IP address, not hostname).
  • Re-worked setting the Backfill Buffer base directory for better linux handling.
  • TCP re-connect on timeout now recreates the socket every time
  • Fixed possible race condition in server when multiple clients are backfilling simultaneously.
  • Improved reliability of X/Y-modem over TCP links.
• Configuration:
  • Check for Mk3 digitizer configuration without no outputs enabled: Scream! now disables the Upload button to prevent this.
  • Added support for DM baud rate at 230400. (not listed as a rate, but will be preserved if already set). Previously, it would have been reset to 7200 Baud.
• Miscellaneous:
  • Control: when performing an SOH operation via a network server, monitoring mass was not reporting properly.
  • Forced reading INI files to be case-insensitive. Previously, the Linux version was case-sensitive while Windows was not. This hindered transfer of configs between operating systems.
  • Added some checks to stop AVs when attempting to open/cancel multiple configure/control windows at the same time.
  • Recording: Fixed bug in generation of FDSN channel names which caused channels that should have been Bxx to be Mxx.
  • Fixed AV when selecting "calvals" on a replayed data stream.
  • Prevent thread spinning if unable to check free disk space on recording base path.
  • Added support for 800sps incoming GCF.
  • Fixed bug in detection of “Mass position out of range” - was on +ve limit only.
  • Suppressed mass position monitoring whilst pre-loading history from file.
  • In the URLs for plot in google maps, changed the encoding of '(' and ')' to use %28 and %29 instead. Parentheses are linux shell metacharacters and were being misinterpreted.
  • Allow long calibration durations for CD24's.
  • Serial: change autobaud slightly to prevent multiple triggers unnecessarily.
  • Fixed: terminal logging might miss a little text immediately before the terminal closed.
  • The backfill manager now closes file handles before trying to move files after a change of base directory. The previous directory is now cleaned up.
  • Search harder for a calvals file which already has a section for an instrument.
  • Only write DisplayBufferFileList when it changes - reduces file I/O
  • Fixed bug causing FD 0 (STDIN) being closed.
  • Fixed sysinfo() on linux to get the correct values.
  • Attempt to fix occasional clipboard synchronisation issues.

Other changes

• Added µg as an acceleration display unit. Convenient when setting up level triggering, as the values are in µg (if InfoBlock loaded).

• When multiple Status forms are tabbed together, moving the splitter to resize the plot on one will move in all tabs.

• Save Recording list (.rec) file after each change to stream recording

• WaveView: Stream labels display depth instead of Stream ID when in depth mode

• Changed default network options (when there is no scream.ini file) to have Rx enabled, and a network pull from the Platinum multicast address selected.

• Defined filters for the Terminal → Send File dialog for binary images, text files, and all files.

• Changed caption on the Allow remote access checkbox, and widened the scope of its control to include pass-through for forwarding hosts.

• Reorganised DNS lookups to use a cache. Prevents multiple unnecessary lookups to the DNS server, reducing load and improving performance.

• Removed list of supported OS in the about box. If you can read it, then you can run it.

• Tidied up Network window save/load for column widths. Some INI file entries changed.

• Changed "Ref" marker in google Earth KML to be red.

• Disable Latitude/Longitude auto-position updates if a manual override is in use.

• Added a UDP receive watchdog timeout, which defauls to 128 seconds. If no UDP packets are received before the watchdog timer expires, the system will reset all UDP receive threads. The timeout is defined by an optional UDPWatchdogTimeout in the [custom] section of the scream.ini file. A negative value disables the watchdog.

• Modified Unified Status reporting to include undefined bits.

• Filter out Xon and Xoff characters from terminal log.

• Added "validating files" progress in View mode, as it seems some operations can be very slow over a network share.

• Changed the default filename format to YYYY\YYYYMM\YYYYMMDD\I_A_YYYYMMDD_HHNN

• WaveView: Change zoom-in time limit to 20000 from 2000.

• Moved the display.lst files into a sub-folder to tidy up the base recording folder.

• Adjust event handler to prevent display of network control messages being delayed under heavy load.

• Updated GUI references from ‘GPS’ to ‘GNSS’ to better describe operation when using the Galileo, GLONASS or Beidou constellations for synchronisation.

• Switched to use of IEC binary prefixes (Ki/Mi/Gi, etc). See this article for background information

• Windows: When launching in View mode, change current dir to executable location, as it was probably launched from the shell, and CWD is system32.

• Evidence that "Invalid Canvas State Request" occurs on memory starvation. Lower the hard limit from 1.5GiB to 1.4GiB.

• Add logStatReport ini option for network control to enable logging of all status messages to files - one file daily per window.

Installer changes

• Decompress the ART3 CTF whilst in admin mode, to prevent errors at first run by non-admin user.

• Add template calvals.txt and polezero.txt files, containing basic useage notes.

• Change calvals.txt and polezero.txt permissions for Full Control - All Users

• Move the Start menu into All Users, leave the desktop shortcut in Current User

• Don't warn of failing to register gcfmenu if some other error occurred

• Add registry keys for uninstaller to appear in Programs and Features