hop-SNalert-app

An alert application for observing supernovae with the SNEWS detector network.

Prerequisite

• Python 3.6 or above

Overview

This is an alert application that extends the SCiMMA hop-client using the hop-client cookiecutter template. This application monitors the observations published by detectors in the SuperNova Early Warning System (SNEWS) network, and can optionally send alerts upon the detection of a potential supernova.

The application consists of:

• storage - data structure to store recent messages and remove old messages
• decider - applies message parsing logic to decide if incoming messages indicate a supernova
• model - instantiates a decider object and connects to SCiMMA HOPSKOTCH message streams; passes messages using hop.stream to the decider; publishes an alert message if the decider indicates a supernova

The application utilizes the hop-plugin-snews plugin to provide custom message formats: see the repository and [documentation] for more details about this format, and see the hop-client message formats for information on specifying other custom formats.

With appropriate HOPSKOTCH authentication, a user can use the application to publish and subscribe to the online topic "snews-TOPIC".

Quickstart

Setting up a virtual environment

• pip:

  python3 -m venv demo-venv
  source demo-venv/bin/activate

• conda:

  conda create --name demo-venv python=3.7
  conda activate demo-venv

  Install snews

• pip

  pip install git+https://github.com/RiceAstroparticleLab/hop-SNalert-app.git

  Basic command-lines

• running the app:

  snews model --env-file example.env --no-auth

• generating test messages:

  snews generate --env-file example.env --rate 0.5 --alert-probability 0.1 --persist --no-auth

Tutorial

For a full tutorial on how to set up the application with local message streams, follow the guide here: https://github.com/RiceAstroparticleLab/hop-SNalert-app/blob/demo/tutorial/snews-local-tutorial.md

For a full tutorial on how to set up the application with the SCiMMA HOPSKOTCH network and request HOPSKOTCH credentials, follow the guide here: https://github.com/RiceAstroparticleLab/hop-SNalert-app/blob/demo/tutorial/snews-dev-tutorial.md.