SID Monitor Overview

SID monitor is a utility for SID monitoring stations. It has been designed to automate as much as possible the data acquisition and storage tasks, so that the user can focus on data analysis.

SID monitor acquires digital data from a VLF receiver. Up to 16 channels can be monitored simultaneously.
Each channel signal level is periodically sampled and stored in a database. To that purpose, SID monitor embeds RRDTool data logging and graphing application. All RRDTool low-level database management and graph generation commands are automatically handled by SID monitor.

RRDTool also includes an aberrant behavior detection algorithm. This algorithm is used to warn the user of potential SID detection. Warning messages can be sent by email.

Monthly snapshots of the database are done.

SID monitor also include help for generating monthly reports which format is compliant with the NGDC (National Geophysical Data Center) as required by the AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers) for reducing data gathered by all VLF monitoring systems.

SID monitor automatically downloads the X-ray flux measurements from the GOES satellites. As a comparison means, those values can be plotted on the signal level graphs.